Finished last night....
Jul. 20th, 2005 09:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gwendolyngraceAround 10:45 pm. Would have been half an hour sooner, but my *father* called about 50 pages from the end of the book!
Unfortunately, I really couldn't sleep last night, and the knot in my stomach that returned right around Chapter 27 still hasn't gone away. I don't think it will for a while yet.
So while I have to go back to skip=150 to get to the beginning of all your reviews, and I've got about 25 tabs to follow-up on, first I must post my own
Okay. Yesterday I theorized that the HBP could be a bunch of people, but that I was highly doubtful about any of them. This is one of those instances when I wish I'd stuck with my initial instinct: Snape was the first person I thought of when Harry got that potions book, but I immediately rejected that identity because 1. it seemed way too obvious and straightforward for the twists we've come to expect from JKR and 2. because I really didn't think Snape was truly half-blood (especially not with a Muggle father!!). I found that entirely pat, and while it makes *sense* that the book was his, right now, his background doesn't add up for me, it doesn't ring true, much the way Sirius's background still doesn't ring true to me. I think there are many other possibilities for why he is what he is that would be far more interesting and less simple, and that still would have accomplished what she wanted to have happen. Incidentally, does anyone have a chapter or page where Hermione first finds Eileen Prince? I would like to re-read that section and I couldn't find it on a quick page-through this morning.
I was, of course, right about him killing Dumbledore, and I am absolutely confident that he was acting out the possibility that he and Dumbledore discussed long and hard. When Harry heard that Dumbledore was angry at Snape, it's because Snape was having second thoughts about killing him. I'm sure of that.
Still don't like Bill/Fleur. Still don't like Remus/Tonks. Again, they don't ring true, though I have to admit R/T wasn't *as bad* as it could have been. Don't get me started on Harry/Ginny - while it and R/Hr could be seen coming a mile away, IMO, it was just another in a long string of "typical" fantasy romances.
Mainly, I still think that there was just too much shippy nonsense in this one, even if the kids are 16. I found all the little romantic pair-ups too pat, too predictable, too formulaic. The whole book was far more formulaic than any other so far, and while executed somewhat more enjoyably, IMO, than OoP, I felt the forumla almost forcing the action, in a way I didn't feel in the other books. All in all, I think this series is going to go down on the books as moments of sheer brilliance, punctuating an overall pedestrian plot.
I could practically imagine the Campbell papers on this one as I was reading along. I can just guess what theorists such as John Granger will have to say about it - and that didn't add to my enjoyment at all. It's almost as if the structure she's created for her books now stifles their creativity - as if she now has to shoehorn her characters and what little plot there is left into the formula to which she's trying to adhere.
Characters, once on the page, can take on a life of their own, and I wonder whether the reason so much of the current character interaction feels weird to me is that she's manipulating them to do things that they don't "want" to do. I've absolutely no doubt that she always intended this character to end up with that, or this character to reveal that, or that character to be the one who does that, but in some cases, I think that the characters may have grown beyond her plot devices, and that therefore it feels forced to push them back into her original molds. Maybe I'm too heavily influenced by my own and others' interpretations, but there were far too many instances of easy choices - again, just like in OoP.
I had no expectations for all the background on Tom Riddle, so I was well-pleased by what was there to be found. The Draco subplot possibly made the most sense, though again, there were parts that were simply more obvious and straightforward than I have come to expect from the author.
Oh - except that JKR can't do math, yet again. There's something seriously wonky in the timeline. In this book, Dumbledore is clearly Dippet's successor as Headmaster, *and* it happens somewhere around the mid-to-late 50's. BUT, in PoA, Remus pretty clearly implies that Dumbledore didn't become Headmaster until *after* he was bitten - in fact, the implication is that he didn't become Headmaster until just in time for Remus to attend Hogwarts himself. Well, MWPP were born, at earliest, '54-56, and more likely, '57-59. So if Dumbledore became Headmaster around the time they were *born*, Remus's statement that it looked certain he wouldn't be able to go, but then Dumbledore became Headmaster and that all changed, makes no sense.
And Lucius's age is still wrong. Grr. I don't much care for "Abraxas" as his father's name, either, but oh, well. As with Remus "John" Lupin, I'll just ignore that. Like so much else I'll be ignoring. ;^D
I also find it interesting that the expansion of each book into the world continues, to the point where Harry has no intention of returning to Hogwarts next book. It completely makes sense and is one part of her formula that works uncommonly well - Harry has "outgrown" school (even if his remarks to Ginny were entirely too mature and reasoned, and well, external, for Harry - a Spiderman moment if ever there was one) and since his mission now requires him to quest, finally, he will do so. An Active Harry at last. About damn time. (But of course, he had to lose his mentor to get there. Le Sigh.)
I do want book 7, but mainly so that we can all just be *finished* at this point and have free reign for AU goodness... because I will never dislike other interpretations of the characters and their backstories just because they happen to be different than the author's.
Unfortunately, I really couldn't sleep last night, and the knot in my stomach that returned right around Chapter 27 still hasn't gone away. I don't think it will for a while yet.
So while I have to go back to skip=150 to get to the beginning of all your reviews, and I've got about 25 tabs to follow-up on, first I must post my own
Okay. Yesterday I theorized that the HBP could be a bunch of people, but that I was highly doubtful about any of them. This is one of those instances when I wish I'd stuck with my initial instinct: Snape was the first person I thought of when Harry got that potions book, but I immediately rejected that identity because 1. it seemed way too obvious and straightforward for the twists we've come to expect from JKR and 2. because I really didn't think Snape was truly half-blood (especially not with a Muggle father!!). I found that entirely pat, and while it makes *sense* that the book was his, right now, his background doesn't add up for me, it doesn't ring true, much the way Sirius's background still doesn't ring true to me. I think there are many other possibilities for why he is what he is that would be far more interesting and less simple, and that still would have accomplished what she wanted to have happen. Incidentally, does anyone have a chapter or page where Hermione first finds Eileen Prince? I would like to re-read that section and I couldn't find it on a quick page-through this morning.
I was, of course, right about him killing Dumbledore, and I am absolutely confident that he was acting out the possibility that he and Dumbledore discussed long and hard. When Harry heard that Dumbledore was angry at Snape, it's because Snape was having second thoughts about killing him. I'm sure of that.
Still don't like Bill/Fleur. Still don't like Remus/Tonks. Again, they don't ring true, though I have to admit R/T wasn't *as bad* as it could have been. Don't get me started on Harry/Ginny - while it and R/Hr could be seen coming a mile away, IMO, it was just another in a long string of "typical" fantasy romances.
Mainly, I still think that there was just too much shippy nonsense in this one, even if the kids are 16. I found all the little romantic pair-ups too pat, too predictable, too formulaic. The whole book was far more formulaic than any other so far, and while executed somewhat more enjoyably, IMO, than OoP, I felt the forumla almost forcing the action, in a way I didn't feel in the other books. All in all, I think this series is going to go down on the books as moments of sheer brilliance, punctuating an overall pedestrian plot.
I could practically imagine the Campbell papers on this one as I was reading along. I can just guess what theorists such as John Granger will have to say about it - and that didn't add to my enjoyment at all. It's almost as if the structure she's created for her books now stifles their creativity - as if she now has to shoehorn her characters and what little plot there is left into the formula to which she's trying to adhere.
Characters, once on the page, can take on a life of their own, and I wonder whether the reason so much of the current character interaction feels weird to me is that she's manipulating them to do things that they don't "want" to do. I've absolutely no doubt that she always intended this character to end up with that, or this character to reveal that, or that character to be the one who does that, but in some cases, I think that the characters may have grown beyond her plot devices, and that therefore it feels forced to push them back into her original molds. Maybe I'm too heavily influenced by my own and others' interpretations, but there were far too many instances of easy choices - again, just like in OoP.
I had no expectations for all the background on Tom Riddle, so I was well-pleased by what was there to be found. The Draco subplot possibly made the most sense, though again, there were parts that were simply more obvious and straightforward than I have come to expect from the author.
Oh - except that JKR can't do math, yet again. There's something seriously wonky in the timeline. In this book, Dumbledore is clearly Dippet's successor as Headmaster, *and* it happens somewhere around the mid-to-late 50's. BUT, in PoA, Remus pretty clearly implies that Dumbledore didn't become Headmaster until *after* he was bitten - in fact, the implication is that he didn't become Headmaster until just in time for Remus to attend Hogwarts himself. Well, MWPP were born, at earliest, '54-56, and more likely, '57-59. So if Dumbledore became Headmaster around the time they were *born*, Remus's statement that it looked certain he wouldn't be able to go, but then Dumbledore became Headmaster and that all changed, makes no sense.
And Lucius's age is still wrong. Grr. I don't much care for "Abraxas" as his father's name, either, but oh, well. As with Remus "John" Lupin, I'll just ignore that. Like so much else I'll be ignoring. ;^D
I also find it interesting that the expansion of each book into the world continues, to the point where Harry has no intention of returning to Hogwarts next book. It completely makes sense and is one part of her formula that works uncommonly well - Harry has "outgrown" school (even if his remarks to Ginny were entirely too mature and reasoned, and well, external, for Harry - a Spiderman moment if ever there was one) and since his mission now requires him to quest, finally, he will do so. An Active Harry at last. About damn time. (But of course, he had to lose his mentor to get there. Le Sigh.)
I do want book 7, but mainly so that we can all just be *finished* at this point and have free reign for AU goodness... because I will never dislike other interpretations of the characters and their backstories just because they happen to be different than the author's.
