Review 12: Harry Potter (no spoilers)
04/09/07 23:24 Filed in: Reviews
Well it
took me 20 hours, but I gulped down the rushed prose of the last HP
book and now we can all move on with our lives.
My review? It was all right. I couldn't remember a lot of details and Rowling did little backstory. The same bitching, whining and totally inappropriately timed jokes that made me hate the characters in the last couple books continued. The story resolved somewhat satisfactorily. However, there is a huge plot gap, as well as the fact that the pivotal hinge of everything happened a whole book ago and was easy to miss, that required Rowling to "set the record straight" according to NBC. You can read it here if you finished the book with the same WTF expression that I had.
But all of that is garbage. An author should never have to say, once a reader finishes, perplexed, "oh well what actually happened was..." What the hell is that? We're talking about fiction, not some event you attended and poorly reported on. If you need to explain it, it ain't working, just like a bad joke.
Whether she's a victim of massive fanpressure, of boxoffice deadlines or is just not the writer she was when she started out with a compact and honed little novel, I don't care. Thanks for the escapist fantasy -- I'm off to read something more important.
My review? It was all right. I couldn't remember a lot of details and Rowling did little backstory. The same bitching, whining and totally inappropriately timed jokes that made me hate the characters in the last couple books continued. The story resolved somewhat satisfactorily. However, there is a huge plot gap, as well as the fact that the pivotal hinge of everything happened a whole book ago and was easy to miss, that required Rowling to "set the record straight" according to NBC. You can read it here if you finished the book with the same WTF expression that I had.
But all of that is garbage. An author should never have to say, once a reader finishes, perplexed, "oh well what actually happened was..." What the hell is that? We're talking about fiction, not some event you attended and poorly reported on. If you need to explain it, it ain't working, just like a bad joke.
Whether she's a victim of massive fanpressure, of boxoffice deadlines or is just not the writer she was when she started out with a compact and honed little novel, I don't care. Thanks for the escapist fantasy -- I'm off to read something more important.