Underworld gets a vote from me also.
LeDivorce by Diane Johnson was great until the Hollywood ending at EuroDisney. What was she thinking?:eek:
Ah yes, thank you. I read The Weight of Water a few years ago. Also Fortune’s Rocks. That was okay, once I got over the way Shreve can go on for 3 paragraphs about the starched lace edge of an embroidered petticoat.
I have to agree with the Wheel of Time. I read every book up until the last one that came out. It got to the point that I was just reading it because I wanted to know what the hell happened. By the End of the 7th book it didn’t seem to be any closer to ending, and I didn’t feel like going out and buying the next book, so I just stopped reading it. I bet that the end of the 8th book wasn’t any closer to the conclusion either.
Another thing that annoyed me was that all the characters got separated so you had like ten different story lines going on at once and he would jump from one story to the next. It was really aggrivating.
Moby Dick.
It starts as a what I thought was a pretty interesting description of this guy hanging out in a New England whaling town, sharing a bed with a cannibal, and then drags on for another 500-some pages.
I’ve been re-reading some of Larry Nivens’s stuff lately like Ringworld and the Smoke Ring and the Man-Kzin Wars and the Mote in God’s Eye. It seems that a lot of his stories, after elaborate build ups, intricate plots and involving story arcs end clumsily story wise with very abrupt and disjointed endings.
It’s almost like he got tired and said “Eh… enough!”
Amazing. A Kiss Before Dying popped into my head when I read the thread title. Not so much a bad ending, as extremely anticlimactic. The first third is devious, putting you in the head of a guy plotting a murder, the middle third of the book is some of the best suspense thriller writing I’ve read (and utterly unfilmable, which is why both movies versions skip it and aren’t that great) as you realize that despite all the insight into the killer’s life, we were never given his name, just lots of pronouns (he, him, his). But the third section (a) is anticlimactic - the reader learns the killer’s identity at the end of the second section in an awesome twist, and then spends the last portion of the book waiting for the other characters to finally figure it out
and (b) strains credulity.
Scott Turow’s The Burden of Proof has the worst deus ex machina ending I have ever read. Spoiler: There is a major case going to trial, which when evidence is presented will ruin the lives of most of the characters. Three pages from the end of the book, on the eve of the trial, the defendant has a fatal heart attack. No need for a trial. Everyone’s secret is safe. That ending sucked so bad I’ve never read another one of his books. And Presumed Innocent was so good. too.
**Well, I read *A Kiss Before Dying * years ago and remember liking it. I’ll have to read it again. Rosemary’s Baby scared the crap out of me, but Son of Rosemary was really, really bad. It fell back on a horrible cliche of an ending. I think it was the first time I actually threw a book across the room. I thought about calling the library and demanding compensation for the time I wasted reading it. :rolleyes:
His other books were good. This Perfect Day, The Boys From Brazil and The Stepford Wives were all good.
I don’t think he’s written anything recently.
I’m slightly embarressed to admit that I loved the original vampire books. Fortunately I’m signed on as my son, sorry kiddo. Lately all of the anita books books wrap up in the last two pages with anita killing the bad guy with some new and amazing power. And while I’m at it what’s with the new fairy series and the guys with hair down to their ankles and ooo poor me I have to make love to dozens of guys who haven’t goten any for the past two centuies?
Sorry about the poor spelling above. I’m using a touch screen and typing one letter at a time. I got a phone call and submitted before checking. :wally
If we’re including series as well as individual books, Phillip Jose Farmer’s epic Riverworld stories starts out great, with a fascinating premise (everybody who’s ever lived on Earth is resurrected in the distant future on the banks of a million-mile long river that winds all over an alien planet). He gets to use interesting historical figures (Sir Richard Francis Burton, Mark Twain, Eric Bloodaxe, Cyrano de Bergerac, Herman Goering, etc.) and put them together in odd ways. There are a number of serious mysteries facing the resurrected people; the problem is that when the solutions to those mysteries come to light, it’s really anticlimactic.
Incidentally, Bibliocat, please don’t thow library books; they’re not your property.
Hey Baldwin, where does that quote in your sig line come from? I realize that Stephen King used it in “IT” but did he originate it?
I think Stephen King is a fabulous writer who suffers from too many ideas bouncing around in his head. He’ll build up a great book (The Stand, It, or even Dreamcatcher) and then let it peter out at the end- almost as if he got tired of writing it and decided to wrap it up as quick as possible so that he could move onto his next book. BTW, IMHO Bag of Bones highly underrated. It went from start to finish and was one of his better works.
(spoilers for Lonesome Dove ahead)
Reread my post, I loved MOST of the book, but once Gus kicked the bucket Woodra was lost. He quest to bring Gus’ body back to be buried was lame. The fact that he kept running into just the right people required to wrap up plot lines was contrived.
If anyone knew who I was I wouldn’t say this, but Piers Anthony. Some good ideas, and then he just peters out into 2000 identical books about sex and bad puns. It’s a pity.
Series getting worse and worse is one of the most annoying things, as you’ll never know how the story ends. If it just stopped, at least its possible someone else might finish it, but once the books are so bad you can’t read them it’s all over.
SPOILERS BELOW warning for beginning Heinlein fans.
If I might hijack for a moment to share my delusion/insight (take your pick) about Heinlein on this matter…
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Heinlein set up a multiverse with this book where universes are literally created. That is to say, authors in some universes create other universes by writing stories about them.
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His characters, using the modified car (named "Gay Deceiver’) could travel between these universes. They visit Oz and meet Glinda the Good for example.
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These characters meet Lazarus Long, who not only has a long genetic lifespan but has access to youth-restoration technology.
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By the way, the car can travel in time, too. They rescue Lazarus Long’s mother this way and give her a youth-restoration treatment.
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In one scene, Lazarus mentions to the car-traveling characters that he once read (and destroyed) a book which seemed to describe the adventures of four people traveling between universes in a modified car. Our characters desire to acquire this book.
Put all this together, and it seems evident to my twisted mind that Heinlein wanted his characters to come to our universe and rescue him, carrying him off before the moment of his death, restoring his youth and leaving behind some clone-ish mindless corpse to satisfy the medicos.
AmbushBug
(the real question is, what’s he written lately?)
Larry Mc Murtry’s Cadillac Jack had wonderful characters, dripping with soul and possibilities. The plot, though, built up to a crescendo that never happened. If LMcM can’t kill off most of his cast, he’s lost. He has a heart-grabbing gift for character, gut he needs a plot consultant.