Editor’s Note: This review does not reveal any major plot points from the book, so feel free to read the review and enjoy “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” in any order.

So, did Harry Potter die?

No, and yes, and then no again.

That describes the way that “Harry Potter” has worked itself into our collective psyche, so in that sense, Harry can never die.

The fact remains, however, that this is it. All plots have been wrapped up, all loose ends have been tied, and now it’s time to judge the whole package.

And objectively speaking, J.K. Rowling’s final installment in her insanely-popular series, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” is an amazing novel.

The problem is that precious few people will approach this novel from an objective position. After 10 years and six books, ending the story so neatly and finally may be Rowling’s greatest achievement, but it is also her readers’ greatest disappointment.

Rowling fills this book with the things she does best: intricate plotting and character development. Friendships are tested, romances get thorny, storylines materialize only to disappear and reemerge triumphantly all the more gorgeous for having been hidden. In this book, the old tricks are burnished to a riveting luster against the high stakes for both author and hero.

After over 3,000 pages worth of build-up, this is the book that finally delivers the ultimate showdown between Harry and his evil nemesis, Lord Voldemort. Harry and his friends Ron and Hermione are on the run from a hostile puppet government, on a secret mission to demolish the barriers Voldemort erected between himself and his demise. For most of the book, the three of them are utterly alone, cut off from friend and foe alike, and the solitude around them lets us see even greater nuance in their already delicately crafted relationships.

At the end of the previous book, their path seemed treacherous yet clear and straight, so it is to Rowling’s credit that she allows her characters to set out confidently on dead-end side-tracks and feel most lost mere feet from their goal. They are intelligent but not always rational, eager but not necessarily tireless—in short, wherever the magnificent threesome might have fallen into cliché, Rowling steers them deftly clear of danger.

Major figures of the past get similar treatment, including two giant question marks: Albus Dumbledore and Severus Snape. All of this deepening and broadening leaves Rowling no time for Quidditch games and day-trips to Hogsmeade, but she makes up for it with spectacular escapes and dozens of new locales, from jaw-dropping to cozy.

In the end, it is the detail itself that feels flat. Unpredictability becomes expected, and unexpected depth becomes predictable. Some of the book’s deepest and potentially most moving revelations get lost in the cavalcade of surprises, turning the lack of cliché into a cliché in and of itself. She changes directions so many times that occasionally it's difficult to remember which way is up.

It’s difficult to decide what to make of the Christ-figure material Rowling uses to set the pitch for the final battle. In the midst of her determined efforts to break out of the flat, the sudden presence of such an archetypal characterization could prove an unwelcome knockout.

What is most interesting about the ending is that that Rowling has had it written for years, and she has said that she’s felt very little temptation to deviate from her plan. That means that all the maturity we have seen both Harry and his author develop over the last ten years, in the end, means nothing. The series’ ending shows the same tendency to sum up and smooth over that nagged at the first few novels, a tendency that Rowling had overcome by book four.

This was an impossible book to write, and 9/10 of it is beautiful. Perhaps that one 1/10 was unavoidable, but the fact is that it is there, and it distracts from what is Rowling’s marvelous swansong. Harry Potter has been put to rest at last.

Rowling announced this week that she plans to compile a “Harry Potter” encyclopedia from all of her notes and ideas that didn’t make it into the works, which eventually will give him new life. But there is no more going forward—only gazing lovingly back.

—Reviewer Jillian J. Goodman can be reached at jjgoodm@fas.harvard.edu.