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Originally Posted by John F
I take it you didn't care much for The Return of the King either (or was it The Two Towers)?  |
Heh. I read those all in a blur, so I don't remember much what happened in one rather than the other.
Two Towers was the middle book; it was allowed to be "here's our protagonists stumbling around in the woods trying to figure out where the action is." The final book of seven shouldn't be "what the hell are we doing now?"
Also, in the LotR series, we *saw* action. Not all of it, but we had protagonists in the war and saw them fighting.
(Eowyn says, "Prepare to die, for I am no living man!" ... followed by Legolas saying "Ha! I am an Elf; no living Man!" Then Gimli says "Trying to get all the action, arrow-boy? I am no living Man!" And Merry pipes up with, "I, too, am no living Man...but you folks are welcome to him." And the King of the Dead says, "I am also no living Man! Damn, did you pick the wrong army to fight today!")
The 7th HP book would've been much stronger if she'd cut out a handful of the Camping Chapters and replaced them with whatever was going on at Hogwarts, letting us see Neville and Luna and Ginny leading the underground resistance. Or showing us Fred & George being ninja-spies infiltrating Death Eater supporters and stealing resources or just scrambling activities. Or *anything* that worked as actual build-up to the final battle, rather than acting like a teen drama TV show for twenty chapters followed by massive death & destruction.