Saturday, July 4, 2020

Book Blogger Hop - July 3rd - July 9th: The Battle of Wolf 359 Pitted the Federation Against the Borg


Jen at Crazy for Books restarted her weekly Book Blogger Hop to help book bloggers connect with one another, but then couldn't continue, so she handed the hosting responsibilities off to Ramblings of a Coffee Addicted Writer. The only requirements to participate in the Hop are to write and link a post answering the weekly question and then visit other blogs that are also participating to see if you like their blog and would like to follow them.

This week Billy asks: What book or books got a lot hype, but were a disappointment for you?

The only book that comes to mind right now that failed to live up to the hype for me is Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I generally liked the Harry Potter series, even though for me it wasn't anything more than a decently executed young adult fantasy series that was kind of derivative at times with mostly nonsensical world- building. Given all the build-up for Deathly Hallows, I picked up the book expecting a worthy finish for a series that had built up a lot of momentum to that point.

What I got was a deadly dull anticlimactic snooze-fest. The book was about twice as long as its contents merited, with far too many of the pages taken describing a camping trip that simply would not end, the final battle was uninteresting, and even the post-mortem meeting between Harry and Dumbledore was dull. The much ballyhooed final chapter that Rowling had allegedly written when she started the series was awful. In short, the book was simply not even up to the modest standards of quality that the previous volumes in the series had established. Even though the earlier books had a few minor missteps there and there, they were isolated and relatively minor. Deathly Hallows, by contrast, felt like Rowling had taken every wrong decision she had ever made in the series and decided to place them front and center as the featured element of the book. And then she made sure to write about every one of them for about five times as long as needed.

Basically, I expected something that was at least an adequate finish to the series, and instead Deathly Hallows turned out to be bad enough to retroactively make every previous volume in the saga worse.

Previous Book Blogger Hop: Route 358 Is a Road and a Band in Arkansas

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1 comment:

  1. Oh I am so glad somebody else doesn't like Deathly Hallows. It was such a disaster and makes it to my blog hop too:). Here it is, if you are interested:

    https://ahotcupofpleasureagain.wordpress.com/2020/07/09/book-blogger-hop-hype-and-wrecks/

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