Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

[happydalek]

Finished it!  Bam!  Haha!

And managed it spoiler-free, too! 

Definitely not the strongest of the series, for sure.  Like its predecessors, HP7 is badly in need of a no-nonsense editor.  The first half of the book was surprisingly dull and felt like filler; quite a let-down from my expectations, but once the action got underway in the second half, WHOOSH!  The uneven pacing was also not helped by its rather clumsy plotting.  I could forgive the first half being slow going in order to set up all the necessary exposition, but even once the pace picked up, characters were still forced to make giant info-dumps during the middle of climactic fight scenes, making the whole thing sound a little amateurish to me.  Speaking of amateurish, the less said about HP7's pointless epilogue, the better!

Ultimately, HP7 was a fairly predictable story, ending much the way I expected to, though perhaps not exactly as I had hoped.  Hampered with enough explanations, exposition and backstory to gag a mandrake, the story nonetheless manages to do justice to the majority of its characters.  The action is exciting (though not always logical), and in many places the book nearly brought me to tears.  There is a very good story buried within HP7, but it strikes me as more of a "first draft" than a polished conclusion to this much-beloved saga. 

I look forward eagerly to the film adaptation.