Such is the internet. I was searching for Jeremy James books online today and I ended up writing a review of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Here it is (don’t worry, there are no spoilers):

Though it picks up towards the end, this final Potter adventure, for the first two lengthy thirds, reaches a level of dullness unprecedented by the rest of the series. Little (or, indeed, sometimes, nothing) happens until the finale.

Rowling constructed an effective pattern for her first four books and proceeded to destroy it for the last three, and it’s this, primarily, that makes them confusing, aimless and dull. Deathly Hallows concerns Harry, Ron and Hermione and rarely devotes any attention to the rest of the extensive cast, causing a serious lack of action and a reader’s boredom with the few characters involved. The greater ensemble is also denied any closure in the epilogue, which isn’t really acceptable when your readers have spent six previous books nurturing a fascination with them. Only one character is given any further exposition or depth (it’s worth noting that the discovery of this character’s flaws are probably the closest that Deathly Hallows has to a saving grace). What few deaths occur seem like nothing more than publicity stunts, and, bar one, the characters are dispatched with plain, unemotional writing.

The skill level of the writing is, incredibly, lower than Rowling’s usual standard. She typically writes in a childish but endearing manner, never artistic but somehow always gripping; in Deathly Hallows she manages to be amateurish with her uninspiring prose and lack of expressive imagination (and a strange and infuriating obsession with the word “slightly” that serves to kill any description that might otherwise be evocative). Of course, the phrase “appeared out of thin air” makes its customary appearance.

The plot is not terribly exciting and certainly not unexpected. There’s little sight of the brilliant twists and “red herrings” that so wonderfully littered the earlier books. It’s for this reason that the book is barely worth reading.

Finally, the ending, while essentially satisfying, is very underwhelming and done with far too quickly. The epilogue is cagey, uncompelling and unfulfilling. The book would have fared much better if she had concluded it one chapter sooner.

My verdict on the entire series: read the first four, then stop. Little else happens and the subsequent books are so detached from their ancestors that it feels like moving from one smart series to a distinctly inferior one.

I hadn’t realised until I wrote the review just how much I disliked the book!