And so I spent Saturday and Sunday night finishing the chronicles of Harry Potter. Rowling wastes no time plunging the world into a Voldemort-ruled chaos and no one is spared.

While Harry, Ron, and Hermoine are off on a quest to find the remaining Horcruxes and sidelined by the Deathly Hallows, the rest of the world are devastated by Muggles and Mudbloods being rounded up and executed like Jews in the second world war.

It begins brilliantly. The Durseys are swiftly extracted for their own protection and Dudley makes an unexpected gesture that is really very touching. Harry's own extraction from his home of 17 years, thus breaking its protection both for his family and himself leaves the Order of the Phoenix one short.

Sad and unexpected deaths scatter through the beginning and through dreadfully draggy middle of the book but it is only from Harry, Hermoine, and Ron's brilliant escape from Gringotts when the action really kickstarts. The Battle of Hogwarts brought to mind many a battle from Lord of the Rings, and its final swan song well choreographed.

It was not without flaws though. For many Potter fans who failed to reread the whole series before embarking on the final journey, some parts perplexed me, such as how did Neville draw the sword from the Sorting Hat when it was clearly with the goblin? Also, Harry's resurrection was a tad convoluted although well-explained in its wiki.

Like many other reviewers, I found the epilogue pointless and scant of value. It could have been fuller with more on what happened to everyone else, rather than a focus on the trio's children. It felt rather cliched. At the very least, it could have shed more light on how Harry and the others felt after all those years. As an ending to a monumental series, it fell flat.

Still, the Deathly Hallows answered most of the hanging questions and neatly tied up most of the loose ends. It could have been better organised: less time spent on the trio's search for the Horcruxes, Snape and Dumbledore's tales weaved into the story rather than stuck in as chapters of their own, and a more cohesive ending which told more of what happened 19 years later to everyone, not just the trio and Neville, or perhaps even better, not at all.

Technorati: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows review