The Penultimate Potter

"Those who like this sort of thing will find this is the sort of thing they like."
--Abraham Lincoln

"Those who like it, like it a lot."
--Canadian beer commercial

I was nearly late for work this morning because I was trying to finish the last 50 pages of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince over breakfast. (Couldn't...quite...do it, although I finished it as soon as I got home today; would have had it polished off on Sunday, were it not for a very busy weekend away from home.)
As an aspiring writer and a voracious reader, I envy Joanne Kathleen Rowling her phenomenal ability. Critics who--especially with this latest tome--suggest her prose is pedestrian at best, and that she's afflicted with literary bloat, miss the point entirely.
Yes, a nitpicking niggler can make an argument that the last three Harry Potter novels were each at least a hundred pages too long. I suppose one can also assert that Rowling isn't in the class of a Tolkien or even a C.S. Lewis. So what? These days--and my apologies to all you legions of Lord of the Rings and Narnia fans--these days, anybody writing like Tolkien or Lewis marks him or herself as an instant fuddy-duddy.
J.K. Rowling is, at this point, editor-proof. She knows it, and likely her editor does too. "Cut out that subplot that goes nowhere? You're kidding, right?"
And she's got a point. Here's one reader who wouldn't complain if each book was twelve hundred pages long and Rowling spent half of that describing a Weasley shopping trip. "It's the world, stupid!" Rowling is remarkable at world-building. She effortlessly throws in details to make her books seem all the more real, even though they are pure fantasy: the belching wastebuckets, the live-action paintings and photographs, the books that scream and lunge...
And the characters! Rarely has any soi-disant "children's writer" imagined such vivid, complex characters. There's one particular character named Snape of whom I have totally changed my opinion about six times now. (For those of you who have also finished this book, and without giving anything away, at this point I believe Snape is on the side of the angels: further events in Book Seven should bear me out. But I cheerfully conclude I may be off my Knut.)
Speaking of Book Seven, I understand Rowling's finished it. She says she's left Harry Potter behind and will move on to other projects. I wish her well, and I will at least consider buying anything else the woman writes. As far as I am concerned, she's earned every penny she's made.
I was saddened to finish this book. Now I must cast about for something, probably inferior, to read...