Harry Potter: Its all over

All in all, an 'ok' conclusion to the series.I had two gripes with the book, one not so big, the other way more critical.First, the book did not follow the standard Potter formula, with school being the gel that held everything together. It was far more similar to your classical 'quest' fantasy novels and unfortunately I think it really showed Rowling's weakness as a writer. It was hard to compare the first six books to other works because of the setting but when you remove that you can far more easily put it side by side with other books and see where it falls down.The far more critical issue with the book was the lack of any real epilogue or 'denument'. After investing seven plus years and 3000 or so pages into a setting and characters the lack of closure really, for lack of a better word, sucked. It was like watching the LOTR movies without the scouring of the Shire or Babylon 5 without season 5. I would like to think that she did this on purpose in order to leave further writing opportunities open to her, but unfortunately I think that is giving her too much credit.Oh well, it's all over now.Other then the really weak ending (gripe 2), I would really recommend the series to anyone. I think it was a blast and a load of fun to read.

SPOILER ALERT!!!!.
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. I agree with what you are saying, but the execution was very weak. I was very happy that she actually killed Dumbledore and kept him dead for that very reason. I had serious doubts that she would actually commit to that, and I'm happy to have been wrong about it. Jaderis hit what is probably bugging me about the setting thing. She has always claimed that there was going to be one book per school year. What happened to the seventh year? That's the thing though. Wars just don't 'end' cleanly like portrayed in this book. There is always aftermath, always strife that needs to be resolved, always ramifications to the people involved. Again, I have to point to LOTR and B5 as perfect examples of works that understood this and followed through on it. After so much investment in the world, I want to know how things turned out and 5 pages of sappy 19 years later doesn't cut it. The story arc deserves another few hundred pages devoted to it and I don't think we will ever see it now.