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Originally posted by The Friar:
Mandrake root (from the 2nd one) actually looks like a shrunken, root-like human.

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Harry Potter: 1990-2007
Harry Potter, J. K. Rowling’s boy wonder who took the world by storm in 1997, reaches the final climax. The strength of Voldemort has grown, and Potter must now face off with him after taking the ultimate Campbellian hero’s journey, taking the call to adventure when he is scarcely 10 years old, completely unaware of where he would end up. Harry, Ron, and Hermione spend the majority of the book away from Hogwarts searching frantically for Horcruxes, bits of Voldemort’s soul stored in items. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is a roller-coaster ride conclusion to the defining bildungsroman of this generation, which toys with the emotions of the reader, who has grown to care about the characters.
From early on, death plays a large role in the book. Almost immediately, Hedwig and “Mad-Eye” Moody die. Then Harry, Hermione, and Ron begin a search for the Horcruxes. They find Salazar Slytherin’s locket, but as they are unable to open it, they are compelled to carry it around. Ron, frustrated by the fact that Harry is obsessing over magical items known as the Deathly Hallows, deserts Harry and Hermione. Ron returns to Harry’s aid, however, by destroying the locket when it nearly kills Harry. The Horcruxes are destroyed one by one, but in the meantime characters drop like flies. The book culminates in Hogwarts, the place where everything began. The final battle ensuing in Hogwarts claims more than fifty people, with six of these people throughout the books. The book ends with most, if not all, questions answered, and concludes with a powerful, though predictable, ending.
The book is surprisingly weak as a stand-alone book. The characters would be incomprehensible, capricious, and infuriating to someone reading it that had not read the other six. The book is extremely dependent on the other books, which makes it harder to judge it as separate entity rather than as a continuum. Though the books as one book in many volumes are a stunning fantasy endeavor, in general, and specifically in Deathly Hallows, they wander horribly and go on hundred-page tangents. Harry, Ron, and Hermione spend hundreds of pages searching for Horcruxes when the subplot could have been compressed to much less. This has always been a weakness of Rowling’s books – the U.S. printing of Order of the Phoenix is 845 pages long, and Deathly Hallows contains 759 pages. In addition to lack of editing and rambling, she too often utilizes a deus ex machina to save someone from a trying situation. In Deathly Hallows, Neville pulls Godric Gryffindor’s sword out of the Sorting Hat because he is a “true Gryffindor”, but the idea seems too fantastic even for a fantasy novel. The idea behind a fantasy novel is to provide some aspect of magic without being too outlandish, and a few times Rowling oversteps these bounds.
Though the book suffers from being too long and at times too fantastic, it collects masterfully an amazing array of loose threads. If nothing else, it is a testament to Rowling’s ability to keep track of all the subplots occurring during the main plot and being able to tie everything in at the end. She also draws from an impressive array of books and people, taking cues from Joseph Campbell, Sir James Frazer, J.R.R. Tolkien, and many others. Above all, however, the book at its roots is a well-written story that happened to captivate a generation with its immersive universe. Each book has sold at least 50 million copies worldwide, due, according to Sam Leith of the Daily Telegraph, to its “crossover” appeal. Adults and children alike have fallen for the series, which has sold hundreds of millions of copies, surpassing 325 million in 2007, with the number growing daily.
Harry Potter risks becoming an overused, tired franchise: the last two movies are slated to come out in 2008 and 2010, and unless some drastic occurrence prevents it, there are also going to be games and soundtracks for the last two. The LEGO® company is licensed to create Harry Potter sets as well. Sometime in the next few years, a Harry Potter-based theme park is opening on Island of Adventure in Universal Studios. Those who came late to reading Harry Potter have been immersed in Potter-mania since birth – all around them there were and still are an absurd amount of Harry Potter media. Deathly Hallows concludes the epic, but Potter shows promise to live on well past the final book.

WORKS CITED
Leith, Sam. “The Wand is Mightier than the Pen”. Daily Telegraph. 30 June 2007.
Rowling, J.K. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. New York: Scholastic Press, 2007.

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Originally posted by The Friar:
the snape arc was my favorite part of the book too. who is your favorite minor character? and least favorite character?