OK, so I guess I should take Dark Places off my Amazon wish list, then.
The His Dark Materials trilogy, by Philip Pullman. He just doesn’t pull it off in the end. He sets up a lot of promise and then we get a flimsy battle and Lyra can’t read the alethiometer anymore. Big meh. It feels like he made it all too grand and he just can’t pull it off.
I liked The Broker, all in all, but Grisham says in the author’s note that he enjoyed his trip to Italy so much he wanted to get a book out of it. He really makes no bones about it.
I strongly disagree. Couldn’t disagree more. It’s a dark ending, it’s certainly an appalling ending from the perspective of a key character, but it’s a great ending, I think. Jabiru, I hope you’ll still read it.
Joe Haldeman is one of my favorite authors, but several of his books have crappy endings - in particular Buying Time, Earthbound and The Coming. Abrupt, unconvincing and bigtime let-downs. What was he thinking? Ugh.
I guess I am too attached to the authors I admire, who could distill a warehouse of knowledge or experience into worthwhile prose… having a naval officer say and do exactly the right thing, using a subtle observation about a European city to advance the story, communicating exactly what it’s like to ride this train, drive that car or make an extreme save in tennis.
I don’t have much appreciation for the Grishams and Clancys who dump whole travel journals, weapon manuals or encyclopedias into their work, primarily to pad them out to modern salable length.
I’m glad Grisham had a nice visit to Italy, but that should have disappeared into the bones of the story and made no more of an appearance than necessary… not go on for page after page about specific hotels and restaurants and menus and tours and so forth. That falls somewhere in between snobbish, stupid and lazy. IMVHO.
Crappy doesn’t equal, ‘bad’ or ‘out of nowhere’…actually I don’t really see it. yes, “Seasons” is kind of a kick in the gut, but most of his short stories have happy endings, and Forever War had a surprisingly happy one.
Admittedly, the short stories and Forever War are all I’ve read of his work.
Agreed. And I wouldn’t even call it meh. I found the ending so poor that I wanted to throw the book across the room.
Not one of the best-known books, but Down to a Sunless Sea by David Graham. Supposedly there were two versions of the novel out there, with a positive and a negative ending. I’ve never seen the negative one, only the positive and it’s just a little too “everything’s going to be all right in the end and if it’s not all right it’s not the end” kind of thing.
I like Haldeman. But, in sci-fi, I dislike aliens that are so advanced and powerful as to be virtually gods - and Haldeman loves them. He’s ended more than one series with hey, turns out that godlike aliens have manipulating events all along. Ugh.
The ending of J. G. Ballard’s Super-Cannes wasn’t a bad ending really. It wasn’t a good ending either, with the protagonist turning himself in for a crime he didn’t commit for no apparent reason. The bad part about it was
that was exactly the same ending as his previous book, Cocaine Nights. And the whole time you’re reading Super-Cannes you’re thinking, “There’s no way he could be possibly setting up the same ending, is there? I mean, it’s J. G. Ballard, but even he wouldn’t pull a stunt like that, would he?”
Sadly, that turned me off from reading anything else by Ballard. I’m sure there’s better stuff in his body of work, but that ended it for me.
The Golden Compass. the first book was very interesting. Every person a has a familiar who is their Id, armoured polar bears, flaying archer witches, steampunk, etc…
Then the next two go off into boring and depressing mundania so that the author can lecture us all about how religion is Eviiiil since I mean, well Narnia…
Thomas Hardy’s Return of the Native ends in a perfectly satisfying fashion. Then for the 1912 edition he added a different ending, apparently the original, which his publishers hadn’t liked. This being Hardy his preferred ending is the one that leaves everyone as miserable as possible.
This pales in comparison to what the ITV adaptation of the book did: A main character is a reddleman*, his job, making a dye for marking sheep, has stained his skin red. In the book he waits two years for the colour to fade before returning to woo his long time love. In the TV series the dye washes off when he heroically leaps into a river to rescue someone. Yep, he was only red because he never had a wash and furthermore a charlatan whose dyed sheep didn’t last the first rainfall. Or the river was magic. Or something
*The dye is red ochre
The fact that The Stand’s ending was foreshadowed doesn’t make it any better. I disliked the senselessness of it. It could have ended exactly the same way with or without the “good” characters there.
As far as The Dark Tower, I think the ending we got was the only ending possible so I was okay with it.
Mother Abagail’s God works in mysterious ways.
For me, the ending of The Stand is just fine… because the scene everyone always references as the ending isn’t the actual ending. The real ending is much cooler. Daddy saved the day this time, but the Walking Dude has lots and lots of times.
Well, “Seasons” is a short story, not a novel (this thread is about novels), and its ending is fine IMHO. I agree that The Forever War has a “surprisingly happy” ending, given all that came before.
But to be blunt, I don’t care if it’s a happy, sad or ambiguous ending, as long as it’s well-written. Abrupt endings, deus ex machina endings, implausible endings, endings that just drop what seemed to be long-important plot thread(s) - that’s what gets me chewing bricks. May I suggest, if you want to read more Haldeman novels with well-written endings, check out Mindbridge, Tool of the Trade, All My Sins Remembered, Camouflage and The Hemingway Hoax.
All too true. Agreed.
What’s Eating Gilbert Grape? Brillant book, but the ending was sad.
Hannibal. Thomas Harris takes the best villian and one of the best female heroes, and turns them into a couple by turning her into a Stepford wife?
I’m with you! The first time I read it, I was quite young, and I guess I lacked perspective. But reading it as an adult? Holy shit, I still can’t believe it got published and King didn’t get lynched. And aside from the total social unacceptability of it, it is just poorly thought out and executed. The fact that he thought a bunch of twelve year olds who had developed such strong bonds of friendship needed to express ultimate love by having a gang bang makes me reeeeeaaaallly wonder about him.
The Stand had a literal deus ex machina, but at least had a god who regularly communicated with characters all along. It also fits in with our general concepts of the Christian god, who IMHO doesn’t come off as actually all-powerful, and is also kind of a dick who likes to demand totally unnecessary sacrifices from his followers.
The Dark Tower had a disappointing ending, but it would have been arguably justified if so much of the preceding story hadn’t started to totally suck ass.
Yes. I’ve never read anything that was so obviously a big “fuck you” to all the loyal fans.
This… I think it’s just fine and really- the ending isn’t the point. The whole point of that book is how Stu Redman is the most awesome, righteous man in the fictional universe.
I want to make my case for:
Tad Williams, maker of ginormous tri/tetra- ologies
A: Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn series-The Dragonbone Chair was really a great beginning book; Stone of Farewell is a strong middle; the story starts to drift a bit in To Green Angel Tower, which had to be split into two books (each longer than the previous ones!). After all that, the ending was so anticlimactic, I can’t even remember it to spoil it. I can’t recommend this series.
B: Otherland series- City of Golden Shadow was a super great start, the River of Blue Fire was also fantastic; then the story gradually dwindles and loses focus over two more books, Mountain of Black Glass and Sea of Silver Light. Again, I found the end so anticlimactic that I cannot even remember it, and I never recommend this book.
I think he introduces too many moving parts to keep a cohesive story going from start to finish (much like @#% George RR Martin and his @#% Song of Fire & Ice, which I predict none of will live long enough to see how he screws up that ending). I will not read another book by this author.
The third book was a single volume in hard cover - it was only split in two for the paperback version.
And I loved the ending. One of the best in fantasy literature.
What annoyed me the most about the series was the retcon of the first book. I had read the first book not too long after the second book had been published. This was back in high school. Then about 10 years or so ago I began to read the entire series, and still had the copy of my original Gunslinger. I was thrown for a bit of a loop when it was revealed (in the third book, IIRC) that Walter and Marten were the same person, since it was clear that they were two different people in the original version of the fist book. Walter was one of Marten’s retinue. He pretended to be weaker than Marten so that he could keep an eye on him. Marten was an evil sorcerer; Walter was someone who seemed to be more of a neutral entity. It’s even implied that Walter removed Marten from the equation so that Roland could fulfill his role in the events to be without Marten’s meddling.
After being confused, and double-checking that I hadn’t misread the first book, I looked online and discovered that King had a some point changed the ending to the first book, for a worse version. So I guess this does fit the thread in that the retcon to the ending made no sense. There was no reason to make Walter and Marten the same, especially since Walter dies of old age at the end. Heck, there wasn’t even much reason to make them both more incarnations of Flagg. Walter was an intriguing character that had promise. I found Marten/Flagg to actually be kind of boring. His minions were far more interesting. Even his death was rather lame.