Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling

Some family members have not yet read this, so I'll be brief and obscure.

If you have read the previous 6 books, you know the style and what to expect. This climactic book describes the resistance to an evil wizard bent on domination, and naturally has a very high corpse count. In fact, the death rate is still too low to be realistic, and Harry survives more concussions than Tom Swift, but this is minor nitpicking.

Rowling weaves many of the threads together from the earlier books, and does a good job of it. I wish that fans would quit assuming that every book must have perfect continuity, and generating complex backstories to explain inconsistencies. I'm glad Niven put a logical end to his Ringworld series--it was getting creakier and creakier as he tried to explain and tie together all the details. That sort of thing gets in the way of telling the story--which is the book's first duty.Rowling tries to tell the story, and not worry about getting every last detail straight.

It is not possible to talk about the book's themes without introducing spoilers, so I'll postpone that. Obviously one central question was going to be "How could Dumbledore have been so wrong about Snapes: or was he?" And of course, would Harry survive?

"It is a floor wax and a dessert topping!"

I don't need to say "read the book." Those who've read the first 6 will, and those who didn't get into the story and gave up won't. I liked it.