One of the appeals of the books was the complicated backstory. To me, its a hallmark of a well organized series when an interesting, though at the time, insignificant detail from one book turns out to be an important part of the story. It ties all the stories together into one story.

Ditto with the overly complicated back story for Albus Dumbledore.

I actually felt that this was very important to the story. As this book was Harry’s final transition into adulthood it was important for him to question his mentor. One of the major aspects of growing up is realizing that the world isn’t black or white, good or bad. With the back story of Dumbledore we were able to see Harry start to realize that Dumbledore wasn’t a saint. At first he thought this was incredibly important and that if Dumbledore wasn’t perfect maybe he shouldn’t follow his advice.

But as the book went on Harry made the transition from childlike, “He did bad things he must be bad” to the adult, “He did bad things, but he also did good things.” Harry reached that point where he could accept that Dumbledore was human, not perfect, but not pure evil. He learned to judge based on actions AND intent, not just one or the other.

To me it reminded me of when I first started really digging into history. I learned all this bad stuff about historical figures. At first I was disillusioned. But as I learned more and grew up some, I realized that they weren’t the heroes we had been taught they were, but nor were the monsters. They were people. They did some questionable things but also did some really good things. They don’t need to be idolized but nor do they deserve to be villianized.

The other questionable tactic Rowling uses is her excessive killing off of characters.

I thought that this was important…up until a point. Killing Hedwig and Mad-Eye right at the beginning set the tone for the book, No One is Safe! Anything Could Happen! That feeling started to abate when no one else died for awhile but the torturing of Hermione and killing of Dobby I think reignited it.

As for the deaths of Lupin, Tonks, Fred, Crabbe….I dunno. In away they were kind of routine, lacked emotion. But at the same time were necessary. This was suppose to be a major battle. The idea that everyone would come through unscathed is just silly. I really don’t know how you could do it where the deaths had more meaning without shifting the focus of the story to be on that person at each death.

The other thing that made me choke up a little (in a good way) was Kreacher leading the house-elfs into battle at the end. Don’t know why.

You mean like offing Hedwig? Killing Lupin and Tonks offstage? Greyback not devouring Hermione at the first opportunity?

I really liked this book, but as you say, it was not without disappointments.

The Lexicon has a fairly good timeline, which I think was originally based on Nearly Headless Nick’s death party (his 500th, and he was supposed to have been killed in 1492). However, there are apparently a lot of contradictions even within that timeline; days of the week don’t match up with dates exactly. My guess is that the first book took place in the “then” of the writing (didn’t she start around 1990?) and she stuck with that even when some books took longer to write.

(And anybody else find it peculiar that Mad-Eye Moody’s body was never found?)

Yes. I was sure he’d turn up alive later on.