it's good to know somebody's still sane.

From Lakshmi Chaudry's review of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in The Nation:

Rowling's ham-handed characterization of Voldemort is in stark contrast to her depiction of a far more insidious and contemporary kind of evil, one captured so brilliantly in the bright-eyed malice of Dolores Umbridge, the Grand Inquisitor in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. In the Ministry of Magic--originally led by Cornelius Fudge, who is later replaced by Rufus Scrimgeour in Half-Blood Prince--Rowling points her finger at elected officials hellbent on preserving their power at the expense of their citizens, wresting basic rights, eroding freedoms and manipulating information, all in the name of maintaining order. But in her final book, Rowling simply sweeps aside the multitude of the Ministry's sins in the wake of Voldemort's bloody coup. His far more spectacular crimes offer a good excuse to turn Scrimgeour into an unlikely hero of sorts. He's just one of the good guys, though a little unsavory in his methods, Rowling assures us.

If Rowling's take on evil is politically evasive and, in the final analysis, just plain uninteresting, her notion of good is no less obscure, best exemplified by the muddled characterization of her hero. Here's a 17-year-old who spends much of the book wallowing in the most unheroic of sentiments: resentment, suspicion, paranoia, self-pity and anger, but not of the outraged, impassioned kind that you might think a death-wielding Nazi would inspire. He's far too busy hating Hermione for breaking his wand or Dumbledore for leaving him in the lurch. Even the sight of desperate Muggle-borns being rounded up and "registered" to meet what will surely be an awful fate cannot shake Harry out of his self-pity. As the rest of the wizarding world teeters on the brink of catastrophe, what Harry really wants to know is: Did Dumbledore love me or what?

The personal is political and love is the ultimate good, or so Rowling insists. Dumbledore repeatedly assures his young protégé that his ultimate superpower--his mighty heart--will finally vanquish the Dark Lord. And yet Harry's love is every bit as personal and immediate as his other preoccupations. He loves his pals, various parental figures and his school, and it is for them that he takes the greatest risks. Unlike Hermione, he shows little compassion for anyone outside his immediate circle of friends, and certainly no interest in the larger issues at stake in the resistance against Voldemort. Yet Rowling reiterates the love mantra over and over again to make the fatuous--and disingenuous--distinction between good and evil. Voldemort, you see, doesn't have any friends, for to be good, one must love and be loved. If that were the sole criterion for goodness, even Nazis would make the grade.

Where the cataclysmic showdown in The Lord of the Rings leaves the Hobbits and Middle-earth irrevocably altered even in victory, the wizarding world merely returns to business as usual, restoring its most famous citizens to a life of middle-class comfort. At the end of this overly long saga, the reader leaves with the impression that what Harry was fighting for all along was his right--and now that of his children--to play Quidditch, cast cool spells and shop for the right wand. Or what George Bush would call "our way of life."