best/worst endings

[Nesacat]

I like some measure of resolution. Not everything has to be explained and tucked away neatly but there has to be enough of a sense of completion, that you feel that you have read a whole story and not feel this sense of missing very important bits. It's good though to have some mystery and possibilities to wonder about and to be able to come up with your own conclusion. For instance in Neil Gaiman's Dreamhunter I believe the monk and the fox fairy were together in the end.

I really do dislike abrubt endings though. Had that happen recently with Elizabeth Kostova's Historian. It was a wonderful book with several threads all running through a rich, complex plot and it kept me turning the pages, wanting to know what would happen next and where it was all going. And then it suddenly ended. I actually read the last couple of pages several times to make sure I'd not missed anything. It was like a damp squib going off instead of a firecracker and the ending was such a let down given the strength and tenacity of her characters. It made me angry that it ended that way.

[SteveR]

Tau, yes I recall being somewhat miffed about the lack of closure with RwR. Then again I didn't know that Gentry Lee existed and was going to write a load of sequels.

Not sure the whole RAMA thing ever really got fully explained - but that could just be my memory going!

Steve

[Lirineth]

For starters let me admit that I am a super sucker for happy endings. The happier the better. Yes, I know, it’s quite pathetic, but that’s the way it is.

But on a more realistic note, I like endings to have sense and rationality. It really makes me angry when after reading 400 pages all of a sudden its ‘the end’, kind of ‘I’m boring with writing this book, so let finish it once and for all’

Another thing that I really hate is when after reading a trilogy in which the author takes all the time in the world to tell us about anything and everything, suddenly in the last quarter of the last book, not only he/she wraps it up, in some kind of happy ending, but also leaves half of the problems unresolved and/or unexplained, in the conviction that the happy ending will do away with them.

And finally, what is the point of having 20 very important characters, if when the time comes to solve the problem, those same heroes that during 400 pages could barely blow their noses without the aid of the other 20, miraculously and out of the blue ‘discover’ all these magnificent powers and … yes, you go it: ‘they they ride into the sunset’

[jackokent]

Sad endings, for some reason, seem more memorable (I think I was irretrivably scarred by Tarka the Otter). I also sometimes think it must take a lot of guts to kill off a character you love (and to kill off the possibility of a sequal presumably).

Agree with others that there is nothing worse than a pat implausable ending. I'm really looking foward to the end of Janny Wurts Light and Shadows series and am terrified that it's going to be a disapointment as I have no idea if it would be humanly possible to tie it all up and allow it to end happily.

[Nesacat]

Originally Posted by lazygun

Like my stories to come to an end in general.Don't like buying/reading series if the next one has not been written.

Absolutely agree with this, especially with this extremely aggravating tendency that book stores in Malaysia have of often not completing a series. It's slowly getting better and there's an increasing respect for SFF as a genre but it's got a long way to go. I still find book 3 with no sign of book 1 or 2 and no one in the store has a clue either. Or Book 1 will appear and 2 and 3 won't and suddenly there will be 4 on the shelf.

It's got to be the most aggravating thing.

[Tau Zero]

Originally Posted by SteveR

Tau, yes I recall being somewhat miffed about the lack of closure with RwR. Then again I didn't know that Gentry Lee existed and was going to write a load of sequels.

Not sure the whole RAMA thing ever really got fully explained - but that could just be my memory going!Steve

No it was never explained. As i understand it, Clark was trying to write a realistic sci-fi. In real life, our First Contact may involve us not knowing who they are, where they came from, and where they're going.

It's nothing new for Clark. 2001 was also unexplained- the origins and reasons for the monolith, the nature of the Star Child, and other ideas in the book. His other books have similar features. In a college class on sci-fi they called it "The Clark Mysticism."

[Tau Zero]

Of course, the solution to explained or unexplained endings is to not end at all. Robert Jordan is the reigning master of never ending. The series should have ended 5 books back!