Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (SPOILER INSIDE starting on page 3)

[eldaec]

Only the usual PR/journo shills who call everything the best thing in every series, because copy/pasting press releases is so much easier than real work.

EDIT: And if anyone else is doing so, feel free to go harass them on *their* threads. Because, yes, everyone in this one agrees with you.

Yes,  Prisoner > Hallows.

[Ironwood]

They ALL owned Hallows.  That's the problem.

[eldaec]

imo, for what it is worth, from good down to pretty good....

Prisoner
Chamber
Prince
Stone
Hallows
Goblet
Phoenix

[Ironwood]

Move Hallows to the bottom and I'd agree.

[Rasix]

I may be somewhat odd in that Goblet of Fire is my favorite one.  Chamber is my least fav.  Hallows is near the bottom for me, whatever that means in a list of books that I've all enjoyed. 

[Calantus]

The goblet is horrible almost completely based on the fact that the tri-wizard tournament was a big yawn-fest. I was expecting duels or some shit, not stealing an egg from a dragon, having an underwater scavenger hunt (what. the. fuck), and navagating a hedge maze. Oh and of course Harry needs help through it all because he doesn't know shit. It was very lame.

[grebo]

The third book was good, I liked the third book.  While reading the fifth and sixth books, I kept wondering when something was going to happen...book seven should have been after 4, with more dark evil world killing plotlines and Voldemort not being such a stupid douche... for 3 books!  Yeah, that would have been super neat.

Rowling is famous for clever plot twists, but she ends the series in the most banal, predictable way possible, while killing a lot of people to create ... atmosphere?  bah.
Would have been ver nice if Voldemort had lived up to his reputation just a little bit.

And didja notice how Rowlings explains the potter/riddle wand issue by basically saying it was not understandable?  I hate that crap.

[Merusk]

And didja notice how Rowlings explains the potter/riddle wand issue by basically saying it was not understandable?  I hate that crap.

Eh?

Do you mean the "Dual Cores" thing, or the new-minted "Rules of PhallusWand Exchange?"

[Margalis]

Rowling is famous for clever plot twists

Come again?

[grebo]

"I believe that your wand imbibed some of the power and qualities of Voldemort's wand that night, which is to say that it contained a little of Voldemort himself.  So your wand recognized him when he pursued you, recognized a man who was both kin and mortal enemy, and it regurgitated some of his own magic against him, magic much more powerful than anything Lucius's wand had ever performed.  Your wand now contained the power of your enormous courage and of Voldemort's own deadly skill:  What chance did that poor stick of Lucius Malfoy's stand?

Who says that?  and edits it?  and has a dozen "experts" look at it?  and then prints it anyway???  who???  that paragraph sucks ass!

edited to make pretty.

[grebo]

Rowling is famous for clever plot twists

Come again?

No, you come again!  What is there to debate?  There are books about this stuff, books about wondering what she might be going to do next! 

[Margalis]

The fact that people speculate is totally unrelated to being "famous for clever plot twists." People speculate because the future hasn't happened yet. Any popular, engaging narrative will encourage speculation.

The Harry Potter series really doesn't have a lot of twists, and the ones it does have are mostly predictable and not clever at all.

[grebo]

The fact that people speculate is totally unrelated to being "famous for clever plot twists." People speculate because the future hasn't happened yet. Any popular, engaging narrative will encourage speculation.

The Harry Potter series really doesn't have a lot of twists, and the ones it does have are mostly predictable and not clever at all.

a.  I think you're wrong. 

b.  Having reread my post, I think my point would be just as well served if you removed the word "twiists".

So, meh.

[Selby]

At least 7 finishes everything off.  Book 6 has all of one major sequence combined with a ton of nothing happening, almost like book 5 but with less teen angst.

The first 3 were good light-hearted fare, easy to read and fun to deal with.  Not to mention they were maybe 350-450 pages.  Book 4 I enjoyed despite it being rather dark and like 800 pages.  Book 5 & 6 were just too long based on what happened.  After finishing 6 I just wanted 7 to be out so I could get it over with.  That's how much I didn't care for 6.

[lamaros]

This is the worst book I've read since I quit reading American Gods after 100 pages.

Remember that thread a while back where we explained the Snape thing? So she writes it out exactly like that..

For some people things like that might be inventive and enjoyable, but for many it (and you can't argue - we have it in writing on these forums) was simply boring, predictable, and devoid of flair.

It's a bad book because there is no style, the dialog is soporific, the 'themes' are on a short and unvarying cycle, and the plot so rudimentary that you can see it coming books in advance.

Except for the whole mind bond thing, which was built up rather solidly only to be abandoned with a memory Dumbledore coming out with a "oh, I think he's safe from attack by that route now" out of nowhere. Assumedly so that she didn't have to work out a way it might have been involved in the story yet still providing a neat solution for those fans who just have to have complete closure.

Oh and the wand thing was hilarious.

The epilogue was like a very bad piece of fan fiction.

It's just a very bad book, I'm not going to get riled up about it because I chose to read it and finished doing so, but that's not going to make me hold it up as anything other than a bad book either.

If there was anything in the series that was good then, for me, it was the humor and the enthusiastic imagination of the first novel. These things disappeared more and more over the life of the series - while the books also became longer. I laughed a couple of times reading the final book, but only once or twice was it at her jokes ("Percy you're joking!" made the cut, King's Cross Station did not).

I seriously don't know how people could read through the pages of the novel without shaking their heads softly and feeling sorry for the author - who clearly didn't give a shit anymore but was forced to fill out a hefty few pages and felt obligated to satisfy a legion of fans - but then, I don't understand people much anyway.

[Ironwood]

What really bothers me (and it's not just about this book, but all books) is that the role of Publishing Editor appears to have dissappeared.

There's been a lot of famous big books I've read recently that needed sorted with a Hedge Trimmer.  This was one of them.  Just because someone earns millions doesn't mean a good critical editor shouldn't be sending them back to the writing desk.

[Reg]

The worst example I've seen of non-existent editing lately is any recent stuff by David Eddings (the guy who wrote the Belgariad series). He must be such a big seller that the editors don't touch his books anymore because in the last few he's actually repeated identical pieces of dialogue several times through each book. It's incredibly annoying.

[Ironwood]

I'm surprised Dean Koontz hasn't been knifed by his editors.

I suspect it's because they've given up.

[Big Gulp]

when I and many writers can't even get publishers to look at page 1 of their book.

And for that I, and readers worldwide, profusely thank the publishers.

Maybe if you weren't such a bitter, twisted douchebag things would actually turn out better for you.

[Ironwood]

Oh, I dunno.  I do all right.

[Big Gulp]

Oh, I dunno.  I do all right.

You don't constantly fall back on the, "I'm jaded and angry all the time!  I'm extreme!  I'm edgy!" bullshit.  Most of us get past that sometime after high school.  Apparently for some of us it takes longer.

[HaemishM]

Wow, that was so perceptive, Gulp. You've seen through my entire charade! You've exposed me for the poseur that I truly am and as such my life has no more meaning!!!! You've foiled my cunning plan!

Or could be you've misinterepreted my honest feelings as some sort of "act" that I put on. No, I'm really that much of an angry, twisted douchebag in real life too. I'm a joy to be around.

[Venkman]

Actually, I read him as saying that this is what you were like. Nobody around here could think you were putting on an act for this long. That'd take mercenary conviction of an unrealistic order :)

So was Harry Potter 7 Seinfeld-end bad or just Buffy-end bad?

[HaemishM]

In that case, he can eat a fat bag of dicks and die. Which really he can do for either interpretation, as can the rest of the world. For all time.

I AM ANGST!

[eldaec]

What really bothers me (and it's not just about this book, but all books) is that the role of Publishing Editor appears to have dissappeared.

There's been a lot of famous big books I've read recently that needed sorted with a Hedge Trimmer.  This was one of them.  Just because someone earns millions doesn't mean a good critical editor shouldn't be sending them back to the writing desk.

Goes for films too.

I blame Peter Jackson.

[eldaec]

Actually, I read him as saying that this is what you were like. Nobody around here could think you were putting on an act for this long. That'd take mercenary conviction of an unrealistic order :)

So was Harry Potter 7 Seinfeld-end bad or just Buffy-end bad?

The ending was fine, if predictable. Once the gang get to hogwarts, the book gets going, unfortunately that isn't till page 439.

The problem the book has is the 200 page wizarding world tour stuck on the front to tieup the plot lines from books 1-6. Rowling felt she had to give a few pages to every character and even every object that hadn't been definitively dealt with. Every order member, every birthday present, every enemy who isn't already dead, every throwaway dumbledore or snape comment, even random shards of mirror, all got their plot line. Result is that the book 7 arc doesn't really get going.

It's still a fun book.

[Margalis]

And for that I, and readers worldwide, profusely thank the publishers.

Maybe if you weren't such a bitter, twisted douchebag things would actually turn out better for you.

This is the biggest douchebag comment in this thread by far.

[eldaec]

The goblet is horrible almost completely based on the fact that the tri-wizard tournament was a big yawn-fest. I was expecting duels or some shit, not stealing an egg from a dragon, having an underwater scavenger hunt (what. the. fuck), and navagating a hedge maze. Oh and of course Harry needs help through it all because he doesn't know shit. It was very lame.

One thing I never really understood about the triwiz, was that apart from the dragon egg thing, it was entirely unsuitable as a spectator sport.

I kept thinking, yeah, so you are variously in a maze or at the bottom of a lake, NOBODY CAN SEE WHAT IS GOING ON. Probably not something worth worrying about, but there you go.

[HaemishM]

I kept thinking, yeah, so you are variously in a maze or at the bottom of a lake, NOBODY CAN SEE WHAT IS GOING ON. Probably not something worth worrying about, but there you go.

Magic psychic cameras. DUH.

[Ironwood]

Goes for films too.

I blame Peter Jackson.

What ?  Why ?

[HaemishM]

Because the longer the Lord of the Rings films got, the more Hollywood let directors make long ass movies even if the movie didn't need that much time. Case in point: Peter Jackson's King Kong.

[Ironwood]

The Lord Of The Rings was BRIEF considering the fucking material.

 

[eldaec]

I was aiming more at King Kong than LotR.

That said, the cinema LotR films were either too short or too long, take your pick.

They either needed filling out to the full DVD versions, or cutting down and missing sections entirely, as they were, they hit an awkward spot with not enough time to do justice to the amount of plot PJ wanted to include; rushing through as much of the plot as they did made the cinema versions unecessarily hard work to watch. imo.

And that aside, LotR's success is a big part of why every other film is 3 hours long these days.

[Ironwood]

Ok, I've not seen Kong so I can't comment.  But the LotR stuff is bullshit.

[Venkman]

I agree that LoTR needed the time it was given, particularly in the Director's Cut stuff, and that this compelled Hollywood to let other Director's off the hook whether they needed to or not. They certainly didn't like giving that time to Dances with Wolves :)

But remember, prior to that was the fascist time limits that gave us the original Abyss. I'd rather be bored in a long movie than have a lobotomized one in an otherwise pretty darned good flick.