I'm not a huge raving fan of Harry Potter - I enjoy the books, but I also usually recommend authors in the same genre who are, in my opinion, superior writers (Philip Pullman, Diana Wynne Jones, and so on). But I think there is a childish element of "it's so popular, how boring, I'm not going to like it" in those thoughts.
I really enjoyed this book. It's rather exposition heavy, but it's interesting exposition. I liked the sense of threads drawing together. I really didn't like the grumpy Harry in Order of the Phoenix, and I much prefer the teenager he's turned into here - still fraught with teenage emotions, but with an increasing mature control over them. And I enjoyed the love affair with Ginny - in fact, I liked most of the love affairs in this story. I thought they went well with the very limited fighting action - the reader needs a break before what I imagine will be the action overload of the final book.
God, the ending was devastating. I knew it was going to happen (because I can't keep my nose out of spoilers), but it still shocked me. The funeral was one of the most depressing things I've read in a while. I think the final book is going to an extremely dark journey.
In terms of the writing, it has the usual things wrong with it - a bit clunky in places, adjectives sprinkled all over the place with a heavy hand. But who cares? It's completely absorbing, and that's the most important thing.
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