Witches Abroad - Terry Pratchett

   1991; 320 pages.  Book 12 (out of 41) in the “Discworld” series.  Book 3 (out of 6) in the “Witches” subseries.  New Author? : No.  Genres : Fantasy; British Humour; Fairy Tales; Satire.  Laurels: 197^th in the Big Read.  Overall Rating: 8½*/10.

 

    Desiderata Hollow has died.  She was both a witch and a fairy godmother, and she's bequeathed her godmotherly magic wand to the young witch, Magrat Garlick, which surprised some of the more experienced witches such as Nanny Ogg and Granny Weatherwax.  But the wand came with a note and a task.

 

    “You must goe to the city of Genua.  I would of done thys myself only cannot by reason of bein dead.  Ella Saturday muste NOTTE marry the prins.”

 

    There was also a postscript: “PSPS Tell those 2 Olde Biddys they are NOTTE to come with Youe, they will onlie Ruine everythin.”

 

    There’s no doubt that the “2 Olde Biddys” refer to Nanny Ogg and Granny Weatherwax.  And there’s no doubt that Desiderata knew exactly how they’ll react to being forbidden to accompany Magrat.

 

    All three witches will be heading to Genua.

 

What’s To Like...

    Witches Abroad is Book 12 of Terry Pratchett’s 41-volume “Discworld” series.  I’m not reading them in order, and that doesn’t seem to be a handicap at all.  It’s also part of the 6-volume “Witches” subseries, of which I’ve now read all but one.  The three witches all get equal time in the spotlight here.

 

    In a nutshell, Witches Abroad is a take-off of the Cinderella fairy tale.  The book’s premise is that, for the characters in any such classic story there is no such thing as Free Will, they must adhere to whatever the storyline is.  Our trio of witches are determined to change those rules.

 

    Of course, they do not immediately embrace this task.  While traveling by broomstick to Genua, they cross paths with other tales, such as Snow White, Little Red Riding Hood, the Three Pigs, the Three Bears, the Wizard of Oz, and even the game of Clue.  Both the reader and the witches develop an empathy for the poor, doomed Big Bad Wolf in Little Red Riding Hood.

 

    The book is written in a mild form of English, not American, so you get some British spellings such as jewellery, defence, ante-room, and half-way, but it’s not a distraction.   And Nanny Ogg’s self-coined polyglot efforts are a wonder to behold.  One sample of her efforts is given below.

 

    The greeting “Wotcha!” always makes me smile when I come across in a book I'm reading.  Absinthe gets a brief nod, and it was fun the learn how to turn rocks into pumpkins.  An as is true of almost any Terry Pratchett novel, there are lots of witty footnotes and no chapters.

 

    The ending is vintage Pratchett:  clever without being obvious, and as exciting as a humorous fantasy climax can be.  The plotlines are all tied up and everyone gets their just desserts.  Witches Abroad is both a standalone novel as well as part of a series.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.7*/5, based on 3,511 ratings and 555 reviews.

    Goodreads: 4.22*/5, based on 82,370 ratings and 2,5134 reviews

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Eructate (v.) : to belch.

Others: Vouchsafed (v.).

 

 

Things That Sound Dirty But Aren’t…

    “Just twist the first thing you can grab, as the High Priest said to the vestal virgin.”  (pg. 263)

 

Excerpts...

    “It’s only a folk song, Esme,” said Nanny Ogg.

    “Hah! Said Granny Weatherwax.  “I should just say it is a folk song!  I knows all about folk songs.  Hah!  You think you’re listenin’ to a nice song about . . . about cuckoos and fiddlers and nightingales and whatnot, and then it turns out to be about . . . about something else entirely,” she added darkly.  “You can’t trust folk songs.  They always sneak up on you.”  (pg. 67)

 

    “We ought to be getting on,” she said.

    “Oh, I’m fed up with broomsticks,” said Nanny.  “More than a couple of hours on a stick and I’ve gone rigid in the dairy air.”

    She looked expectantly at the other two.  “That foreign for bum,” she added.  “Although, it’s a funny thing, in some foreign parts ‘bum’ means ‘tramp’ and ‘tramp’ means ‘hobo’.  Funny things, words.”  (pg. 101)

 

“Openny vous, gunga din, chop-chop, pretty damn quick.”  (pg. 76)

    There’s never anything to quibble about in a Terry Pratchett novel, and that holds true in Witches Abroad.  There is a sprinkling of mild cussing in the text, but I only counted five instances in the first third of the book.

 

    If the Discworld witches aren’t your favorite set of characters, you might be slightly disappointed.  Sam Vimes and the rest of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch are absent, ditto for the Librarian (ook!) and any of the wizards.  But there are zombies, vampires, familiars, and a voodoo practitioner to keep you turning the pages.  The character DEATH also pops up from time to time, although he doesn’t have much of an impact on the plotline.

 

    If you’ve never read any Discworld novels, this is as good of a starting point as any, although I’d say that about a couple dozen other books in the series.  The pacing is quick in Witches Abroad, and there’s lots of wordplay, humor, action, and keen Pratchett-inspired insight to keep you entertained.

 

    8½ Stars.  One quick example of the wordplay in Witches Abroad:  One of the characters, a little short fellow intent on wooing Nanny Ogg, is named Casanunda.  It took me an embarrassing amount of time to realize that that’s the opposite of the name Casanova.

Actually, the Comma Goes Here - Lucy Cripps

    2020; 160 pages.  Full Title: Actually, the Comma Goes Here: A Practical Guide to Punctuation.   New Author? : Yes.  Genres : Editing Reference; Punctuation Reference; Non-Fiction.  Overall Rating : 9*/10.

 

    Punctuation.  Those pesky dots and squiggles, in all sorts of combinations, and straight lines of various sizes, either sloping or horizontal.  They’re the bane of writers, editors, and proofreaders and are worse than misspelled words, because the latter can be checked easily enough.

 

    Researching punctuation on the internet often just makes things more confusing.  Where one source demands that a comma be used, another source forbids it.  Heck, they can’t even agree as to whether you should put one space or two after the end of a sentence.

 

    I suppose we could let the British make the rules; after all, it is called “English”, not “American”.  But they put single quotation marks around direct speech, and us Yanks all know quotation marks come in pairs.  And for goodness sake, they call a single dot that closes out a sentence a “full stop”, everyone knows it’s called a “period”.

 

    There are a number of punctuation books out there, but they mostly seem to take themselves too seriously, adopting “it’s my way or the highway” stance.   If only someone would write a punctuation book that addresses all the various official “styles”, and lets us know when some bit of punctuation is optional, and what our options in that case.

 

    After all, fellow readers, writers, and editors, overusing punctuation marks, you know, is worse, I’m sure, than, underusing, them. 

 

What’s To Like...

    Actually, The Comma Goes Here is divided into 15 chapters plus an introduction, with each one, for the most part, focusing on a different punctuation mark.  The chapters are:

    00. Introduction                08. The Exclamation Mark

    01. The Period                  09. The Hyphen

    02. The Comma                10. The Em and En Dash

    03. The Apostrophe          11. The Parenthesis and the Bracket

    04. The Question Mark    12. The Ellipsis

    05. The Colon                  13. The Slash     

    06. The Semicolon           14. Unusual Characters

    07. The Quotation Mark  15. The “Not Punctuation Points”

 

    The chapters usually have the structure of:

        Introduction,

        Uses (and occasionally “Not-Uses”),

        History Lesson,

        How To Beat the Snobs, and once or twice:

        Memory Tips

 

    The chapters are concise (the book is only 160 pages long), but I found them extremely helpful.  Frankly, 99% of the time I consult a Punctuation website, it’s due to some “gray area” of grammar, which is what this book focuses on.

 

    My favorite chapters are given above in pink, and by far my favorite part of the chapters was How To Beat the Snobs.  There’s also an extremely helpful chart in the back comparing the various “House Styles” and how they differ.  The Introduction and History sections are a Trivia buff’s delight.  I learned that Kurt Vonnegut hated semicolons and Winston Churchill hated Hyphens; why we call that “at sign” an Ampersand, that “sic” is Latin for “sic erat scriptum”, and that although an ellipse is three dots (not two dots, five dots, or ten dots), yet sometimes it's grammatically correct to have four dots in a row.

 

    The tone of the book is lighthearted, but don’t be misled: the text is packed with oodles of useful punctuation information.  If you’re trying to figure out which grammar system to use, Lucy Cripps recommends the Chicago Manual of Style for most of us (the others being for specialized areas such as legal, scientific, and journalism areas), then further customizing that to our own tastes and for the sake of clarity, and calling it our “House Style”.  Her only caveat: BE CONSISTENT!!

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.5/5 based on 483 ratings and 90 reviews.

    Goodreads: 4.38/5 based on 118 ratings and 53 reviews

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Noughties (n., British) : the decade from 2000 to 2009.

Others: Diple (n.).

 

 

Excerpts...

    Fiction and nonfiction authors rely on the Chicago Manual of Style (CMS), often with an additional, possibly contradictory, house style sheet.

    So when someone comes at you with their “you’ve missed a comma, here” or “you’ve missed the hyphen in nonfiction,” you can respond with divine calm that you are using a house style.  For combatting snobbery, punctuation styles give us excellent breathing space.  (loc. 82)

 

    When “email” was just coming out of diapers, I insisted on using “e-mail,” as in “electronic-mail”.  But others used Email, E-mail, email.  Chaos.  By my reasoning that e- had to stay.  What would happen when eentertainment, eevent, eedition, eeducation, eemployee came along?  Just ridiculous.  But, it seems, that is where we are heading.  The hyphen after e is no more.  Maybe we, too, must eevolve and eembrace it.  (loc. 1029)

 

Kindle Details…

    Actually, the Comma Goes Here currently sells for $8.99 at Amazon.  This is apparently the only e-book authored by Lucy Cripps that's offered on Amazon.  Here’s hoping she’s working on a sequel, maybe one on grammar and/or spelling variations.

 

“What happened to the semicolon that broke the grammar laws?”  “It was given two consecutive sentences.”  (loc. 758, and LOL)

    There’s not much to quibble about in Actually, the Comma Goes Here.  Some reviewers were turned off by the book’s “folksy” tone, but I thought it made the reading a more fun.

 

    As you’d expect, the text is remarkably clean, with just a single “hell” as far as cusswords go. And. although it's really nitpicky, I wish someday I find a grammar book which includes a “Quiz” section so you can see how well you’ve comprehended the language rules.

 

    But I quibble.  I’m doing some copy-editing on the side right now, and Actually, the Comma Goes Here was exactly the refresher course I was hoping for.  I intend to use it as my primary editing reference, especially when it comes to those pesky commas.

 

    9 Stars.  We'll close with a couple of teasers: You might think the use of periods is pretty simple, but are national acronyms supposed to have them (U.S.A. and U.K.) or not (USA and UK)?  Regarding the apostrophe, do two-digit decades require two apostrophes (‘70’s), one apostrophe (70’s or ‘70s), or none (70s)?  You'll find the Actually, the Comma Goes Here.

The Odessa File - Frederick Forsyth

    1972; 329 pages.  New Author? : Yes.  Genres: Suspense-Thriller; Intrigue; Holocaust; Historical Fiction.  Overall Rating: 9*/10.

 

    I learned it in high school History class, so it has to be true.  With the exception of a few Nazi officials who knew they would be executed as war criminals, almost all of the German civilians welcomed the liberating Allied armies.  Well, maybe not the Russian army so much, since they had some atrocities to avenge, but at least the American, British, and French soldiers.

 

    The problem is, if that’s so, how do we explain why so many Nazi war criminals managed to avoid being found, arrested, and tried?  Yeah, a few were caught and put on trial, including Hermann Goring and Adolf Eichmann.

 

    Some others fled to foreign countries, mainly to South America.  But most simply blended into the German populace with forged identities, and lived out their lives to a quiet and peaceful end.  How could that happen?

 

    Frederick Forsyth's The Odessa File presents a plausible explanation for such a travesty of justice.

 

What’s To Like...

    The Odessa File is a best-selling 1972 thriller/historical fiction novel where we follow Peter Miller, a German freelance reporter as he investigates the whereabouts of SS Captain Eduard Roschmann, aka “The Butcher of Riga”, the maniacal and savage commandant of a concentration camp located there.  The story takes place in 1963-64, primarily in places all over Germany, especially the Hamburg area, with occasional quick detours to places like Egypt and Israel.

 

    The book does a fantastic job of chronicling the post-World War 2 sentiments of the German people.  Not every German rejoiced that the Nazi personnel, particularly those that had been in the infamous SS Division, were now hiding out and posing as German civilians.  The titular “ODESSA” is an acronym for “Organisation der ehemaligan SS-Angehorigen”, which translates to “Organization of Former Members of the SS”, a (fictional) clandestine group that gives huge amounts of money, muscle, and resources to any former SS person who needs to become “invidible”.

 

    I liked that lots of real-world figures have parts in the story, including Simon Weisenthal (Nazi hunter), Anwar Sadat, General Meir Amit (Mossad), Reinhard Heydrich (Nazi), Bishop Alois Hudal (Nazi sympathizer), Bruno Streckenbach (SS general), and Peter Miller’s target, Eduard Roschmann.  You’ll also pick up a few basic German phrases along the way; chuckle at ancient (1970s) things like Telex, pensions, photostats and public telephones; and ;earn how to make a car bomb out of common household materials.

 

    The overall plot of the book is fairly straightforward.  Our protagonist sets out on his search for Roschmann, gets stonewalled by all sorts of German bureaucratic agencies, doggedly keeps at it, and gradually becomes a threat to Eduard Roschmann’s well-being, which calls for the Butcher of Riga to take appropriate countermeasures.

 

    It all builds to an exciting, twisty, and suspenseful climax.  Peter Miller survives and fulfills his mission, but not in the way you’d expect.  Not all the baddies die, but those that don’t, have to flee for their lives.  Things close with a “where are they now” epilogue that includes both fictional and real-world characters.

 

Ratings…
    Goodreads:  4.13/5 based on 58,363 ratings and 910 reviews.

    Amazon: 4.6/5 based on 508 ratings and 147 reviews

 

Excerpts...

    “The trouble with you, pal,” he told his reflection in one of Sigi’s brilliantly polished saucepans as he rinsed out the cup with his forefinger, “is that you are lazy.”

    He had been asked by a civilian-careers officer, at the end of his military service ten years earlier, what he wanted to be in life.  He had replied, “An idle rich man,” and at twenty-nine although he had not achieved it and probably never would, he still thought it a perfectly reasonable ambition.  (loc. 395)

 

    “He was killed, you know, shortly after that.  He returned to his native Austria and was killed fighting against the Americans in early nineteen forty-five.  His body was identified by several people who had known him in life.”

    “He must have been a remarkable man,” said Miller.

    Dr. Schmidt nodded in agreement.  “Well, yes, some thought so.  Yes, indeed, some of us thought so.”

    “I mean,” continued Miller as if the interruption had not occurred, “he must have been remarkable to be the first man since Jesus Christ to have risen from the dead.  He was captured alive by the British on December twentieth, nineteen forty-seven, at Graz in Austria.”  (loc. 2085)

 

Kindle Details…

    Presently, The Odessa File sells for $6.99 at Amazon.  Frederick Forsyth has more than a dozen other novels in e-book format, including the highly-acclaimed thriller, The Day of the Jackal.  The prices for those range from $6.99 to $13.99.

 

“It’s a question of election mathematics.  Six million dead Jews don’t vote.  Five million former Nazis can and do, at every election.”  (loc. 2445)

    There’s little to quibble about in The Odessa File.  Cusswords are sparse, only six instances in the first 25% of the book.  There are a couple rolls-in-the-hay and two allusions to male excitement.

 

    I caught a couple of typos: Kaposs/Kapos, hose/those, rights/right, By-By/Bye-Bye, but those might have occurred when the book version was converted into e-book format.  And although the book is mostly written in "American" English, a couple of “British” spellings show up, including: disk jockey, whisky, and “waked up”.

 

    It should be noted that this is more of a Suspense/Intrigue tale, not an Action-Adventure.  Thrills-&-spills do show up, but not until the second half of the book, when Peter Miller has morphed from a nuisance into a threat to Roschmann.

 

    For those who are cinephiles, a movie version came out in 1974 starring Jon Voight and Maximilian Schell, although Wikipedia implies that its adherence to the book’s plotline is rather “loose”.

 

    That’s about it.  I found The Odessa File to be a great read, both as a work of historical fiction focusing on post-WW2 Germany and a page-turner.  This was my first book by Frederick Forsyth, who rarely discounts the e-book versions of his novels, but I will now be on the lookout for other works by him, including his equally famous thriller, The Day of the Jackal.

 

    9 Stars.  For those who wonder whether books and movies really have any significant impact in the real world, Wikipedia has this note about the 1974 film adaptation of The Odessa File: “After the film was released to the public, he [Eduard Roschmann] was arrested by the Argentinian police, skipped bail, and fled to Asuncion, Paraguay, where he died on 10 August 1977.”  All because of the movie.  Awesome!

McNally's Dare - Vincent Lardo

   2003; 308 pages.  New Author? : No, and no.  Book 12 (out of 13) in the Archy McNally series.  Genres : Private Investigator Mysteries; Florida Noir.   Overall Rating: 6*/10.

 

    Talk about a party pooper!  Jeff Rodgers sure is one.

 

    He was working as a waiter at Malcolm MacNiff’s la-di-dah party held at the close of his fundraising “Tennis Everyone” tournament, and somehow managed to drown himself in the swimming pool while on break.   Hmmph.  He was probably high on booze or drugs or something.

 

    Archy McNally, our protagonist Private Investigator (he prefers the phrase “Discreet Inquirer”), was at the party too, having participated in the tennis tournament.  The pool that Jeff drowned in was somewhat out of the way, which is most likely why no one saw him when he fell in.  It’s very sad, but accidents like that happen occasionally.

 

    Except the Palm Beach Police have just announced Jeff Rodgers was murdered.  Archy has some sleuthing to do.

 

What’s To Like...

    McNally’s Dare is the twelfth, and penultimate book in this series.  The series' original author was Lawrence Sanders, who passed away after the seventh book.  Vincent Lardo accepted the opportunity to continue the series, and contributed another six stories, putting them out at more-or-less one each year.

 

    The story is told in the first-person POV, Archy’s, and the setting is the greater Palm Beach, Florida area.  Both of these are norms for the series.  Archy is the self-confident, somewhat spoiled junior partner of the law firm McNally & Son, Attorney-at-Law.  Father generally takes care of the legal aspects of the business; Archy takes care of the legwork.

 

    The death of Jeff Rodgers at the posh MacNiff estate is a social embarrassment to the Palm Beach upper crust, and no less than three different clients engage Archy’s services, all emphasizing him to be discreet.  The case quickly becomes more complex: there are rumors of blackmail, illegitimate heirs, and impostors putting on airs.  There are clues to decipher as we tag along with Archy, but also some red herrings to keep us on our toes.

 

    I liked the brief literary nod to Willy Loman, as well as a couple basic phrases I learned in French 101: “Touché” and “N’est ce pas?”.  The title reference comes on page 293, but it doesn’t really impact the storyline.

 

    Everything builds to decent, slightly twisty, but not very exciting ending.  Archy solves the Who, How, and Why of the crime and the baddies are proven guilty, which turned out to be the most challenging aspect of the investigation.  McNally’s Dare is both a standalone novel and part of a series.  I’m not reading the books in order, and I don’t think that matters.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.5*/5, based on 273 ratings and 84 reviews.

    Goodreads: 3.86*/5, based on 1,205 ratings and 53 reviews

 

Excerpts...

    “A lot of kings bit the dust in Aunt Margaret’s lifetime.  The medication had her indulging in a remembrance of things past, as some writers put it.”

    Proust, if my brief but memorable at old Eli served.  I recalled a classmate who had actually read Proust.  For penance he served four years, graduated summa cum laude, and made millions as a pioneer in waste disposal.  I read The Power of Positive Thinking and am now eking out a living counting toes.  Is there a lesson to be learned in this?  (pg. 235)

 

    I left Father tugging on his whiskers and retired to my penthouse digs where I undressed, washed, brushed and donned a silk kimono in white with a scarlet obi.  This was presented to me by a lady friend who was a Shintoist.  I was a convert for the duration of our relationship, which was conducted on a mat.  She left me for a karate instructor who came with his own mat, and I was left holding the kimono.  (pg. 244)

 

How I longed for a refreshing cup of hemlock.  (pg. 132)

    There’s very little cussing in McNally’s Dare.  I counted just five instances in the first third of the book, and they were all just variations of the mild expletives: “hell” and “damn”.  The book opens with Archy going undercover (literally) at a massage parlor, but there’s nothing lewd about the ensuing sting.  Joint-smoking and amphetamines get a brief mention later on, but drug usage never figures into the storyline.

 

    My big issue with McNally’s Dare is the crime investigation.  We eschew spoilers in these reviews, so let’s just say Archy, and others, including myself, all latched onto a prime suspect pretty quickly, and nothing much along the way dissuaded any of us from our hunch. I like my murder mysteries to throw surprises at me and this book didn’t do that.

 

    6 Stars.  This was my third Archy McNally book, the other two are reviewed here and here, and were penned, one each, by Lawrence Sanders and Vincent Lardo.  McNally’s Dare was definitely the least impressive of the three, but maybe by this book Lardo was running out of good and innovative ideas for a murder-mystery.  Or maybe I’ve just outgrown the series.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - J.K. Rowling

   2007; 784 pages.  Book 7 (out of 7) in the “Harry Potter” series.  New Author? : No.  Genres : Fantasy; YA; Adventure.  Laurels: Winner – 2007 Newsweek – Best Book; and others.  Overall Rating : 9*/10.

 

    It’s showdown time!  A duel to the death between the Boy-Who-Lived and He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.  Come out fighting and may the best wand win!  Or, for you Muggles out there, a contest of magic between Harry Potter and Lord Voldemort.

 

    Harry’s definitely the underdog.  Voldemort’s minions have taken over key positions at both Hogwarts and the Ministry of Magic.  His Death Eaters are looking high and low for “Undesirable Number One”.  For the moment Harry’s friends are hiding him, but sooner or later his cover will be blown.

 

    Things look bad for the good guys, but Harry’s got one slim hope – destroying the entire set of horcruxes, each of which holds a piece of Voldemort’s soul.  Too bad Harry has no idea where those horcruxes are, what they look like, or how to destroy them even if he does find them.

 

    And we won’t even mention the prophecy.  You know, the one that says the only way Voldemort can be killed is if the Boy-Who-Lived dies also.

 

What’s To Like...

    Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is the seventh, and final, book in J.K. Rowling’s fabulous Harry Potter series, although there are some supplementary screenplays and short story collections for diehard fans.  The overall tone of the series continues to get darker, but that’s not surprising for a “showdown” story.

 

    Once again there are a bunch of riddles and mysteries for Harry and his two closest friends – Ron and Hermione – to solve:  What is “Grindelwald’s Mark”?  What is the Sign of the Deathly Hallows?  Who is the mysterious “R.A.B.”?  Where is the Sword of Godric Gryffindor?  And possibly most important of all, who is the owner of the Silver Doe Patronus?

 

    In addition to the riddle-solving, the horcrux-finding, and the Harry/Voldemort main storyline, there are a gazillion other characters with their own secondary plotlines to be tied up.  J.K. Rowling does an amazing job of this, devoting much of the first half of the book to do so.  You’ll come away with a good idea of what happens to the Dursleys, the ghosts, the house-elves, the centaurs, all the Weasley siblings, and even the owls after the series ends.

 

    I liked the drawings at the beginning of each chapter, as well as the captivating “Tale of the Three Brothers”, from whence comes the book’s title.  There are also plenty of spells and magic gizmos to marvel at; my favorites being the Polyjuice Potion and the Extendable Ears.  And it’s always a treat to have Peeves, Dobby, and Hagrid show up in a scene.

 

    The ending is, as expected, fantastic.  Everything builds to an epic, action-packed, several-chapters-long, final battle.  Most (but not all) of the good guys survive; most (but not all) of the bad guys are vanquished, and the series-long question of whether Snape is a white-hat or a black-hat is finally resolved.  Things close with an Epilogue, which takes place nineteen years later, and which left me misty-eyed.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.9*/5, based on 37,157 ratings and 6,133 reviews.

    Goodreads: 4.57*/5, based on 3,288,633 ratings and 75,366 reviews.

 

Excerpts...

    “I couldn’t think what to get you,” she said.

    “You didn’t have to get me anything.”

    She disregarded this too.

    “I didn’t know what would be useful.  Nothing too big, because you wouldn’t be able to take it with you.”

    He chanced a glance at her.  She was not tearful, that was one of the many wonderful things about Ginny, she was rarely weepy.  He had sometimes thought that having six brothers must have toughened her up.  (loc. 1522)

 

    “His knowledge remained woefully incomplete, Harry!  That which Voldemort does not value, he takes no trouble to comprehend.  Of house-elves and children’s tales, of love, loyalty, and innocence, Voldemort knows and understands nothing.  Nothing.  That they all have a power beyond his own, a power beyond the reach of any magic, is a truth he has never grasped.”  (loc. 8996)

 Kindle Details…

    Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows sells for $9.99 right now, as do the other six books in the series.

“Imagine if something went wrong and we were stuck as specky, scrawny gits forever.”  (loc. 672)

    It’s hard to find nits to pick about anything in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.  As usual, there’s a small amount of cussing – I counted eleven in the first 50% of the book – and most of them are variations of the mild “hell” and “damn” invectives.  Oh, and Harry gets kissed once, but he’ll remember it for a long time.

 

    The book screams for a “Cast of Characters” section, but to be fair, in the Kindle version, which is what I read, when you click on someone’s name, even a minor player, it usually sends you to a link with a background about him/her/it.

 

    Finally, for those who loved the Quidditch and Hogwarts classroom antics in the earlier books, it should be noted that this book contains nary a trace of either.

 

    9 Stars.  It’s taken 20 years or so, but I’ve made it through the entire Harry Potter series.  I read them all in order and the first one in French.  This is a great series, one that keeps both YA readers and adults thoroughly entertained.  The Epilogue could possibly be used as the basis for a sequel, but J.K. Rowling hasn’t done so in the intervening fifteen years, and frankly, I think that was the correct decision on her part.