<P> The Baltimore Sun's critic, Mary Carole McCauley, noted that the book was more serious than the previous novels in the series and had more straightforward prose . Furthermore, reviewer Alice Fordham from The Times wrote that "Rowling's genius is not just her total realisation of a fantasy world, but the quieter skill of creating characters that bounce off the page, real and flawed and brave and lovable". Fordham concluded, "We have been a long way together, and neither Rowling nor Harry let us down in the end". The New York Times writer Michiko Kakutani agreed, praising Rowling's ability to make Harry both a hero and a character that can be related to . </P> <P> Time magazine's Lev Grossman named it one of the Top 10 Fiction Books of 2007, ranking it at No. 8, and praised Rowling for proving that books can still be a global mass medium . Novelist Elizabeth Hand criticised that "...the spectacularly complex interplay of narrative and character often reads as though an entire trilogy's worth of summing - up has been crammed into one volume ." In a starred review from Kirkus Reviews, the reviewer said, "Rowling has shown uncommon skill in playing them with and against each other, and also woven them into a darn good bildungsroman, populated by memorable characters and infused with a saving, irrepressible sense of fun". They also praised the second half of the novel, but criticised the epilogue, calling it "provocatively sketchy". In another review from The Times, reviewer Amanda Craig said that while Rowling was "not an original, high - concept author", she was "right up there with other greats of children's fiction". Craig went on to say that the novel was "beautifully judged, and a triumphant return to form", and that Rowling's imagination changed the perception of an entire generation, which "is more than all but a handful of living authors, in any genre, have achieved in the past half - century". </P> <P> In contrast, Jenny Sawyer of The Christian Science Monitor said that, "There is much to love about the Harry Potter series, from its brilliantly realised magical world to its multilayered narrative", however, "A story is about someone who changes . And, puberty aside, Harry doesn't change much . As envisioned by Rowling, he walks the path of good so unwaveringly that his final victory over Voldemort feels, not just inevitable, but hollow". In The New York Times, Christopher Hitchens compared the series to World War Two - era English boarding school stories, and while he wrote that "Rowling has won imperishable renown" for the series as a whole, he also stated that he disliked Rowling's use of deus ex machina, that the mid-book camping chapters are "abysmally long", and Voldemort "becomes more tiresome than an Ian Fleming villain". Catherine Bennett of The Guardian praised Rowling for putting small details from the previous books and making them large in Deathly Hallows, such as Grindelwald being mentioned on a Chocolate Frog Card in the first book . While she points out "as her critics say, Rowling is no Dickens", she says that Rowling "has willed into a fictional being, in every book, legions of new characters, places, spells, rules and scores of unimagined twists and subplots". </P> <P> Stephen King criticised the reactions of some reviewers to the books, including McCauley, for jumping too quickly to surface conclusions of the work . He felt this was inevitable, because of the extreme secrecy before launch which did not allow reviewers time to read and consider the book, but meant that many early reviews lacked depth . Rather than finding the writing style disappointing, he felt it had matured and improved . He acknowledged that the subject matter of the books had become more adult, and that Rowling had clearly been writing with the adult audience firmly in mind since the middle of the series . He compared the works in this respect to Huckleberry Finn and Alice in Wonderland which achieved success and have become established classics, in part by appealing to the adult audience as well as children . </P>

Who died in the seventh harry potter book