Its nice to finally join in this thread now, I've been avoiding it until I could finish up. Its tougher to find chances to read with a new baby in the house
. Anyways, finished it up yesterday afternoon, and I really enjoyed it. I can say that I've liked all of the books in this series very much, and I think I liked this one the most. Everything was wrapped up nicely, the action seemed almost non-stop, and I even liked the epilogue as well - a view of the future of the main characters.
I kept waiting for Snape to be revealed as "actually being good", and it took awhile. I liked his story though, very tragic, as was mentioned earlier. The revelations about Dumbledore's past were a bit surprising, and there sure were a lot of deaths. I'm curious how this one will end up when its brought to the theaters - there's so much to fit into a movie, so many deaths, and a definite darker tone. It was nice to see Neville turn out to be such a hero as well. I kind of thought we might end up seeing more of a "heroic turn" from Malfoy (Draco) than we did, although he wasn't as eeeevil as he was in the past. Like others have said, it was a book I just couldn't put down either. I'd stay up late reading it, even though I was dog-tired, and just didn't want to stop. I don't know that I've ever enjoyed reading books more than I have these - kind of bitter sweet to see them end.