Dan’s Reviews > Wind That Shakes the Seas and Stars > Status Update

Two chapters to go, but I feel like we could have ended with the chariot flying away and that would have been fine.

I’ll have a lot to critique when it’s time to write my review, but I don’t have a bad word to say about that battle besides RIP Pansy.

I love this series and I get they’re fighting a war, but sometimes it seems like the author is making the story grim just for the sake of it.

I realize that 25% of this book is ~180,000 words (so enough to be a novel on its own), but what kind of crazy person introduced a whole new subplot 75% into a story?

Everyone talking about getting married/joined at 15 years old is crazy, especially since wizards live about twice as long as humans. They do not need to worry about marriage anytime soon.

Perhaps I’m just remembering something that happens later, but I don’t get how Harry using Dumbledore’s and Voldemort’s magic to replace the magic of the linchpins to free the Northern Goblins isn’t the obvious thing to do with it. He was going to do it with his own magic at the end of last book, anyway—maybe now he’s actually considered about the inheritance issues that Light families would object to?

I can’t feel much sympathy over the reveal that Voldemort has Snape because maybe someone would have figured it out earlier if one single person had thought to try telling Snape even just “brb, off to the Dursleys’”

I remembered a huge fight with Dumbledore but couldn’t recall details, so when I read Dumbledore attacking Harry at school in COoDM, I thought that must be what I was thinking of and was underwhelmed. With good reason—this one was WAY better.

I get why Draco and Snape are mad, but I’d be tempted to not mention Digle’s stabbing attempt too, given they accuse him of actively risking his life even when something completely out of his control happens. Draco got mad at him for the Dark striking him with lightning as if that were Harry’s fault, after all.

I’m glad Harry is healing, of course, but it’s a little tiring reading someone’s therapy sessions.