Are you a Potter fan? The first reviews are coming!
The British version is 608 pages long, meaning critics were forced to race through the pages to meet their deadlines, as newspapers received no advance review copies.
Several relied on versions leaked on the Internet or hard copies appearing mysteriously pre-publication, and even those who made it into Saturday’s papers knew they had lost the race.
When the New York Times and the Baltimore Sun ran reviews on Thursday, author J.K. Rowling was furious. Readers of the latter could argue that it heavily hinted at the answer to the most burning question of all — does Harry die at the end?
Mainstream media broadly avoided spoilers on Saturday, although the Daily Telegraph’s online review featured a separate link to a plot synopsis containing many big secrets.
But most critics agreed that the hype surrounding the blockbuster book was justified.
Britain’s bestselling daily Sun tabloid employed speed-reading champion Anne Jones to write its review. She took just 47 minutes and one second to read the U.S. version, but still had time to conclude:
“Without being too critical, the plot does seem to be a bit complicated, but I would not change a word. ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows’ is a real page-turner.”
ENDS WITH A BANG
Kate Muir, reviewer for the Times of London, also admitted to speed-reading the book, but was impressed nonetheless.
“This chest-crusher of a book ends the Harry Potter series with a bang,” she said. “The plot hatched over 17 years of writing clicks into place, loose ends interlocking, all as complex as a magical lock at Hogwarts Castle.”
Muir, like others, peppered her review with references to older literary traditions, including Arthurian and Greek myth, and remarked that evil Voldemort’s methods were reminiscent of the Nazi Holocaust.
Her main complaint was that some passages were a “bit of a snooze unless you are a Potter-junkie.”
Mary Carole McCauley of the Baltimore Sun, one of two reviewers to draw Rowling’s ire two days before publication, argued that the plot was probably too complicated, despite praising many other aspects of the book.
“That’s 10 distinctly different magical objects, all with their own significance,” she wrote. “Trying to keep them all straight is not unlike searching for the golden snitch in a hotly contested game of Quidditch.”
The New York Times was glowing in its praise.
“Ms. Rowling has fitted together the jigsaw-puzzle pieces of this long undertaking with Dickensian ingenuity and ardor,” it said in its pre-publication review.
Harry Potter - the fastest-selling book ever
The seventh and final volume in the Harry Potter series has become the fastest selling book in history, publishers said on Monday, with more than 11 million copies sold during the first 24 hours in three markets alone.
U.S. sales of the eagerly awaited “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” hit 8.3 million, comfortably beating the previous Potter installment, which posted sales of 6.9 million copies in the first day, U.S. publisher Scholastic announced.
In Britain, Bloomsbury sold a record 2.7 million copies of the final Potter book in the first 24 hours, up from 2.0 million for “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince”.
The same company also announced nearly 400,000 copies of the English language edition of J.K. Rowling’s story were bought in Germany over the same period.
Thousands of Potter fans queued outside book stores in major cities around the world over the weekend to get hold of the book, which answers the questions on every reader’s lips — ‘Who dies at the end?’ and in particular, ‘Does Harry survive?’
In India, police said on Monday they seized hundreds of pirated copies of the cover of “Deathly Hallows” after raiding a printing press, storage depot and private home in Bangalore.
Internet versions of the book also surfaced last week and two U.S. newspapers ran reviews before publication, but it was not enough to dampen enthusiasm for the last chapter of the boy wizard’s increasingly bloody fight against the forces of evil.
Lisa Holton, president of Scholastic Trade and Book Fairs, likened the weekend excitement in the United States to the hysteria that greeted the Beatles’ first visit to the country.
“This weekend kids and adults alike are sitting on buses, in the park, on airplanes and in restaurants reading ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows’,” she said in a statement.
Barnes & Noble Inc., the world’s largest book retailer, sold 1.8 million copies of “Deathly Hallows” in the first 48 hours, while Borders Group Inc. sold around 1.2 million worldwide in a single day, both records for the outlets.
“This isn’t the end of Harry Potter by any means,” said Steve Riggio, CEO of Barnes & Noble. “Barnes & Noble expects to sell millions of Harry Potter books over the next few years.”
RAVE REVIEWS
Reviews of “Deathly Hallows” have been almost universally glowing, noting the darker tone of book seven in which several characters die. Critical reaction to the previous six Potter tales, which sold 325 million copies worldwide, has been mixed.
Rowling, 41, is likely to see her fortune swell further over the coming years. She is estimated to be worth 545 million pounds ($1.12 billion) already, making her the first dollar-billionaire author.
In addition to the books, the first five Hollywood adaptations of her Harry Potter stories have amassed around $4 billion at the global box office. The final film in the franchise is slated for release in 2010.
“After 608 crammed pages, it’s still hard to believe it really is the end of the road for Harry,” said Henry Sutton, books editor for the Daily Mirror tabloid in Britain.
He believes that the epilogue at the end of book seven means there is “no possible return” for the Harry Potter saga, although not everyone agrees.
Hours after the release of “Deathly Hallows”, Ladbrokes bookmakers cut their odds on an eighth Potter tale to 10/1 from 16/1, following a flurry of bets.
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