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katie__pillar and I bopped off to Waterstones late last night to pick up Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I had ummed and ahed a lot about which version to get, and had eventually pre-ordered the adult one, because the children's cover was so hideous, but when it came to it I got the children's cover, because all my others are, and because having an "adult" cover for a children's book is just really stupid, je pense. We only queued for about an hour or so, which wasn't too bad. But anyway, enough foreplay. On to the good stuff...
OMFG, how excellent was it? I really, really loved it. I learnt from my experiences with OotP and HBP, and didn't attempt to read it as quickly as humanly possible (though I sort of had to with HBP because it was the night before we were going to Austria, and I had to read it pretty damned quickly if I wanted to get any sleep), and sort of savoured it. I can't really come up with anything coherent, so am going with the tried and true bulletpoint option.
♥ Molly Weasley duelling with Bellatrix. Oh yeah, baby.
♥ Dobby! Oh, Dobby! I never particularly liked you, but you came up trumps here!
♥ Alas, poor Fred. Still, one of the Weasleys had to go, and I can live with it.
♥ Percy! Huzzah! I knew he'd see the light! Potential for fic to chart his recovery to normality, je pense.
♥ I liked that Lucius and Narcissa did in the end care more about their family than Voldemort. But Scorpius, or whatever it was (can't check - Katie has book now)? Even Draco's better than that...
♥ Dudley not hating Harry! ♥
♥ I always believed in Snape. The whole loving-Lily-forever may have been slightly saccharine, but it worked for me.
♥ Dumbledore as Machiavellian mastermind type also completely worked for me. Interesting to see his background, though, and poor Ariana :'-( (patented single emo tear of woe). Heh, and Aberforth was kinda cool!
♥ The battle at the end was good, better than that confusing mêlée at the end of OotP.
♥ I didn't like the way it seemed to be sort of assumed that the Slytherin students would all have to run away from Hogwarts with Slughorn. Slytherin students must constitute a quarter of the wizarding world, and this blythe assertion that they're all a bit dodge has never settled well with me. Everyone has bad and good in them, and I don't see that Slytherin students (espesh since, come on, they're Sorted at the age of 11!) are going to have a particularly different balance.
♥ Um, what else? I loved the trio bopping around the country, hiding out in the tent, without any clear idea of what exactly they were doing. It was ace.
♥ Harry was a horcrux? Really? Well, who saw that coming? Oh, right, everyone... Still, I really enjoyed it when we all thought he was actually going to die, and it took balls to bop off and meet his fate, but then Harry did always have that self-sacrificing hero mojo working, so only to be expected.
♥ Potterwatch! Potterwatch ruled!
♥ I did like the whole atmosphere of the book, the oppression, the people in hiding, Voldemort not coming into the open, but everyone knowing, and everyone scared. And Hogwarts the same but so different. And Neville! Oh, Neville, I love you!
So all in all, a top read. *Really* looking forward to the film!
On a final note, how much do I love LJ? I come on this morning, and basically my entire flist is talking about the book. I love that sense of community, that there are things like this that bring us all together, because we are (mostly) all fannish, and it's beautiful.
katie__pillar and I bopped off to Waterstones late last night to pick up Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I had ummed and ahed a lot about which version to get, and had eventually pre-ordered the adult one, because the children's cover was so hideous, but when it came to it I got the children's cover, because all my others are, and because having an "adult" cover for a children's book is just really stupid, je pense. We only queued for about an hour or so, which wasn't too bad. But anyway, enough foreplay. On to the good stuff...OMFG, how excellent was it? I really, really loved it. I learnt from my experiences with OotP and HBP, and didn't attempt to read it as quickly as humanly possible (though I sort of had to with HBP because it was the night before we were going to Austria, and I had to read it pretty damned quickly if I wanted to get any sleep), and sort of savoured it. I can't really come up with anything coherent, so am going with the tried and true bulletpoint option.
♥ Molly Weasley duelling with Bellatrix. Oh yeah, baby.
♥ Dobby! Oh, Dobby! I never particularly liked you, but you came up trumps here!
♥ Alas, poor Fred. Still, one of the Weasleys had to go, and I can live with it.
♥ Percy! Huzzah! I knew he'd see the light! Potential for fic to chart his recovery to normality, je pense.
♥ I liked that Lucius and Narcissa did in the end care more about their family than Voldemort. But Scorpius, or whatever it was (can't check - Katie has book now)? Even Draco's better than that...
♥ Dudley not hating Harry! ♥
♥ I always believed in Snape. The whole loving-Lily-forever may have been slightly saccharine, but it worked for me.
♥ Dumbledore as Machiavellian mastermind type also completely worked for me. Interesting to see his background, though, and poor Ariana :'-( (patented single emo tear of woe). Heh, and Aberforth was kinda cool!
♥ The battle at the end was good, better than that confusing mêlée at the end of OotP.
♥ I didn't like the way it seemed to be sort of assumed that the Slytherin students would all have to run away from Hogwarts with Slughorn. Slytherin students must constitute a quarter of the wizarding world, and this blythe assertion that they're all a bit dodge has never settled well with me. Everyone has bad and good in them, and I don't see that Slytherin students (espesh since, come on, they're Sorted at the age of 11!) are going to have a particularly different balance.
♥ Um, what else? I loved the trio bopping around the country, hiding out in the tent, without any clear idea of what exactly they were doing. It was ace.
♥ Harry was a horcrux? Really? Well, who saw that coming? Oh, right, everyone... Still, I really enjoyed it when we all thought he was actually going to die, and it took balls to bop off and meet his fate, but then Harry did always have that self-sacrificing hero mojo working, so only to be expected.
♥ Potterwatch! Potterwatch ruled!
♥ I did like the whole atmosphere of the book, the oppression, the people in hiding, Voldemort not coming into the open, but everyone knowing, and everyone scared. And Hogwarts the same but so different. And Neville! Oh, Neville, I love you!
So all in all, a top read. *Really* looking forward to the film!
On a final note, how much do I love LJ? I come on this morning, and basically my entire flist is talking about the book. I love that sense of community, that there are things like this that bring us all together, because we are (mostly) all fannish, and it's beautiful.
