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All-Time High Scores
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed books.
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Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows [Book 7] |
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![Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows [Book 7] reviews](/media/books/authors/rowlingjk/harrypotterandthedeathlyhallows/picture.jpg) |
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The seventh book in this wildly popular fantasy series brings the series to an emotional, action-packed close.
Arthur A. Levine Books, 784 pages
$34.99
ISBN: 0545010225
All reviews are classified as one of five grades: Outstanding (4 points), Favorable (3), Mixed (2), Unfavorable (1) and Terrible (0). To calculate the Metascore, we divide total points achieved by the total points possible (i.e., 4 x the number of reviews), with the resulting percentage (multiplied by 100) being the Metascore. Learn more...
Entertainment Weekly Tina Jordan
Despite the complicated plots and subplots, despite the effortless allusions to mythology and classic tales (anyone else think Harry is a little like King Arthur, and Dumbledore like Merlin?), Rowling winds up her tale with a stunningly beautiful simplicity. As an added flourish, she gilds it with a moving epilogue, one that brought tears to my eyes.
Los Angeles Times Mary McNamara
What Rowling has achieved in this book and the series can be described only as astonishing...To create such an extraordinary world, fill it with complicated characters and convergent back stories is beyond the reach of most writers. To sustain that world and grow those characters over seven books filled with plot twists, folklore and even a magical curriculum and then bring it all to an articulate, emotionally wrenching conclusion - that is a truly epic quest. [22 July 2007, p.E1]
Chicago Tribune Julia Keller
This is a deeply engaging book, filled with love and loss, with crackling action and almost unbearable heartbreak. Rowling resolves every question, ties up every loose end, and delineates characters' futures with a scrupulousness that never feels forced.
Boston Globe Liz Rosenberg
To have ended it perfectly, compactly, fully, would have been more heartbreaking than what we have here -- a holy, not an unholy, mess. Still, the series' accomplishment is staggering.
Christian Science Monitor Yvonne Zipp
Harry and Rowling rally their troops so successfully, it's almost painful to be stuck on the sidelines. As always, Rowling's greatest strength is the ability to whisk readers away to a fully imagined world.
USA Today Deirdre Donahue
Rowling effectively resolves these vital, end-of-series issues. The most gratifying aspect of Hallows is the way she unravels the series' central mystery: is the Harry-hating Hogwarts' professor Severus Snape good or bad? What motivates this complicated character? And the final dramatic confrontation between Voldemort and Harry is masterfully executed.
Washington Post Elizabeth Hand
I cried at the end of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. It's that rare thing, an instant classic that earns its catharsis honestly, not through hype or sentiment but through the author's vision and hard work. One gets the feeling that J.K. Rowling is as relieved and joyous as we are to reach this point at last; that she's grown and suffered and struggled through the last 10 years, just like Harry. Just like us.
Chicago Sun-Times Matt Zakosek
It is a great pleasure to report that, in this instance, the outcome (almost) lives up to the hype.
Sydney Morning Herald Angie Schiavone
That so much is at stake is what sustains the reader's attention. Without this and our deep affection for Harry and his friends, Rowling's writing style would prove tedious. She leaves little to the reader's imagination, describing every emotion in great detail, and repeatedly.
The New York Times Michiko Kakutani
Getting to the finish line is not seamless — the last part of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the seventh and final book in the series, has some lumpy passages of exposition and a couple of clunky detours — but the overall conclusion and its determination of the main characters’ story lines possess a convincing inevitability that make some of the prepublication speculation seem curiously blinkered in retrospect.
Salon Laura Miller
Even though (as a grown-up) I did occasionally weary of Rowling's rudimentary romantic comedy and love-conquers-all moral -- and even though I found myself conscientiously ticking off her borrowings from a host of other fantasy classics -- I was still genuinely moved at the end.
Daily Telegraph Tibor Fischer
Potter fans will love this book (although I felt Rowling deferred gratification a bit too much, but then I'm not the target audience).
The Globe And Mail [Toronto] Sandra Martin
The HP-inspired reading bond between adult and child in our wired-up world has proved not only that the old technology still resonates, but that it can vaporize the artificial barrier that separates "suitable reading material" for children and adults. That is a huge achievement; I might even call it magical.
The Guardian John Mullan
Mysteries from earlier volumes are satisfyingly shown to be ripe for unravelling. Rowling has done her damnedest to round up events and minor characters from all the earlier books.
Publishers Weekly
We couldn’t put Hallows down ourselves. But we believe Rowling, and future readers, deserved even better.
New York Observer Mark Lotto
The Deathly Hallows fails, when it does, because it deviates from the Rowling formula. Whereas the previous six novels were structured like syllabi—their grace notes were class assignment, exams questions, semester breaks—the seventh has Harry dropping out of Hogwarts to wander aimlessly among exposition scenes and action sequences. It’s the conventional Grail quest and Hollywood through-line Ms. Rowling always spared us from—and I, for one, felt as nostalgic for their school days as I sometimes am for my own.
The average user rating for this book is 8.3 (out of 10) based on 307 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
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