I finished the book five minutes ago, some 18 or 19 hours after I found it in my mailbox. I’ll try to review it, and I’ll do my best to do so without any spoilers, but for those who doesn’t want to know a godsdamned thing, I’ll hide it. Naturally, there will be spoilers for the earlier books.

The book begins one month after the death of Albus Dumbledore, and a few days before Harry’s seventeenth birthday — the day the blood-tie to his mother’s family will stop protecting him from Voldemort. This event will mark the end of Harry’s relatively safe life, as he will no longer have a safe haven where the Death Eaters cannot get to him. It also sets the tone for the rest of the book: Harry won’t be safe anywhere, and neither will his friends and accomplices.

For the most part of the book, Harry — accompanied by a few friends — are both hunters and hunted. They’re constantly vigilant against the Death Eaters’ attempts at capturing them, while they’re also searching desperately for the last of the Horcruxes — and soon also for the legendary Deathly Hallows.

Although it tends to get somewhat repetitive — Harry and his friends run, are attacked, escape narrowly, bicker, before they must run,be assulted and escape again — the story was fairly fast-paced. There were few superfluous scenes or sequences — if any — and the mentioned repetitive-like progression actually helped to create a hectic, haunted, fearful and thrilling atmosphere to the whole thing. When in addition almost every major subplot from the last six books were utilised in the solution of various problems Harry et al. encountered, it made for a enjoyable read.

The characters were also quite interesting. Sure, Harry, Hermione and Ron were for the most part their own selves, but a lot of excellent side-characters — like Xeno Lovegood, for example — elevated the story greatly. Rowling’s descriptions of how these people dealt with their greatly altered life situations, what they did to cope, was one of the most fascinating aspects of the whole book. And Neville Longbottom — character development incarnated!

Of course, Harry Potter isn’t really a children’s book any more — not that it’s been that after PoA. The book’s really dark and I guess people who think that children should be sheltered from dark things wouldn’t allow their kids to read it. Furthermore, the characters aren’t children any more, either, and both their behaviour and language reflects this, as does the enormous amounts of violence and death — compared to the first five or six books, anyway — described in the book. When you on top of this throw in some relatively pubescent or adult themes, and a metaphysically advanced climax, I guess the whole thing can get a bit hard for kids. That is, the youngest of kids; I don’t doubt that 11-year-olds could benefit from reading this — both as entertainment, and as food for thought.

Finally, I thought Rowling handled the whole issue of “what if someone tries to resurrect the franchise after I’m dead?” rather nicely. Amazing what a epilogue a few pages long can do, really. Sure, in light of the story of Harry Potter’s fight against Lord Voldemort, the epilogue probably didn’t contribute much — apart from the obvious — but it was still a nice read.

As can be said for the book as a whole.

Now, all I gotta do is cope with the abstinences and the aftershock — it hasn’t quite dawned on me yet, that I’ll never again read a fresh story about Harry Potter — The Boy Who Lived. And frankly, right now, just the thought of this is almost enough to make me cry.