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Originally Posted by Pitchwife
And fully d'accord about Rowling's limitations, Nerwen - she's a competent and entertaining writer, but nowhere near e.g. Tolkien's league. There is at times a painful disharmony between the schoolboy story background with its classroom comedy and obligatory Quidditch match in every volume and the darker theme of the gradually increasing struggle against evil, and the way everybody (including, at times, the author) is doting on Harry would be unpalatable if we didn't have Snape.
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I would add that Rowling made too many and too complex "rules", so many that she can't even follow them herself sometimes. She focuses on the rules instead of depth of character and feeling. And when she attempts feeling, instead of giving it depth she just writes all these gushy love affairs, or simply increases the death rate.
An exception to that is the Sirius-Bellatrix-Molly thing. I find it satisfying that Molly "avenges" Sirius in a way.
One thing that I could say in her favour, though, is her use of Latin. Many HP fans that I've talked to are annoyed by it, but I see it as positive thing, and I love deciphering the spells.
She borrowed from Latin like Tolkien from Finnish and Anglo-Saxon. She sisn't steal the idea, but it's a similarity.
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EDIT: PS.- You know one thing that irks me greatly about the end of the story? We have the Hogwarts motto "Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus", and we have a character named Draco. In my book, when you include a coincidence like that in your story, you have to do something with it. I always expected Draco to turn against Voldemort in the end and do something real flashy (like saving Harry's life or what do I know), so I could brandish the book at the ceiling and cry out, "I knew it!" That lukewarm not-quite-conversion Rowling wrote for him was a huge disappointment.
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No one's allowed to tickle a sleeping Draco.
(But doesn't that phrase ring a bell?
)
The thing that irks me is that Voldemort is completely destroyed. (I know I'm weird...)