After watching Tiger Woods screw up last night (if you call one under par a screw up), I finished off Harry Potter book 6, making it 50 hours without sleep.
Surprisingly, even after that long without sleep, the body clock takes control, and there was a bit of tossing and turning before I finally got to sleep.
Warning: Possible Spoilers ahead
Without further ado, let me give a quick non-professional review on certain aspects on the book.
Firstly, this book has less closure than any of the previous HP books. You won't expect closure on a HP book, given that it is known that the series consists of 7 books, but this book has far less closure than any of the previous books. There are more than the usual twists introduced at the end.
As is usual in this book (or every book since the death of Cedric Diggory), there is the death of a friendly character. There has been a lot of speculation about who dies this book - let me just say, if you read the book, its pretty obvious. By the time before you reach the final battle scene (which actually isn't much of a battle actually, compared to book 5), it is quite clear who is going to die.
Each Harry Potter book grows darker and darker, and with Voldemort having unleashed his Death Eaters to terrorise the population, the setting in this book is dark indeed.
The character development is interesting. The book explores, among others, the themes of optimism, trust, love and sacrifice. The twist at the end, when you find out the great sacrifice is for naught, sets the stage for the 7th, and last book.
One problem is that there are a lot of contrived acts. The development of love relationships within the characters is rather contrived (in my opinion). Even more important, the potion-drinking prelude to the final scenes (with Harry and Dumbledore) is rather forced. If you are able to scoop the potion out to drink it, why can't you just scoop it out, dump it away, and then grab the locket at the bottom? or just scoop out the locket?
The penultimate book is simply a prelude. This book is not a real complete story per se; what it does is establish what he has to do in the final book, and introduce even more twists to the equation. In a sense, it gives clarity to the purpose of certain characters, such as Snape, and firms them more towards a good/bad kind of character instead of casting them in various shades of grey.
You can guess what happens in book 7; there's going to be some Jin Yong-style revelation where Harry suddenly realizes the full extent of his powers and becomes really strong. At the end of book 6, he is still relatively weak; but as he says, "I'm not returning to Hogwarts." Draw your own conclusion. There's also probably going to be some super epic battle where like everyone or nearly everyone dies; but that is just speculation.
In any case, we are probably looking at an extremely epic book 7 in the future.
If you're a Harry Potter fan, the book is worth reading. If you're not, there are a few themes the book explores that might make it worthwhile reading.
