OK, second attempt...

WELL. That was awesome. Ignoring the cheesilogue, of course. I cringed at Scorpius. I wanted to call my kid that.

I thought it was exciting and tense from the start. After the obligatory evil-elsewhere chapter, the Privet Drive stuff did a good job of setting the tension that lasted more or less through the whole book. Then once they'd shuffled out, it was straight to the action. The multiple Potters were good, and I liked how the subsequent attack felt unexpected, even though all the characters had been mentioning how dangerous it would be.

After the Burrow/wedding scenes, the Grimmauld Place and tenty stuff was all interesting enough, and the series of action-packed excursions was great. It didn't seem to stop: the Ministry, the Lovegood residence (that horn thing made an excellent exploding barrel), Godric's Hollow, Gringotts, and then the Big Hogwarts Blowout (of which more later).

This was all balanced out by the various twists, turns, backstories and revelations, something that had been lacking in the last one, and it didn't stop until the very end. There was all the Hallows stuff, and although I was sort of expecting Snape's revelation, Dumbledore's backstory was especially interesting. It was pretty cool how it incorporated previously obscure characters like Bathilda Bagshot, Grindelwald and the Grey Lady too.

The Hogwarts battle at the end was gratuitous. Having what seemed like all the surviving characters ever mentioned return to fight was both awesome and ridiculous. I remember finding something really stupid...Percy saying to Fleur something like, 'So you're my sister-in-law now?' Hello good writing.

Forget the Dumbledore revelations: my brain broke when Mrs Weasley said 'bitch'.

For all the size of the death count, I thought it was mostly well handled until that final battle. Fred's death was shocking and dramatic, but then Tonks and Lupin just felt like they were thrown in as an afterthought to make sure we felt it, and Colin Creevey just felt tacked on.

Poor Dobby.

Poor Hedwig.

Overall, though, although the action was a bit exhausting at times, I thought it was a good book and an excellent end to the series.