# Books that when they ended you went "WHAAAAT?" **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [January 23, 2014, 12:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-that-when-they-ended-you-went-whaaaat/679489 "2014-01-23T00:39:47Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2014, 2:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-that-when-they-ended-you-went-whaaaat/679489/21 "2014-01-23T14:47:03Z")
Tom Clancy’s _Debt of Honor_ which concludes with [spoiler]A plane crashing into the US Capitol in DC where the House, Senate, Supreme Court, the President and Jack Ryan are there to witness Jack’s being sworn in as VP. By a string of improbable occurrences so unlikely a Google data center couldn’t calculate the odds, everybody in the room ends up dead except for Jack and his family. _Everybody_. Jack gets sworn in as President in the most blatant coup since Glenda took over Oz. End of novel.[/spoiler] I will admit, it was a hell of an ending, reading it for the first time. Then you’re like, “Wait, what?” ---
**Author:** ![gallows\_fodder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/8c91f0/32.png) [@gallows\_fodder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gallows_fodder)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2014, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-that-when-they-ended-you-went-whaaaat/679489/22 "2014-01-23T15:29:18Z")
Ian McEwan’s **The Cement Garden**. First of all, it was really gross all throughout, what with the death and rotting corpse in the basement and the brother lusting after his sister. Then it ends with the brother finally having sex with his sister on the last page, as if to say, “Whew, finally! All that tension pays off!” Or something. It was gross, and I’m sorry I read it. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2014, 3:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-that-when-they-ended-you-went-whaaaat/679489/23 "2014-01-23T15:31:53Z")
> [@JohnT](#): > > Tom Clancy’s _Debt of Honor_ which concludes with > > [spoiler]A plane crashing into the US Capitol in DC where the House, Senate, Supreme Court, the President and Jack Ryan are there to witness Jack’s being sworn in as VP. By a string of improbable occurrences so unlikely a Google data center couldn’t calculate the odds, everybody in the room ends up dead except for Jack and his family. _Everybody_. > > Jack gets sworn in as President in the most blatant coup since Glenda took over Oz. End of novel.[/spoiler] > > I will admit, it was a hell of an ending, reading it for the first time. Then you’re like, “Wait, what?” I think he stopped writing the Ryan books eventually because Ryan would have had to be elevated to Pope, and he couldn’t figure out how to do it. or maybe God. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2014, 3:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-that-when-they-ended-you-went-whaaaat/679489/24 "2014-01-23T15:40:04Z")
> [@nearwildheaven](#): > > For me, the best example of this was Michael Crichton’s “Sphere”. EVERY.SINGLE.PERSON I can think of who’s read the book reacted exactly that way. Hate to be the contrarian on this one, but I’m genuinely curious: what part of the ending, in your opinion, _didn’t_ follow logically from what had come before? ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2014, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-that-when-they-ended-you-went-whaaaat/679489/25 "2014-01-23T15:45:11Z")
> [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#): > > Yeah, Sphere. **The Gripping Hand was pretty wtf**. Hannibal. What part didn’t click with you? It’s been a while since I read it, but the ending seemed fairly straight-forward. Blockade instead of extermination. Although I seem to recall it left a few strands dangling for another sequel if they felt like it. ---
**Author:** ![Dale\_Sams](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/779978/32.png) [@Dale\_Sams](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dale_Sams)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2014, 4:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-that-when-they-ended-you-went-whaaaat/679489/26 "2014-01-23T16:23:10Z")
I think the book version of Andromeda Strain is the same as the movie…I won’t say I went “Whaaaa?” but as a kid, I was very confused as to what happened. Also, don’t they show a jet pilots gear disintegrating before Andromeda escapes the lab? How did that happen? And I would hardly call an organism covering several states that can disintegrate plastics and rubber ‘harmless’. ---
**Author:** ![Diceman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Diceman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diceman)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2014, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-that-when-they-ended-you-went-whaaaat/679489/27 "2014-01-23T17:34:34Z")
> [@Banquet\_Bear](#): > > The ending of the book Hannibal had me literally throwing the book across the room. Definitely agree. The book was basically torture porn. It seemed obvious to me that I was supposed to be rooting for Hannibal Lecter, not Clarice Starling or the FBI. I suspect that Thomas Harris really likes Hannibal Lecter. That’s why the book ends with him escaping, and brainwashing Clarice into basically being his sex slave. ---
**Author:** ![MaxTheVool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9fc29f/32.png) [@MaxTheVool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MaxTheVool)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2014, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-that-when-they-ended-you-went-whaaaat/679489/28 "2014-01-23T18:16:39Z")
A different angle than you’re asking about, but when you read a book on a Kindle there’s a little progress indicator that tells you what percentage you are through the book. One book I purchased came with another entire book tacked on, free, which I didn’t realize. So there I was, happily at about 49% through the book, thinking “well, there’s quite a mid-book climax coming up here. Almost seems like the end of the book”. And then it WAS the end of the book, even though I was only 50% of the way through. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Butterfly\_s\_Ghost](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_butterfly_s_ghost/32/3462_2.png) [@The\_Butterfly\_s\_Ghost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Butterfly_s_Ghost)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2014, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-that-when-they-ended-you-went-whaaaat/679489/29 "2014-01-23T18:23:49Z")
China Miéville _“Kraken”_. I thought maybe I had missed something and it was just me who didn’t understand the ending - so I looked around online a bit for clarification. And this is how I learned about the trope “[Gainax Ending](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GainaxEnding)”… ---
**Author:** ![chrisk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@chrisk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chrisk)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2014, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-that-when-they-ended-you-went-whaaaat/679489/30 "2014-01-23T19:45:09Z")
> [@MaxTheVool](#): > > A different angle than you’re asking about, but when you read a book on a Kindle there’s a little progress indicator that tells you what percentage you are through the book. One book I purchased came with another entire book tacked on, free, which I didn’t realize. So there I was, happily at about 49% through the book, thinking “well, there’s quite a mid-book climax coming up here. Almost seems like the end of the book”. And then it WAS the end of the book, even though I was only 50% of the way through. I had a similar reaction with “A Study in Scarlet”, except it wasn’t a bonus book, it was… Well, now that Holmes caught the guy, let’s go back to Utah and describe the killer’s motive in excruciating detail… ---
**Author:** ![Streetsinger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/0ea827/32.png) [@Streetsinger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Streetsinger)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2014, 7:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-that-when-they-ended-you-went-whaaaat/679489/31 "2014-01-23T19:50:54Z")
_The Name of the Rose_. I slogged all the way through the complicated philosophizing in many languages and then it ends: “Stat rosa pristina nomine, nomina nuda tenemus.” I got a literal translation from my father the Latin professor, but he couldn’t explain why it should be a fulfilling closing to the book, and none of the explanations I’ve seen since were any more satisfactory. It seemed so unfair to bring together all the thousands of threads running through the book and tie them up neatly in a knot with a quotation that doesn’t feel like it has any significance. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2014, 7:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-that-when-they-ended-you-went-whaaaat/679489/32 "2014-01-23T19:56:01Z")
> [@chrisk](#): > > I had a similar reaction with “A Study in Scarlet”, except it wasn’t a bonus book, it was… > > Well, now that Holmes caught the guy, let’s go back to Utah and describe the killer’s motive in excruciating detail… Try reading the later Holmes novel **the Valley of Fear** sometime. It pulls the same trick of 1/2 Holmes, 1/2 the murderer’s backstory in elaborate detail. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2014, 8:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-that-when-they-ended-you-went-whaaaat/679489/33 "2014-01-23T20:10:38Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > I think he stopped writing the Ryan books eventually because Ryan would have had to be elevated to Pope, and he couldn’t figure out how to do it. > > or maybe God. The following book, _Executive Orders_, is the last book that “sounds” like it was written by the same person who wrote the previous books. Since then? Sounds like a completely different person. ---
**Author:** ![Finagle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/b19c9b/32.png) [@Finagle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Finagle)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2014, 8:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-that-when-they-ended-you-went-whaaaat/679489/34 "2014-01-23T20:11:04Z")
Zelazny’s “Dream Master” which, I think, won a Nebula. I’ve read it a half dozen times over the years and still have no idea what happened. I seem to recall having the same problem with “Today We Choose Faces”. And to rub it in, I seem to recall that both of these novellas might have been included in the same paperback in one concentrated effervescent packet of mindfuck. ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2014, 8:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-that-when-they-ended-you-went-whaaaat/679489/35 "2014-01-23T20:21:30Z")
> [@Streetsinger](#): > > _The Name of the Rose_. I slogged all the way through the complicated philosophizing in many languages and then it ends: “Stat rosa pristina nomine, nomina nuda tenemus.” I got a literal translation from my father the Latin professor, but he couldn’t explain why it should be a fulfilling closing to the book, and none of the explanations I’ve seen since were any more satisfactory. It seemed so unfair to bring together all the thousands of threads running through the book and tie them up neatly in a knot with a quotation that doesn’t feel like it has any significance. As I remember it (admittedly it is a long time since I read it, but I also saw the movie fairly recently), _The Name of the Rose_ ends with the heroes looking back as they leave the monastery, and seeing the library burn, the flames looking like a great rose. That seemed like a fairly decent climax, with the murder solved and everything, with the fire somehow symbolizing the end of the middle ages and the oppressive rule of ancient texts. I do not remember that Latin quotation at all. What does it in fact mean? (Google translate just seems to turn it into gibberish, and my own Latin is very rusty.) ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2014, 8:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-that-when-they-ended-you-went-whaaaat/679489/36 "2014-01-23T20:58:24Z")
> [@njtt](#): > > As I remember it (admittedly it is a long time since I read it, but I also saw the movie fairly recently), _The Name of the Rose_ ends with the heroes looking back as they leave the monastery, and seeing the library burn, the flames looking like a great rose. That seemed like a fairly decent climax, with the murder solved and everything, with the fire somehow symbolizing the end of the middle ages and the oppressive rule of ancient texts. I do not remember that Latin quotation at all. What does it in fact mean? (Google translate just seems to turn it into gibberish, and my own Latin is very rusty.) Actually, I always took the destruction of the library to represent the End of The World, which is alluded to frequently in the book (and the movie – all those clues from the Book of the Apocalypse). It’s stated explicitly that the plan of the library reflects the world itself. It all hangs together symbolically, but I admit that I have no idea, beyond invoking the Apocalypse, it all means. ---
**Author:** ![lisiate](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f05b48/32.png) [@lisiate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lisiate)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2014, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-that-when-they-ended-you-went-whaaaat/679489/37 "2014-01-23T21:12:25Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > Stephenson’s “Snow Crash” and “Diamond Age”, but the ride was worth it both times. And every other Stephenson book I’ve read. Great set-ups, interesting middles, terrible endings. > [@MacSpon](#): > > _The Reality Dysfunction_. As I approached the end, I was starting to wonder, how on earth can he wrap all this up in just 50 more pages? > > Then I hit the end and he didn’t. Only _then_ did I notice that it was the first book of a trilogy. 🙂 If you finish the trilogy you’re get a true deus ex machina ending. The final book is called _The Naked God_ after all. ---
**Author:** ![oft\_wears\_hats](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/7993a0/32.png) [@oft\_wears\_hats](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/oft_wears_hats)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2014, 9:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-that-when-they-ended-you-went-whaaaat/679489/38 "2014-01-23T21:29:34Z")
_The Man Who Was Thursday_. Granted, it was getting pretty crazy leading up to the end, but the end was still so abrupt and disappointing. ---
**Author:** ![mascaroni](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/dc4da7/32.png) [@mascaroni](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mascaroni)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2014, 9:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-that-when-they-ended-you-went-whaaaat/679489/39 "2014-01-23T21:29:42Z")
If it’s “WHAAAAT” as in “what a shitty cop out ending” , i’ll go for G. K. Chesterton’s _The Man Who was Thursday_. It doesn’t deserve a spoiler (convenient, because I’ve forgotten how to do them), but it turns out it as all a dream. Not worth reading, (unless I’ve missed some subtle plot device) If it’s “WHAAAAT” as in “blimey, I never expected that”, I’d go for: _The Wasp Factory_ by Iain Banks _The End Of The Affair_ by Graham Greene ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2014, 9:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-that-when-they-ended-you-went-whaaaat/679489/40 "2014-01-23T21:35:05Z")
What’s Eating Gilbert Grape? Great book, but the ending was a total washout. The children are sitting there watching their house with their mother’s body burn up. WTF??? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-that-when-they-ended-you-went-whaaaat/679489.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-that-when-they-ended-you-went-whaaaat/679489.md?page=3)