Deathly Hallows

I finally finished reading the new Harry Potter book (Christine had to help me sound out some of the bigger words). It was good and all, but I could have done without the Hollywood/Happily Ever After ending. I think it would have been way more compelling to end it with the chapter where Voldemort "kills" Harry.

I was put off by how contrived things were in this book. It was like Rowling was inventing the rules that govern that world in order to build a story, which I guess is one of the nice things about writing about a fictional world. The loopholes in the wizarding "physics" (that somehow hardly anybody in all the years of wizarding had figured out) was hack. Maybe I'm no fun and that's why I prefer non-fiction on the rare occasion that I actually pick up a book.

I don't know how the Harry Potter licensing works, but I would expect to see some spin-off books involving the children in that were introduced in the (shiny, happy) epilogue. And I wouldn't be surprised to see a prequel (a great way to rehash beloved characters that got axed in the last installment).