My thoughts on the book:
I liked how the books have themselves been getting more adult as the characters age. The tone matures just a little bit in each one. This one, for example, had an instance of one character calling another a slut (Voldemort's uncle, referring to Voldermort's mother - his own sister); had a werewolf that liked to eat people when untransformed; had an instance of Hermione being what appeared to be sexually harrassed/assaulted (by that Corman guy at Slughorn's party - Harry sees her appearance is disheveled and she says she just escaped him), etc. This, I think, is an improvement, since it keeps the books from being too "kiddy" for their audience.
I like the theory that R.A.B. is Regulus Black, though to my knowledge we've never known his middle name. However, that doesn't seem to jive with how Sirius described him. He said he was stupid, and apparently squeamish enough to try and flee the Death Eaters...and was promptly killed. Someone that dumb doesn't strike me as being canny enough to find the location of a Horcrux, penetrate its defenses, and then steal it.
I enjoyed seeing Harry and Ginny get together, since that one seemed to come out of left field. He had never been very interested in her, and she had gotten over him several books back. Now he suddenly wants her badly, and when he makes a move, she's all to happy to respond in kind. For some reason, that just really made me smile. However, I do agree that the their break up seemed to come right out of the end of the Spider-Man movie.
I'm wondering at the format of book 7...locating the lair, getting through the defenses, and destroying a Horcrux seems fairly major...doing it for four seems like it'd require a fairly massive book, plus the final battle, epilogue, etc.
For what it's worth, I think we'll be seeing the last book in July 2007. Book 5 came out, IIRC, July of 2003, so that'd make sense.
I think Snape is evil. He may not be Evil with a capital E, but he's still self-serving and petty, which can be (and in his case is) evil. I don't think he's a triple-agent, or still undercover for the Order. Harry said that Snape had made an Unbreakable Vow, which we know he had, but Dumbledore dismissed it...while Dumbledore may have been lying to Harry, I don't think so, and so I think that proves that Dumbledore was wrong about Snape.
I'm probably going to be wrong about the above paragraph. However, I do hope that Rowling is good enough to stick to her guns, and not have Dumbledore revealing that his death was faked somehow.
