Given my place of employment, it's not too surprising that I was able to get hold of a copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows soon after the release midnight on Friday. I'm still digesting it, but I have to say that the use of tantric magic is--
No, no spoilers, not even joke spoilers.
Do I feel like I've been cheated?
I don't think so. Harry Potter's final survival and eventual triumph over Voldemort take place using what I remember to be more or less the same laws of magic explained by Dumbledore, the Order certainly doesn't pay a light price, and there's a real sense of the magical world's own lacunae (the suppressed magical creatures rising up against the Death Eaters, say) coming back to haunt the forces of evil. As for a literary critique of the last installment of Harry Potter, while Rowling's style might be a bit strained in parts--the long exegesis on the origins of Snape's head-spinning turnabouts comes to mind--the story itself is quite absorbing. I'm going to read it again, I assure you.
No, no spoilers, not even joke spoilers.
Do I feel like I've been cheated?
I don't think so. Harry Potter's final survival and eventual triumph over Voldemort take place using what I remember to be more or less the same laws of magic explained by Dumbledore, the Order certainly doesn't pay a light price, and there's a real sense of the magical world's own lacunae (the suppressed magical creatures rising up against the Death Eaters, say) coming back to haunt the forces of evil. As for a literary critique of the last installment of Harry Potter, while Rowling's style might be a bit strained in parts--the long exegesis on the origins of Snape's head-spinning turnabouts comes to mind--the story itself is quite absorbing. I'm going to read it again, I assure you.