Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling (based on 3082 customer reviews)

(Audio CD)
Edition: Unabridged
Author: J.K. Rowling
Publisher: Listening Library (Audio)

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Most useful review as voted by customers:
515 out of 677 people found the following review helpful.
Review Date: 7/21/07

A perfect ending to a glorious series

Before the release of the seventh and last book of the Harry Potter series, I re-read all the preceding volumes. Throughout, I followed how the author developed her grand theme of Right vs Wrong, the strong vs the weak and the evils of the misuse of power. How was Rowling to end this series? Obviously, the Apocalypse was at hand, and the heroic struggle between Harry Potter and the evil Voldemort would be the climax of the series.

While we waited for the last book, rumors abounded. Fake spoilers floated over the internet like the soul-sucking Dementors, threatening to extinguish the enjoyment people would get from this final volume. So, no spoilers from this reviewer. All I will say is that "Deathly Hallows" lived up to my expectations and in fact, ended pretty much as I imagined it would. Rowling keeps true to her theme right to the end and to her artistic vision as well.

There is plenty of action right from the get-go. This is by far the most exciting of the seven books, with duels, battles, fights, daring escapes and amazing twists of fortune. There are plenty of surprises and also many reasons to weep. The action sometimes is non-stop, but from time to time, there are welcome respites in the action, times for moments of tenderness or friendship between surprising pairings of characters. The sub-theme of the redeptive power of Love is evident in these idylls.

J. K. Rowling is a master writer who has created an amazing work of art with the Harry Potter series and just as any master craftsman, she has chosen the perfect finish for a fine series of books. I look forward to new series with entire new worlds or...perhaps this is really the end. Some authors do write themselves out when they've said their say. I don't know. But I do know this author is one I enjoy reading and I hope we have many more new adventures to discover from her pen. Bravo!
Joanna Daneman

479 out of 480 people found the following review helpful.
Review Date: 10/13/07

Great End to a Glorious Series

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Probably the best of the series. Rowling finally unfurls all of her resolutions (well, most of them anyway) to her intricate plotlines she has so successfully nurtured throughout the seven books.

The book is very fast paced, there are a lot of actions sequences, and you can tell everyone is playing for keeps this time. And yes, there deaths and tortures. Lots of them!

The ending, especially the scene involving Hagrid and Harry, is one of the most wrenching scenes in the entire series. The last few chapters will have you speed-reading to find out what happened next. Snape, obviously, has an important role, and we finally get the answers to his loyalties. While some complain that we don't get a lot of Snape until the very end of the novel, she has built his character so successfully we don't need to see a lot of him in this novel.

While the Epilogue has gotten a lot of people mad, it does give us a little (very little) snapshot of what happened after. Still, I think there's almost a novel's worth of material you could write about in the reconstruction after Voldemort's fall. Rowling has given further information in interviews, webchats, etc, about what happened to the characters after the end of book seven.

Now that we finally have the entire series at last, I can only applaud Rowling's unflagging invention. This is indeed a series for the ages.

396 out of 461 people found the following review helpful.
Review Date: 7/22/07

A stunning and thoroughly satisfying conclusion

This is arguably the most "hyped" book in history, and if J.K. Rowling had to sneak down to the kitchen for a glass of red wine to calm her nerves while writing The Goblet of Fire (as she said she did), one wonders what assuaged her while writing Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. The collective breath of tens of millions of readers has been held for two years...and now...was it worth the wait? Did Ms. Rowling live up to the hype? (For that, amongst hundreds of questions, is really the only question that matters.)

The answer, most assuredly, is YES.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is told in a strikingly different style than the previous six books - even different from The Half Blood Prince, and, I daresay, it's a better written, better edited, tighter narrative. And while the action is lively and well paced throughout, Rowling found a way to answer most of our questions while introducing new and complex ideas. What fascinated me was this: Some people were right, with regard to who is good, who is bad, who will live, who will die - but almost nobody got the "why" part correct. I truthfully expected an exciting but rather predictable ending, but instead was thrown for a loop. We've known that Rowling is fiendishly clever for years - but I didn't think she was *this* clever.

Not since turning the final page of The Return of the King twenty-eight years ago have I felt such a keen sense of loss. My love affair (indeed, everyone's love affair, I imagine) with all things Harry began somewhere in the first three chapters of The Sorcerer's Stone, and has lasted, on this side of the Atlantic, three months shy of nine years. For all that time we have waited and wondered - was Dumbledore right to trust Snape? Will Ron and Hermione get together? What's to become of Ginny and Harry? What really happened on that tower, when Dumbledore was blasted backwards, that "blast" atypical of the Avada Kedavra curse as we've seen it when used throughout the series. So many more questions than those listed here, and so many devilishly well-hidden hints. The answers, as I hinted above, will shock and awe you.

When first we met Harry Potter, he was "The Boy Who Lived", with an address of "The Cupboard Under the Stairs". Who could help but bleed sympathy for Harry, treated abysmally - abused, really - by the only blood relatives he had, and forced to live under said stairs by those awful Muggles, the Dursleys? It was a sensationally brilliant introduction, one that ensured that our heartstrings would be plucked and enchanted to sing. He was The Boy Who Lived.

Since reading that first book, we have enjoyed Rowling's spry sense of humor - portraits that spoke, stairways that moved at any given moment, Hagrid jinxing Dudley so that a pigs tail grew from his behind, Fred and George's fantastic creations, etc, etc., etc., and more etc's. There was a sense of wonder and magic in Rowling's writing, so thoroughly captivating that the recommended age group of 9-12 in no way resembled the book's actual audience. It was common to see adults walking about with hardcover copies of the latest book, sans dust jacket (to hide the fact that they were reading a "kids" book, I suppose). It was also common to hear of eight year olds sitting down with a seven-hundred-plus page book! By themselves! If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn't have believed it.

As for Harry, we admired him. He wasn't afraid to stand up for what he felt was right, even if he found himself in detention for it. He was brutally honest, and immensely courageous and loyal. Harry came to embody, at times, who we would like to be. He wasn't perfect, of course. He suspected Snape of being the one who was after the Sorcerer's Stone, and in The Chamber of Secrets, he thought that Malfoy was the heir of Slytherin. This didn't diminish Harry in our eyes - it made him more human, more real, and even, perhaps, more enviable.

Endless fan sites have been erected. For an adult to go to any of them, and find that thirteen year olds are having an easier time parsing out the books plots, subplots, and mysteries, was (for me at least) humbling, but yet also a testament to Rowling herself, and her remarkable creation. She encouraged an entire generation of young readers to read and to think for themselves.

But the time has come to say good-bye, for this is truly the end.

So good-bye, Harry. Good-bye Hermione, Ron, Professor Dumbledore, *Professor* Snape, Professor McGonagall, Professor Hagrid, Ginny, Fred, George, Neville, Dobby (and all the house elves), even Lord Voldemort and his Death Eaters. We will miss all of you, every character we encountered, from Muggle to Mudblood to hippogriff and owl, and everything about the world you all so vibrantly inhabit. And to Ms. Rowling: know that you have brought immeasurable joy to millions and millions of Muggles worldwide, and know that we cannot possibly thank you enough. What a tremendous gift you were given. Thank you for sharing it with us.

70 out of 74 people found the following review helpful.
Review Date: 7/21/07

Nice!

This 17-disc audio version of the final Harry Potter book is a worthy way to experience the story without reading it. It features the rich baritone of narrator Jim Dale, who tells the tale with just the right understated touch, supplying all of the characters' voices.

As for Dale's accent, it's appropriately British but not at all too thick. Each word is clear and easy to understand. If you've bought any of the earlier Potter audio CDs you know what to expect: Dale narrated all of those, too.

By the way, note that this is an UNABRIDGED audio book. Listening to it all takes 21 hours!

As for the story, it's dark, and too violent for younger kids, but overall one of the best in the Harry Potter series. Nothing seems forced or thrown together. Author J.K. Rowling wraps up her many plot points and reveals the fates of her characters in ways that almost always surprise you, but afterward seem inevitable.

And how she does it is so inventive! Many throwaway moments and whispered remarks from earlier books foreshadow what happens here, and devices that had little importance before, such as Sirius's flying motorcycle, now play key roles. While creating yet another gripping tale, the author ties her entire epic together with the skill of a true literary master. As for that magic question "Is Snape good or evil?" the answer is... both.

In addition, the story treats its title character with the complexity he deserves. It portrays the (now) young man as disillusioned, full of doubt, overwhelmed -- a tortured soul who, though a responsible leader in an all-out war, often seems to yearn to do nothing more than sweet-talk Ginny Weasley.

14 out of 14 people found the following review helpful.
Review Date: 7/26/07

Get this audiobook!

With Albus Dumbledore dead, and Lord Voldemort on the loose, Harry's life is now in mortal danger. Harry knows the secret of the Horcruxes, the secret of what makes Voldemort seemingly invincible. And so, Harry, Ron and Hermione are off to destroy the Dark Lord, and save the world...but, what will it cost Harry? Quite possibly everything.

This is the seventh and final book in J.K. Rowling's wonderful Harry Potter series. I loved the emotions that she poured into the book - the love, the pain, the sorrow, the hatred, the regret. She is truly a rare find among authors. This is a great book, and a worthy finish to a great series.

Now, if you don't have time to read the book, or if you have read it and want to hear it again, then get this audiobook! Jim Dale, veteran British actor from the Carry On movies (and many others), does an excellent job of bringing the story to life, just as good as he did with the other Harry Potter audiobooks. And, note that the book is NOT abridged, this is the FULL story!

This is a great audiobook, one that I do not hesitate to recommend to anyone and everyone. Buy it!

12 out of 17 people found the following review helpful.
Review Date: 7/23/07

J. K. Rowling still has that magical writing ability

This book is the further adventures of Harry, his friends, his enemies, and quite a few familiar and unfamiliar critters. Will all the speculations come true?

This book (being way to short) is tightly written; there is no fluff and anything that looks like an excursion from the point will come back to be the main story. There is no twist or turn that does not have support from previous writing. So it does no good to try and bypass a single word. You will have to carve out some time to be able to complete this story.

It may be strange but the wording of the narrator in the book sounds suspiciously like the narrator of fractured fairytales. And I never read so many cliff-hangers in one book.

--------------------------------------------
The audio edition has about 21 hours of listening on 17 CD's. In the future maybe someone will stuff all this on one DVD. They staid with the reader Jim Dale who has a way of bring a book to life. He used a different enough voice foe each character that you can tell who the speaker is. The beginning and ending music has changed a bit. Each CD stops abruptly and somehow forms 17 cliffhangers. Makes you want to have a 17 CD changer. The CD's are packaged in groups of three and four.

11 out of 13 people found the following review helpful.
Review Date: 7/23/07

Magnificent Ending to the Best Series Ever

The seventh book in this series is quite a bit different from the others. It does not have the same level of comedic relief as the year goes on, but what it misses in comedy, it makes up in action. More than any of the other books in the series, this book is packed with action and adventure.

J.K. Rowling has definitely finished out the best series in history with a rivoting capstone story. It wraps up everything nicely.

9 out of 9 people found the following review helpful.
Review Date: 7/22/07

I just couldn't help myself!

After reading the other review of this audiobook, I am taking the plunge...
with a sideways nod towards H.L. Mencken's warning: "The first sign of insanity is writing a letter to the editor!"

I simply want to tell you this- Jim Dale's reading of the Harry Potter series is OVER THE TOP!!!
Having been an aficionado of spoken word poetry and literature, I am astonished by his virtuosity of voice characterization and nuance.
The book itself... hmmm....it's pretty good!
Jim Dale?
It should indicate on the recording cover:
"As read by Jim Dale M.B.E.!"

5 out of 5 people found the following review helpful.
Review Date: 7/23/07

Incredible Listen

Jim Dale is incredible for the entire series, but he does his best work yet for the climax of the 7 audiobooks. I actually get more out of the audiobook than I do out of reading the book, because I tend to read to fast and end up skimming important details. With the audiobook, I'm listening at a nice even pace, and get everything.

The combination of J.K. Rowling's descriptive writing, and Jim Dales performance can't be beat! :)

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