I Too Am Done

So, this afternoon, I too joined certain other people in the ranks of the "you can't spoil it for me now, cause I finished it!" club.

I quite enjoyed the book. I found the conclusion a satisfying one, and well worthy of the journey. I've got a few more very general comments to make that don't reveal any details of the plot, but if you haven't finished yourself, and you want to be absolutely, completely unspoiled, you might as well turn back now.

I'd of course expected a darker tone in this book than in previous volumes. Just how dark, though, was still maybe a little surprising. It really was almost humorless, in comparison to the earlier books. And you could tell what you were in for right from the beginning. This was the first time J.K. Rowling ever put excerpts from other books at the beginning of one of her own, and they were very striking choices. Still, it was all really right for it to be this way at the conclusion of the story.

And for what it's worth, I thought the "act three exposition syndrome" I'd mentioned noticing in previous books wasn't so big an issue here. Sure, she had a lot of ground to cover in "explaining how things had really gone down." More in this volume than in any other, really. But I thought it was paced much better, spread out in more places rather than piled up in a single place, like the graveyard scene at the end of Goblet of Fire, for example. Again, this made me feel the conclusion was really satisfying, because I got all the answers I wanted, but in perhaps a better way than I'd been expecting.

Now, if only George R.R. Martin would get crankin' on the rest of those Song of Ice and Fire books!