The last of the Potter books

Out of shear contrarianism (that's not really a word is it?) I avoided the Potter series like the plague when it came out. After all it was a kids book that everyone was creaming about. It was so popular I figured that it had to be crap. Chalk this up to my general distrust of the advertising media machine that tells us what is the cutting edge in popular culture, think American Idol.

So it was on a flight to Europe where I was given a choice of pretending to sleep, as I am irrationally afraid of flying, continuing to read a book that I had been reading for the last few hours or seeing what all the fuss was about as they were playing the second Potter movie on the plane. 10 minutes into the film I said to myself that when I got home, I needed to get the first movie form Mr. Bussey.

It was, while simple, such a rich and diverse universe that JK Rowling had created, and I could not help myself from enjoying the ride. Since I have seen all the movies, including the recent #5, and read all the books. From book 1 to 6 I could not help but see the character development that even a 19th century Russian writer would think was taking a while to get going, and with the development a darkening of the series as Harry and his friends aged.


Now comes the 7th and last book; Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. It is the logical conclusion of the darkening of the series. It is in short, a blood bath. The first significant death in the series is when a tangential character, that is friendly to Harry, dies while Harry looks on helpless. In the next book one of the central characters and mentors to Harry dies, again while he looks on helpless. In the last book I lost track of who was and was not dead and the end of the book is reminiscent of an epic Viking poem listing the warriors who died fighting. The last book is so bloody that the movie version will have to really tone thing down in order to keep from getting an R rating.

It's a rich universe, it's a great ride and ends with blood on the walls and bodies littering the grounds of Hogwarts. Sometimes the machine does put out something good.

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