[the_old_crowd] Conflicts, cheats and credibility (with spoilers)

[ewe2]

On 7/23/07, Barry Arrowsmith <arrowsmithbt at ...> wrote:
> SPOILER.........................................
> SPACE.............................................
> THE...................................................
> BOUNDARY....................................
> BETWEEN.......................................
> INNOCENCE..................................
> AND..................................................
> DISILLUSIONMENT......................
>
> A short rant that some may think is unfair.
>

On the whole I think 6/10 is being quite kind. In my experience,
laughing out loud should be reserved for genuinely funny writing, not
an absurd plot. When I caught myself wondering about the exact age of
the Trilogy's children, I realized I was still hankering after the
Christie Effect and that had been well and truly debunked by the
ramshackle edifice preceding. Dear God please prevent her from writing
any more Harry Potter, no more "clues" to the Happily Ever After!

Found myself singing songs from Monty Python and the Holy Grail during
the apparently vital wandering-witless-in-a-forest sections. Why?
Harry needs more frustration? So he and  Ron can have a
Horcrux-induced argument about the bleeding obvious? Not enough time
for whatever-the-hell had to go on elsewhere? No, because the
Horcruxes ended up being ridiculously easy to find thanks to our old
friend Deux Ex Machina. One book to sum up a seven book series and we
still resort to page-filling because we'd already written the
shortcuts. Coconuts indeed.

It has been partly due to these great lists that nothing in the book
seriously surprised me at all. It was effectively a point summary of
TBAY acronyms. I would not have minded this had there been a better
plot, because I was already resigned to the ersatz characters but jeez
Resurrected!Harry finally understands Pensieve!Snape?  If I wasn't
laughing I was groaning, viz. the Bellatrix-Molly Aliens2 moment, the
wtf-Neville-has-the-sword moment, the kill-Ginny-not-one-of-the-twins
moment.

5/10. Could do better.

ewe2, ironing hands for a reread.

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