Ok, I am not sure exactly what page I am on but I stopped right after Xenophilous Lovegood told them that the Wand, Stone, and Cloak make up "The Deathly Hallows" and that whoever has all three of them has control over Death... or something like that.
Again, please do not spoil what comes next for me.
My thoughts so far:
- I like that it appears the Deathly Hallows will be a significant plot point. I think that some of the previous books had chosen provocative sounding titles that were really fairly unimportant to the book. For example, both Goblet of Fire and Half-Blood Prince are exciting sounding titles but the books were not really about either of those things. Having just read this little tiny bit about the Deathly Hallows, it does appear to me that this could be a very significant plot point and a worthy thing to title the book. I may be wrong, but I am now thinking that Voldemort (who is obsessed with cheating/defeating Death) wants the great wandmakers not because of some problem with his own wand versus Harry but because he wants to find the Elder Wand. Harry's cloak is the Invisibility Cloak. I am not sure where the Resurrection Stone will show up but I really think this will be significant.
- I hated the way Harry found Griffindor's Sword. HATED IT! I am sure the silver doe patronus will be explained and it will make sense at some point, but from where I sit right now, this was lazy storytelling.
- For 3 smart kids, Harry, Ron, and Hermione are really stupid. Why are they not exploring Dumbledore's gifts further to figure out what they really mean? Especially now that Ron's Deluminator has shown itself to have a secondary ability (to hear what your love is saying, huh??) and now that Hermione has found a secret marking (The Deathly Hallows) in the Tales of Beedle the Bard. Of course the Snitch has special powers or some secret hidden in it!?!?! Why are these stupid kids ignoring it? Grrrrr. I find this to be too obvious for them to ignore all this time. On the other hand, there better be more to Hermione's book than the small scribbled symbol of the Deathly Hallows. If Dumbledore left it with them because he knew Hermione would find that symbol (while the Ministry's professional sybologists spent 30 days looking at it and never noticed it) that is, again waay too convenient for a good storyteller. I hate it when storys only resolve themselves because of chance and luck. I am starting to fear that JK is going down this path a bit too often. Dumbledore, who considered finding the Horcruxes and defeating Voldy to be hugely important, seems to have left an awful lot to chance when it comes to how he is helping the kids. At least that is how it appears right now.
- I am really sick of JK making Harry's lack of faith in Dumbledore a central theme... again! Over and over again in the past few books Harry has had these deep soul-searching trials where he figures Dumbledore does not care about him or that Dumbledore is not a good, wise wizzard. And over and over again we get an explanation later in the book where wee find out 'Dore is exactly the opposite of what Harry thought. Sigh. Of course we are headed down that path again. I am tired of it. And for Harry to be trusting of Rita Skeeter's book on Dumbledore... come on!! How dumb is Harry? And whatever happened to Hermione's threat to expose Skeeter as an illegal Animagus if she kept on acting up? I guess they are just ignoring that right now.
- I love the rehabilitation of Kreacher! I think it was very well done and I really like him as a character now. I hope he comes back into the story, though I am skeptical he will. The backstory about Regulus and Kreacher and how they were involved with the locket was some of the best stuff in the book so far. I still do not even begin to understand why Regulus drank the poison potion to get the locket? Why not have Kreacher drink it again? After all, Kreacher would probably have gladly endured the pain of doing this if he knew it would save Regulus' life. Seeing his master die like that was almost certainly more painful to Kreacher than drinking the potion would be. Oh well.
- Talkign about Kreacher's story reminding me of one other thing... does Hermione spend this entire book crying or what? It seems that every time anything happens, she enjoys a good cry about it. I am not a fan of this as the books have done such a great job so far making Hermione into a very strong female. Not that I think it is feminine to cry or that it is bad to cry but it feels like Hermy is doing it CONSTANTLY in this book. It is just a bit much. I half expected her to cry at the end of the story of the Three Brothers.
- As I read the books, I cannot help but imagine how they will translate onto film. So far, this one has a few strong action sequences (the aerial fight with the Death Eaters, the escape from the Ministry of Magic, and -best of all- the encounter with Nagini at Godric's Hollow) that will probably be a lot of fun on film. It is worth noting that Polyjuice Potion plays a huge role in all 3 of these sequences which presents a cinematic challenge because we want to see Daniel Radcliffe fight these battles, not Harry transformed into some older man we have never met before. I imagine the Polyjuice plot points will be abandoned in the Godric's Hollow scenes though the potion plays such an important role in the Ministry of Magic scenes that it has to be used there. Also, on a cimematic note, I am betting that the entire wedding is left out of the movie.
Well, I have more but I will stop for the moment. Just putting all this down in cyberspace so I can look back on it
--Jason "I can't believe I have to wait another week to start reading again!!" Evans