KEY POINTS:
1. Review By Grace Dobson Phillips, aged 10
The first thing everyone will do when they get this book is flick to the last page to find out the ending. Will it be sad like we all expected?
So like everyone, when I was handed the book, I immediately turned to the last chapter. Instead I found an amazing ending. I can't give away too much as I don't want to spoil it for you, but it's not the sad ending everyone expected.
Sure, someone dies and one of my favourite characters is killed, but Harry Potter fans will be pleased with the final book.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows begins with Lord Voldemort ready to gain power with the help of the evil Order that includes Severus Snape and Draco Malfoy.
At the meeting with the Order, Voldemort says, "I must be the one to kill Harry Potter, and I shall be". When I read that, I knew this would be Harry's greatest adventure. Soon Harry is chased by Death Eaters as he tries to find a safe place to hide.
The last few chapters are extraordinary as Voldemort and his evil sidekicks attack Hogwarts.
Some characters who I never expected become heroes, some goodies make mistakes and some baddies aren't what we expect.
I think that this is a very exciting book with big challenges - the best Harry Potter adventure J.K Rowling has written.
2. Review by favourite NZ children's author Margaret Mahy
Well, it's here! It's out in the world. Its final mysteries are revealed to us at last. I am talking, of course, about the latest and last Harry Potter book Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - a book which marks the conclusion of the most astonishing literary phenomenon of our times.
Everyone has been aware that some important character dies at the end of the story, but who?
As I write this, the country is increasingly filling with readers who know the answer to that question. One cannot imagine that there aren't many impatient readers who have begun the story by turning to the end of it.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - a book I personally find to be rather too long - immediately launches the reader into exciting and threatening circumstances. In the first chapter the reader finds himself in the company of villains - Voldemort and Yaxley and co, all plotting and planning to bring about the downfall of Harry.
You have to move on to the second chapter to be reunited with Harry-the-Hero and his good friends Hermione and Ron, working, as they hide and retreat, to overcome the wickedness that is implacably pursuing them.
The story, inevitably episodic, continues as the friends struggle on, saving themselves, working towards the time when their adventures lead them back to their school Hogwarts.
There are surprises through the book and as Harry and Voldemort face one another at the end. For example, one of the villains, Snape, is not what we have supposed him to be.
There is a curious paradox about the last quarter of the book. It encompasses many exciting events, and yet, somehow, it is too drawn out, too complicated. It goes on and on and on as the story somehow struggles to resolve itself. The great danger is that when resolution is finally achieved, many readers might feel rather worn out by that endless series of events, which include at times, I think, an element of cheating as well.
Still, many devoted readers will get huge pleasure from this last book, which works not simply because of the story, but because the fulfillment of expectation and because the drama of the tale has resulted in a drama in the real world. All this while in the process of working its way to a sort of happy ending.
