by Elton Gahr

Created on: June 13, 2009

"Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" is the final book in the Harry Potter series and the fastest selling book ever selling 15 million copies on its first day beating "Harry Potter and the Half-blood prince" that had been the previous best seller. This is different in many ways from the previous Harry Potter novels as Harry has largely grown up in this book. Hogwarts plays a much different role in this book as the main characters are not in school.

In the wizarding world one becomes an adult on his seventeenth birthday. This is an especially important event for Harry Potter who has been protected by the magic of his mother so long as he is a child and spends at least one night a year with her family.

As they pursue Harry Potter the one prophesied to defeat Voldemort the wizarding world begins to fall to Voldemort. He takes over the ministry of magic and only the Order of the Phoenix appears to still have any chance to stand against him.

Harry Potter is faced with his most important decision in this book. He must decide if he will search out the Horcruxs that protect Voldemort or the three deathly hallows. These three artifacts are the most powerful wand in the world, a true invisibility cloak that never wears out and a ring that can bring back the dead. One who controls all three is considered a master of death. Harry chooses to search out the Horcruxs giving up his best chance to become the master of death to protect the world.

The theme of death and learning to understand, deal with and even accept it is one of the most important themes in Harry Potter and the major theme of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows". Harry's life has been full of death, from his parents as a child to the two men who had become surrogate fathers to him, yet in the end when given the chance to control death Harry Potter gives it up, choosing to accept life and death for what they are, something that Voldemort, and even Dumbledore never did.

The book ends with a brief look at Harry's life 19 years later as he has finally earned the family he was denied as a child. Married with children of his own and the words that the scar on Harry's forehead had not pained him for nineteen years seems to speak not only to Voldemort's ultimate defeat but to Harry's overcoming of the pain of the night his parents died.

In many ways a different format than the other books in the Harry Potter series dealing very little with Hogwarts and school this is a near perfect conclusion to an excellent series though I always thought that Harry should have become the Defense against the Dark Art's teacher at Hogwarts.

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