Books with disappointing endings (spoilers, obviously)

Ever read a book that was good or enjoyable, but the ending ruined the whole thing?

First on my list is Tad William’s Otherland. I vastly enjoyed the series, with its futuristic setting, myriad of strange worlds in the Otherland, the creepy Mr. Jingo factor, and the mystery of the whole set-up. I found the solution quite hard to swallow, though.

Really? A giant, telepathic, disembodied brain? Floating in space? Give me a break.

Another was Simon Green’s Shadow Falls. I give Simon Green a lot of latitude with his books, because he’s good with some things (atmosphere, memorable characters) and not so good with others, such as writing coherent plots. So I read his books more for the journey than the destination. I understand that there’s going to be a lot of bad with the good, and so I put up with it.

So Shadows Fall starts out as one of his better efforts- that is, the characters and setting are fun to read about, even if the story meanders too much- and then he goes and utterly ruins everything to point where even I can’t excuse his mess.

Ugh. Too many mystery novels are great up until they actually reveal who the killer is, or whatever, at which point I am left thinking either ‘Duh, that’s been obvious since page 30’ or ‘That makes absolutely no sense’.

Err.

Thomas Harris’s Hannibal has an infuriating ending. I can only explain it two ways:

  1. After the huge success of Silence of the Lambs he got an enormous advance on the sequel rights. He then moved to Rome and proceeded to blow it all on hookers and, um, blow. Anyway, his publisher & the movie producers came a knocking a few years later, demanding either a completed manuscript or their $22,000,000 back. As he only had $22 (no zeroes) left, he dashed out what he thought was an unpublishable piece of crap in about a week, figuring that would buy him some time. To his horror they accepted it.

  2. As postulated in Heinlein’s Number of the Beast, all works of fiction happen somewhere in the multiverse. Someone with a continua device happened upon the Silence of the Lambs universe, and had the misfortune to meet Hannibal just as he was leaving Memphis. Lecter used the continua device to hop to our world, where it broke. Meeting Harris, he was tickled to discover that they looked exactly alike, and, being who he is, ate him and stole his identity. Hannibal is, thus, the bad doctor’s sick dream.

Tough to think of books with good endings tbh. A lot of authors seem to struggle to finish books on a really strong note.

Sort of stretching the theme of the thread a bit, but I’d nominate The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman, in its entirety. The first two novels in the trilogy were outstanding, set a new benchmark for teenage fiction IMO. The finale was really weak, an order of magnitude below the level he was writing at previously.

Sticking strictly to endings of books then Snow Crash will probably be a popular nomination for weak-ass ending. The rat thing hurtling up the plane exhaust was fantastic, but the overall deus ex machina style wrapping everything up from Hiro was disappointing.

I Will Fear No Evil. What do I win?

Two copies of The Da Vinci Code, both [del]shat upon[/del] autographed by Mary Magdalene.

How about the quite literal Deus Ex Machina in The Naked God by Peter Hamilton?

The Difference Engine’s ending was a bit…esoteric.

Great Expectations. I don’t like either ending.

Scott Lynch’s two books really disappoint me. They are set up to be a fantasy Ocean’s Eleven or The Sting.

But in the end the sting disappoints and I feel a huge let down. I will read the next one, but if there are any after that, I’m done.

I didn’t like the beginning or the middle either. Only D I ever got in HS English because I couldn’t bring myself to re-read that book before the test.

The Ground Beneath Her Feet - Salman Rushdie

The whole thing was bad, but I was at least hoping for an ending that would tie the disparate concepts together. I guess he didn’t feel like delivering.

Stephen King’s Dark Tower series was getting pretty bad toward the end. The last couple books were just awful and the ending of the final book was even worse.

Michael Crichton’s Sphere.

Yes, I get to be the first to say:

Everything every written by Neil Stephenson.

Preach it, brother. I loved that series but he totally dropped the ball at the end. Dear Lord, it was craptastic. It’s like his idiot half-brother wrote the last few chapters.

Similarly, Joe Haldeman’s Buying Time is a great near-future sf novel of life extension and interplanetary conspiracy that roars along for a few hundred pages and then just goes splat. Very disappointing.

<walks into thread>

<unpacks flame-proof suit>

<puts flame-proof suit on>

<places safety helmet on table>

Most Stephen King novels.

Lord of the Rings - Seriously? Gollum slips and falls and that is how The Ring gets destroyed? He slips?!? Epic quest ends in slippery feet? Gah!

<puts on safety helmet>

<awaits flamming>

MeanJoe

I’ve found that by and large, Neal Stephanson’s books are less than the sum of their parts. But what parts!

Eugene Sue’s The Wandering Jew, one of the most popular novels of the 19th century (which I recently read to satisfy a 50-year curiosity about it)has a final chapter in which all the nice, decent people we’ve been expecting to win their battles lose. It was one of the most depressing books I have ever read

Recently read and so still fresh in the mind –

The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana by Umberto Eco. Very well written, but it doesn’t end – it just stops.