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RobertLumley comments on HPMOR: What could've been done better? - Less Wrong
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The first time I read it, which was before I had been introduced to any of the LW memes (or really, just transhumanism) I found the section on Askaban to be really... forced.
(<spoilers>)
Specifically, I remember thinking that the idea that dementors were death was a bit cheesy. Taking a metaphor and making it corporeal seems to be a bit much to me. After I reread it a second time, I didn't have nearly as much objection to the passage, since I actually understood what he was getting at. But it still probably remains my least favorite section. But that's not really saying much.
(</spoilers>)
So I think that section either needs more or less transhumanism, so that his point is either clear to everyone or doesn't confuse unfamiliar people.
I find myself confused about how dementors can be a personification of death in the way that Harry sees it when that's not how death actually is in the HP universe. I managed to keep a hold of my suspension of disbelief with the idea that the afterlife is a magical version of a brain upload and only works when you have magic in you to record your brainstate at death. Death is still death for muggles and squibs, wizards have just figured out a clever workaround since dementors first came about.
The fridge horror of realizing that, under this theory, muggleborns and the parents of squibs would live on forever while knowing that their relatives are gone was rather enlightening. It made me realize all over again that death truly is a horrible thing that no one who had not lived with it all their lives would willingly sign up for. Who knows? Maybe magic in its entirety was just a side effect to Atlantis' solution for death.
We're not sure if the afterlife exists in the MoR-verse.
ETA: Eliezer weighed in on this a long time ago.
Warning: Don't wander. One of the things you can find on the sidebar has spoilers for upcoming chapters.
Uh... That's hardly a new archetype.
For non-death examples, see every single god in Greek/Roman/Vedic mythology.
I didn't say it was new, I just said I didn't like it. :-) And in my (limited) experience in literature, such direct personification (where death is, in essence, a character) is most often found in genres like surrealist of postmodern literature, which I don't think Eliezer is going for.