'Hallows': Grim yet poetic

REVIEW | Greatest joy stems from Rowling's revelations about previous books

She did it.

It's not the best book in the Potter series. That's just wishful thinking. (A two-year wait can do that to a person.)

It's not the most elegantly constructed, either. J.K. Rowling still hasn't lost her annoying habit of abruptly dropping the narrative for a newspaper clipping, letter or Pensieve memory. There are more graceful ways to introduce new plot points. And waiting hundreds of pages for beloved secondary characters to emerge will test the patience of even the most devoted fans.

But Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is nonetheless a success, because it ends the seven-book series on Rowling's terms and possesses a strange beauty entirely her own. It would be impossible for Rowling to please everyone with the final installment, but with Deathly Hallows, she has a shot at coming awfully close.

Deathly Hallows begins unlike any other book in the series: Not with the domestic drama of the first three books, the haunting origin story of the fourth, the wistfulness of the fifth, or the comical culture clash of the sixth. Instead, Rowling gives us a glimpse into the purest of evils.

It's a fitting start to what is by far the grimmest book in the saga. The story is no longer just about Harry, hiding in the Dursleys' bushes and counting the days until he can return to Hogwarts. The scope is much greater this time -- greater than the Triwizard Tournament, greater than the battle at the Ministry of Magic, greater, even, than life or death. As one character puts it, "There are far, far worse things in the living world than dying."

This is a profound thesis for a children's novel, to be sure. But by this point, it should be clear that Rowling's work is not only (or even particularly) meant for children.

Not that fans of any age have cause to complain. All of the central mysteries are explained, though a few minor ones -- what did Dudley see when he was attacked by the Dementors in book five and what is the significance of Harry's green eyes? -- will be debated on message boards for years. The greatest joy of Deathly Hallows comes from the revelations it provides about events in the earlier books. Here, Rowling proves she had the end in sight from the time of Harry's very first Quidditch match, if not before.

Some will quibble with the epilogue, which puts too fine a point on previous events. But if Rowling's plotting is not at its strongest this time out, her prose certainly is. Deathly Hallows is filled with some of the most poetic sentences in her oeuvre.

"Dawn seemed to follow midnight with indecent haste," she writes, capturing the agony of a sleepless night with eight carefully chosen words. A protruding forehead is "a crab looking out from beneath a rock"; a supporting character is likened to "a trussed-up Father Christmas." Never before has Rowling had such a command of metaphor. Gone are the ellipses that pepper her earlier novels. She is confident in her descriptions now and relies less on her characters' disjointed perceptions.

Nor has her dialogue ever been better. Rowling knows these characters inside and out; thus, a line that originates with Ron means something entirely different when echoed by Hermione. A recurring joke about Merlin is howlingly funny, and so is Fred's crack about Professor Snape's aversion to shampoo. Rowling even invents a slogan for her Ministry ("Magic is Might") that may have been borrowed from Orwell.

This is a critic-proof book if there ever was one. Chances are, you're already holding a copy in your hot little hands, and if you haven't finished reading, nothing anyone can say or do will stop you from racing through the pages. No matter. It is a great pleasure to report that, in this instance, the outcome (almost) lives up to the hype.