Harry Potter, in Final Volume, Grows Up, Crosses to Other Side

Bloomberg.com -- It's one of the most hotly anticipated novels in literary history, yet the young hero slouches into ``Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,'' the seventh and final installment of J.K. Rowling's series, bleeding and swearing under his breath.

He has cut himself on a shard of mirror while rooting in his old Hogwarts school trunk, literally wading through his past. Harry has come far since the days when he and his pals Ron and Hermione could hide beneath a single invisibility cloak.

Now on the cusp of his 17th birthday -- the moment when wizards officially come of age -- Harry must locate and destroy the four remaining Horcruxes, vessels containing fragments of his nemesis Lord Voldemort's soul. It's a quest that he knows could end in his own death, and midway through the novel he learns that he must also track down the Deathly Hallows, three objects that might protect him. As ever, Ron and Hermione are at his side.

As Rowling's series has progressed, the mischievous charm of the earlier books has given way to a more brooding, introverted atmosphere. Near the start of the new one, Lord Voldemort and his Death Eaters seize control of the magical world, taking over Hogwarts and the Daily Prophet and embarking on a program of ethnic cleansing to wipe out wizards of human extraction -- Muggle-borns and Mudbloods.

Hormonal Silence

Harry, named Undesirable No. 1, goes into hiding in the forest with Ron and Hermione, where they bicker for days before lapsing into a moody, hormonally charged silence. Winter descends and they run low on food. It takes 275 pages for them to find the first Horcrux.

Midway through, though, the pace picks up, and the air grows thick with familiar spells and the clatter of battles. Car-sized spiders, dragons and 20-foot giants appear. There are some narrow escapes, and not everyone survives.

Throughout, Harry's distinctive lightning scar acts as a psychic connection to Voldemort, plugging the hero into his enemy's actions and emotions. Yet Rowling's arch baddie proves a less compelling figure than Albus Dumbledore, Hogwarts's headmaster and Harry's mentor, who died at the end of the sixth book, ``Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.'' Dumbledore turns out to have been a far darker, more complex character than Harry suspected, with a past and secrets of his own.

`Brave, Brave Man'

Faced with a series' worth of loose ends to tie up, Rowling cheats by having Harry cross over for a mystical beyond-the-grave chat with Dumbledore in which all -- or almost all -- is explained. (Bafflingly, Harry arrives for the interview stark naked.) ``You wonderful boy. You brave, brave man,'' Dumbledore greets him -- and within the space of those two sentences the bespectacled boy wizard finally becomes an adult.

Though the novel's body count tops 50, its ending will delight fans who feared the worst, and Rowling reinforces its happiness with a coda that leaps forward 19 years to glimpse a new generation of wizards waiting for the Hogwarts Express while their parents josh about such grown-up matters as parking.

This extra ending feels unnecessary -- a too sugary, too tidy detraction from the metaphysical murkiness that has become Rowling's strength. Her fans aren't the only ones who have grown up alongside Harry. Rowling has, too, as a writer, yet these final pages hark back to the larkier elements of her work -- to earwax-flavored jelly beans and streets with names such as Diagon Alley.

Her skill lies in synthesizing motifs from an eclectic range of sources -- children's classics, myths, theology, even self- help books -- and grounding them in a subtly other world whose quirkiness is cozy and familiar. Shadows are crucial to the magic of that world. By exposing it to the rosy glare of a sunny ending, Rowling breaks her own spell.

``Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows'' is published by Scholastic in the U.S. and Bloomsbury in the U.K. (759 pages, $34.99, 17.99 pounds).

(Hephzibah Anderson is a critic for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are her own.)