Book 7

I just noticed that J.K. Rowling took 3 years following the publication of Book 6, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, to publish this crowning conclusion to the series. I remember back in 2009 scoffing at the people who queued up outside of Barnes and Noble for a weekend so they could be among the first to read this book—but now I understand why!

Thankfully, my kids (9, 11) and I didn’t need to camp out to get our hands on this volume—or delay the anticipation for three years either! In fact, we were able to complete all 7 books between January and July of this year, which is one book per month. And boy, what an adventure we had doing so!

We had a debate following our reading of The Deathly Hallows about which book we liked best, Book 7 or Book 6, and after wading through some pretty intense opinions, we all decided that Book 6 is our favorite from the entire series. The films that cover Book 7, however, obviously take the cake on the movies-side, but only because they were twice as long as all the others, which means they needn’t have haphazardly cut content for play-time. But this post is a book review, not a film review, so—back to it.

This book was quite special in that not much of it takes place in Hogwarts. Instead, Harry and his friends decide to skip their final year at the school for wizards and witches and chase the horcruxes that Lord Voldemort has hidden away across the land. Their fugitive status requires they hide from much of the magical community, as the Dark Lord’s minions have taken over the Ministry of Magic and the Dark Lord himself seeks to reform the magical world to his own dark designs. When Harry and his friends flee to Hogwarts, Voldemort and his army follow, igniting a battle so intense that we really never wanted to put the book down.

This final volume did contain some odd references to Bible verses that I found strange. If I recall, it was “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” and “O, Death, where is thy sting?” Clearly these verses had nothing to do with Jesus and the glorious Gospel of salvation, so they were more a hijacking of the Word than anything, but I did find it interesting. This book also contains a whole lot of death and use of the word “Hell,” so parents will want to be aware of that.

Truth be told, I’m a careful reader concerned about the things I let my children ingest. So way back in like Book 2, I looked up a Wikipedia page that summarized this final book, not because I personally wanted to cheat and know the end from the beginning but because I wanted to know that Good would prevail. When reading such addictive books by authors who don’t claim to follow Christ, it’s really a coin-flip, whether or not they’ll let Good or Evil win the day.

I can recall how I felt at the end of The Hunger Games series, for example, when (for no reason at all) Suzanne Collins killed Prim and turned Katniss into a vengeful murderer (at least by intent). Why did she let that happen? She’d tell you that the story wrote itself, but no, stories don’t really write themselves, not when it comes down to it. Collins was still the god of her little universe, and she could have denied Evil its final swipe. But she didn’t. It’s evidence of a darkness in the author’s own heart, nothing more.

I didn’t want to invest so much time into this present series knowing that such an ending would take place here, and thankfully, it does not. In fact, there’s more redemption here at the end of this series than in most books you’ll read! This isn’t a spoiler page—although everyone and their aunt Myrtle has either read the book or seen the film—but I just wanted to make this point clear. I’d let my kids read this series again on their own, because I know the end from the beginning…and it’s Good.

©2022 E.T.

Read More from J.K. Rowling:

1. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling (1997)
2. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling (1998)
3. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling (1999)
4. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling (2000)
5. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J.K. Rowling (2003)
6. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling (2005)
7. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows by J.K. Rowling (2007)
* Harry Potter and the Cursed Child by J.K. Rowling (2016)