Harry Potter and the Deathly Harrows review (no spoliers)

In deference to p.o.t. readers and unlike a certain newspaper that decided to tell everyone exactly what happened in the first few chapters and a brief round-up of the later parts I'm not going to spoil it for anyone just discuss things in general.

Imagine speeding along the countryside, great views to your left and right, then you hit a queue and the only thing you can see are two large hedges on either side. You edge forward slowly and occasionally get the odd view over a gate, before settling down between the hedges again. Finally the queue passes and you're whistling past all that great scenery again.

That's the "Deathly Hallows". Important events covered by a single sentence spin past you so fast that I actually had to go back a couple of pages just to check I'd read what I thought I'd read. Then it all turns to sludge, it'd be like a novelization of "Die Hard" where all the fights take up a paragraph, but a whole chapter is devoted to connecting the computer to the vault and another for crawling through the vents.

Bits that would be nice to expand on are zipped past, attitudes do a U-turn in a blink of an eye, and at times you're left thinking 'well why do that?'

All the hints and strangeness do get resolved eventually, but still I was left with an odd hollow feeling as with a murder mystery where the detective uncovers the guilty party for reasons there were no way the reader could know about. A little cheated.

But hey as I say it does explain things so needs to be read for completeness sake, but I'll echo several media sources in wishing Rowling had a firmer editor.