We could nitpick all day, but I’m going to go big picture.
There should have been eight books.
It was clear to me that the seventh book had too much material to tackle in her (now standard) 700–800 pages of prose. Harry and company simply had too much to tie up in order to conclude the story. Here’s what they were up against:
- Discover, and destroy, all of Voldemort’s horcruxes.
- Take back Hogwarts from Voldemort’s followers.
- Confront Voldemort, and defeat him.
- Resolve all the romantic/sexual tension between the characters.
- Wrap up all the other loose ends in a neat little bow with a neat little epilogue.
Maybe it could have been done if destroying the first horcrux hadn’t taken half the book to find and destroy.
But, all the same, I felt the pacing of discovering and destroying the first horcrux was appropriate. So, Rowling didn’t need to increase the pace from that point forward. She just needed another book, so she could use book seven to focus on taking care of the horcruxes.
Here’s how I would have liked to see it play out:
- Book seven is all about Harry, Ron and Hermione going after the Horcruxes. There would be nothing about the other characters, and it would focus fully about the three heroes’ journey to find and destroy the horcruxes. It would conclude when they found their way back to Hogwarts, and spend a great deal more time developing their journey toward each horcrux, how they discover its location, and how they dispose of it.
- Book eight is all about the other characters, and their experience that year at Hogwarts. There would be nothing about Harry, Hermione and Ron, and it would focus on the Death Eater takeover of Hogwarts, and how the students coped. It would rejoin the story of Harry, Ron and Hermione when they returned to Hogwarts, and work its way to the finish, as they defeat Voldemort and send the Death Eaters packing.
More of this, please.
I think Rowling, and the fanbase in turn, got too caught up in the one-book-per-school-year format. It didn’t make much sense to insist upon it either, since she had already deviated from that format by making the setting for most of book seven outside of Hogwarts. In the end, it got in the way of a fully satisfactory conclusion.
Read other answers by Jeff Fuhrer on Quora:
- If you woke up as your five year old self tomorrow, with the memories of your lived life intact, what would you do?
- Do you ever feel guilty for rejecting someone?
- What is the most cringe-worthy thing your children have said either to or in front of you?
from Quora http://ift.tt/2ffMAgc
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