Finished Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows -- No Spoilers

At about 3:30pm today I started reading Deathly Hallows and now at 1:30am I have finished it. I even took a break for dinner.

First of all, it was a very good read and a satisfactory end to the series. And secondly, I was right about half my predictions.

All week, I would get a little sad, thinking that the last book was coming and that the story would be over. I was also a little sad that this was my best employee's last week. Fortunately I've got someone already to take over that position and another new employee coming on, who will fill a big gap that we've had for about a year.

But anyway, back to Deathly Hallows. Like all the other HP books, it was fast paced and suspenseful. As in the other books, there are choices to be made and you never know what's going to happen. And the emotions and characters are believable, as always, though I wish some characters would be deepened.

As I read, I did not try to predict what would happen. I just enjoyed how it unfolded.

Tomorrow I will swim laps, which always puts me in a contemplative frame of mind. As my body goes though the motions and I go back and forth, back and forth in the pool, I will think about DH and the whole HP series. Maybe I'll have some more thoughts to add. But how to post again without giving spoilers?

At some point, I will reread the entire series. Now that I know how it all ends, it will be interesting to look for all the foreshadowing JKR puts in.

As mentioned in the New York Times review, there is an epilogue that tells you what happens to some of the characters afterwards. However, it doesn't address the fates of all the characters. I would love if JKR writes another book, kind of like Fantastical Beasts and Where to Find Them, that extends the epilogue and tells us what happens to all the other characters. Or to really write Hogwarts, A History.

What an amazing world JKR has created. What an incredible 10 years this has been!