Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling

Click the photo to purchase Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Also available in the Drew University Library Popular Literature Collection.

The end is here. The true close of my teenage years came not on my 20th birthday, but on the afternoon of Saturday, July 21, in a small white box from amazon.com. For me, like for so many others of my generation, Harry Potter was a dominant force in my young life—I too secretly hoped that my Hogwarts acceptance letter was out there somewhere, lost in the Owl Post.

For those of you who haven't yet read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows , shame on you. But don't worry, I'm not going to tell you whether or not Harry dies, except to comment that Rowling herself didn't seem to be able to make up her mind. And that made it all the more interesting. But there won't be any direct spoilers here—I'll be vague.

A recap for the muggles: Orphan Harry Potter learned on his eleventh birthday that he is a wizard, and was whisked away from his dismal life with his overbearing aunt and uncle to attend Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Once there, he learned that he is The Boy Who Lived. Harry was—as an infant—the only wizard to ever survive the killing curse that the Dark Lord Voldemort used to murder Harry's parents. Since then, everyone believed the Dark Lord to be vanquished, but as the years—and books—go by, it becomes clearer and clearer that Voldemort is on the rise. Throughout the series, Harry comes into his own both as a wizard and as a human being, as all of his experiences prepare him for the epic battle that is his destiny.

At the start of Deathly Hallows , Harry and his best friends, Ron and Hermione, have dropped out of Hogwarts in order to fully commit themselves to the war against Voldemort. Harry is desperate to complete his mission, and with his father-figures dropping left and right, he is feeling the responsibility beginning to rest on his shoulders alone.

By now, most of the world has finally gotten over poo-pooing Potter as a kid's book. Granted, the series is filled to the brim with three-headed dogs, talking portraits, hippogriffs, and Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans. But you're never going to find children's literature that is this profound. Deathly Hallows takes the already deep and affecting Potter saga and pushes it one step further, exploring the very grown-up topics of death, the afterlife, the true nature of bravery, and the power and endurance of both familial and romantic love. Although Harry has witnessed all along that the line between good and evil is quite blurred, he finds now more than ever that no one, not even the most celebrated of heroes, is perfect.

The book, action-packed as it is, occasionally plods under a little too much exposition and explanation. But Rowling's strengths as a writer far outweigh her weaknesses. Her prose is light, simple, and flowing, yet her descriptions are rich enough that readers can picture every sequence perfectly in their minds. While the easy prose invites readers in, Rowling's spectacular characters are what keep readers coming back for more. Most of Rowling's main characters are candidates for the psychologist's couch, and will leave readers analyzing and theorizing long after the book is finished.

We learned in previous installments that Voldemort's hatred grew out of his tortured childhood—he wrongly blames muggles and muggle-born wizards for all of his misfortune, and cleverly convinces other to do the same. In Deathly Hallows Rowling continues to paint Voldemort as a Hitler figure, even cleverly having two Death Eaters—Voldemort's followers to you muggles—give a chillingly heil-like salute in the opening chapter. But now we get to glimpse even more behind the Death Eaters (literal) masks, and learn that even some of the most despicable villains are still human deep inside.

Rowling has a gift for showing the many pains and pleasures of adolescence, and has allowed the series to grow along with her characters' chronological age. Deathly Hallows has an appropriately adult vibe, with blunt, gruesome violence, a more noticeable undercurrent of sexuality, and what is bound to go down in pop culture history as one of the best uses of profanity of all time—you'll know it when you see it. All this gives the series' end an edgy bite that will please Rowling's fans, most of whom have matured along with the characters.

Although I was at first put off by the sickeningly sweet epilogue, looking back I realize it has some beautifully touching moments. The epilogue is necessary—without a peek into the future, many of us would have felt no closure. And closure is important to so many fans who are, let's face it, truly grieving.

I'm not one for cheesy metaphors, but when reading Deathly Hallows I could not stop thinking about fireworks. I felt like I was watching a grand Fourth of July finale. Just as fireworks displays pull out all the stops in their final moments, setting the sky ablaze with every color in their arsenal, so did Rowling bring back every character, place, object, spell, and theory ever mentioned in the series, letting it all erupt in one explosive final bow. And, just as the sky thunders long after the show is over, so does the book's deep emotional resonance still ring in my ears and pound in my heart.