Eden

I have to agree, truth be told. I can see why HP is as beloved as it is, but, for people like the two of us, who have had the good luck to be raised on classics of fantasy, it is a little easier to look at it more objectively. Rowling does a number of things well, but, at the same time, there are things that she handles quite poorly (romance being chief among these; the Harry-Cho dynamic was feeble to the point of being laughable, IMO), and she cannot escape falling down into cliché as she wraps up her story. I have yet to finish the final book because, really, the ending is so telegraphed that I can't find a reason to bother with it. HP jumped the shark with the events of Book Six, and I felt that going too far beyond that wasn't of much use.