A number of the bloggers I read had reviews of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (complete with spoilers) up within days of it coming out. I bought my copy back on July 21st when it first came out but that was the week before we left for China, so we were more than a bit busy back then and Tina wouldn't let me I couldn't finish it before we left. Once we got back I picked it back up and got to the end. So now for my review:

It was fine.

I don't know if living in China for 2+ weeks and completing an international adoption in the middle of the book kind of lessened it for me, but I just didn't find it all that much when it was over. I'm glad I read it, but I'm still a bit perplexed by all the attention these books have gotten. The Harry Potter books are good, and any writer that can get kids to line up at midnight for a book certainly deserves credit, but there are a lot of really great books out there that don't get any recognition. Still it was fun to be with these characters one last time. I read the first book with our son Cameron when he was 11 - the same age as Harry in the first book - that was way back before there were any movies, or mass-marketing, or even a second book. That's part of my love for the series - having shared it with Cameron over the years. Cam also pointed out to me what is probably the most glaring problem with the last book, that Rowling gets to within 50 pages of the end and suddenly has to stop the action and have one character explain what the entire meaning is behind everything that's gone on for the last 4145 pages of the story. But I did finally finish the book.

Now to tie this into the theme of the blog, here's a picture I took of the first 6 HP books on display in the little department store we shopped at in Xi'an...