After two years, J.K. Rowling is back with what she says is the final book in the Harry Potter canon. A lot of people who have grown up with these books are sad to see the saga end; I can understand that, although I've never grown that attached to Harry Potter and friends. I don't think the books are bad, but they have at times struck me as being lengthy for the sake of being lengthy (I've had similar problems with Robert Jordan books).
Read the final book last night, and enjoyed it fairly well, although this was the book that suffered most from being needlessly long. I'm sure that the avid fans would disagree, since the longer it is, the longer they can postpone reaching the end of the literary journey.
I'm not sure how Harry Potter became such a literary phenomenon, though. There's nothing here that I haven't seen done as well, if not better, by many others who never achieved more than a small fraction of Rowling's success.
And while this may be the end of Harry Potter's literary adventures, I cerainly don't think it's the end of Rowling's fantasy storytelling...
There's nothing here that I haven't seen done as well, if not better, by many others who never achieved more than a small fraction of Rowling's success.
ReplyDeleteAfter it became clear HP was going to be a phenomenon, Stephen was on a panel at Boskone with YA writers talking about this very topic: why did HP become such a phenomenon when there are many other YA books as good if not better, and what other books the panel would recommend. He reported later that the first 10 - 12 minutes of the panel consisted of the YA authors all saying to each other things like, "Well, Jane, I can't understand it -- your books are so much better than HP" "I know, Elizabeth... yours too" :->
My review is at my LJ if you're interested.