Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Book 7) (Paperback)

• I am somewhat heartened to read that not every review is a five-star love letter either to The Hallows, to author Rowling or to the series as a whole.
  
  As to the observation Rowling needed a stricter editor for this final (some say, bloated) novel in the Harry Potter saga, it's debatable. However, I take strong exception to one review that labeled Dumbledore a "fraud" with the demand that Dumbledore "be the same as he was throughout the series," or words to that effect.
  
  The key aspect that comes from "HP and the Deathly Hallows" is the human fallibility of all the characters. I suppose it's easy to forget -- considering readers are submerged into the wizarding world -- that Harry and all the other characters (save the fantastic giants, centaurs, and such) are still HUMAN, magical but human. As such, Dumbledore, Harry, even Professor Snape are prone to human weakness, petty jealousies, and even acts of extraordinary courage. Readers are treated to the fact that a young, callow Dumbledore was elitist, selfish, and power-hungry. A young Snape seems to have loved only one woman -- the woman he couldn't have -- all his life. Who'd have suspected that the dour Snape had such a romantic nature?
  
  Yet the adult Dumbledore is so easy to love, to trust. The adult Snape is so easy to hate, to hold in suspicion. In "Deathly Hallows" Rowling points out that all is never as it seems on the surface - a lesson we might apply in our real daily lives.
  
  For this reader, the charm of the novel is finally revealing the feet of clay that all the principal characters possess. More than a tale of wizardry and the eternal battle of good vs. evil, Rowling has painted vivid portraits of the vagaries of human nature, by turns magnanimous then niggardly, cowardly then courageous.

• If J.K. Rowling was ever going to ruin it, it would have been with Book 7. But Rowling pulled it off. The story was every bit as entertaining as its predecessors, and the end was (in my opinion) completely satisfying. My only complaint was epilogue. I wouldn't want to do without it because, just like any other Harry Potter fan, I wanted to know what happened to the characters after the climax. But it felt rushed, and lacked the style of the rest of the books (perhaps because it was in the odd position of telling without advancing a story). Still, I closed the book feeling content, and I look forward to going back and re-reading the books in a year or two.

• This is arguably the most "hyped" book in history, and if J.K. Rowling had to sneak down to the kitchen for a glass of red wine to calm her nerves while writing The Goblet of Fire (as she said she did), one wonders what assuaged her while writing Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. The collective breath of tens of millions of readers has been held for two years...and now...was it worth the wait? Did Ms. Rowling live up to the hype? (For that, amongst hundreds of questions, is really the only question that matters.)
  
  The answer, most assuredly, is YES.
  
  Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is told in a strikingly different style than the previous six books - even different from The Half Blood Prince, and, I daresay, it's a better written, better edited, tighter narrative.
  
  And while the action is lively and well paced throughout, Rowling found a way to answer most of our questions while introducing new and complex ideas. What fascinated me was this: Some people were right, with regard to who is good, who is bad, who will live, who will die - but almost nobody got the "why" part correct.