Harry Poter and The Deathly Hallows ...Review.

Maybe i am just caught up in potter mania, but this seems to be as good a reason as any to put a review together...the challenge of course is to avoid too many details of the plot so that others can still read it...

What i do plan to do it to put the story out in precis over the next week and then also provide a chapter-by-chapter synopsis....when i get around to scanning the covers, will edit this post to include the scans.

This review contains spoilers...read at your own risk.
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Well, what do i say...this instalment from JK Rowling has been worth the wait...every second of it. In Harry Potter and Deathly Hallows, JKR has surpassed all that she has been praised for so far...In a fitting end to the series, she describes the growing up of Harry and his friends...Hermione and Ron find a way to express their feelings and Harry learns to delve deeper into the world of magic...probably as deep as no live wizard has ever gone before....and JKR, at the end, does something which probably touches the heart more than all pairings and emotional scenes in all the books put together...she gives Harry a family to call his own.

Through the book, Harry is alternating between despair and hope...it resonates with incidents any normal person would go through...maybe that is what makes JKR's Harry so special...he is vulnerable like us...Rowling has tapped into that special bit which Stan Lee did with Spiderman ages ago.

The fights between Harry and Voldemort are excellently choreographed in the book. The last fight involving the wizarding world of Harry and friends with Voldemort and his death eaters both inside and outside Hogwarts is excellent...it retains an innocence which you would not get if you read about Ragnarok and is still as fierce.

There is a certain purity to characters in the book...Harry, Hermione, Ginny, Luna and even Voldemort...his bewilderment during the last fight is described in excellent fashion...

Snape being a good guy was almost expected...At the risk of sounding far-fetched, Snape seems someone who JKR wants us to believe in...So, while he is relegated to the sidelines for most of the book, he and Dumbledore finally turn out to be Harry's mentors ...even in death. I do believe that Snape's death should have been better played out...After building up his character for so long, his death was somehow ... an anti-climax.

In any case, Harry finally achieves iconic status...whether it is to advise Lupin of his duties as a father or whether it is his acceptance and understanding of Snape's actions during the heat of battle.

Of course, there are a few unanswered questions...most of them are about minor though...

I personally believe that killing Fred off was not relevant to the plot at such a late stage...It does bring in an extra moment of Molly being the avenging mother and finishing off Bellatrix, but Freds' death does seem a little stretched. JKR seems to re-emphasise parent-child bonding over and over again in the book...Lily talking to Harry,

a) What happens to Umbridge after You-know-Who is overthrown?
b) What happens to Lucius and the other death-eaters ?
c) What does Harry do after the war? Obviously, he cannot go to a regular office, working for someone in a minimalistic capacity....and he definitely is not joining Hogwarts as a teacher

I'm sure there are a few hundred questions like this that will pop up in a few days on multiple websites, but... All in all, the best read i have had in a long while and i hope to be able to read it a few more times atleast. This book is as close to perfection as any book can get...I am now waiting for part 3 of the inheritance series. :-)

Eragon ... Review

What do i say about the inheritance series that has not been said already?
Book 1 of the series is Eragon...It is an amazing novel.

The book starts off with a fact paced action sequence where a shade tries to steal a dragon egg from an elf. He doesn't get the egg,but captures one elf and kills 2 others...
Eragon - the hero of the series picks up the egg in the spine and it is a roller coaster ride for him from then on. He meets up with Brom - an ex-dragon rider who trains him in the art of being a rider. On his journey with Brom and Saphira (his dragon) to track down the killers of his adoptive father, he learns the story of how the riders fell and how the king Galbatorix usurped power. This strengthens his resolve to be on the ide of good...aka. Luke Skywalker.

Brom is ambushed and killed , Eragon makes a new friend in Murtagh and rescues the elf - Arya. He also finds the Varden - the rebels who oppose Galbatorix. The stage is set for a showdown with the shade and the urgals who attack the Varden's outpost. Eragon is greviously injured by the shade, but manages to kill the shade as well. When he despairs of his injury and life, there is a voice in his head which tells him to be sane.

Book 1 ends on this note.

The interesting part of the book is that it probably predicts the manner of ending of the series as well in the form of a dream that Eragon has.

The book is somewhere in between Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings. Comparisons with either series don't make sense as the book itself is for those readers who want to make a smooth transition from Rowling to Tolkein. To think that the author wrote it when he was in his teens boggles the mind.

Some scenes from the book - for example the scene where Angela the witch and solenbaum the werecat are introduced, the rescue of Arya, Eragon's first sparring fight with Arya - all stick to memory. This is a book which can be read multiple times and every part of the book is an awesome read. That is more than can be said about book 2 - which is a great read as well, but parts of which tend to get a little boring.