And good luck with that.
Technically, LOTR qualifies, it was originally six books. Then released as three books.
Dark Horse Comics printed the complete series in English about 10 years ago. Definitely worth seeking out.
As for the ending…
Itto Ogami kills the entire Yagyu clan. Every hidden branch and secret spy. All of them. But the final members of the Yagyu break his sword and seriously wound him right before his final duel with Retsudo Yagyu. Retsudo manages to kill Itto, but he is immediately killed by Diagoro in turn.
Or one book, depending on how you look at it.
Now come on, the Doctor never lets anyone down 
Well, besides the people whose ass he is kicking…
My quibble isn’t with the Dark Tower’s ending per se, but with all the subpar writing that led up to it.
This is kind of a weird example, but I’ll nominate Steven Brust’s Kaavren Romances. It’s sort of a fantasy version of The Three Musketeers (not the exact plot, but heavily inspired by), and it follows the same book + sequel + three-part-sequel, which ends up being five full-length novels. Because of the structure, the last three novels do a lot more threads-interwoven-throughout than the first two, but there’s a very satisfying arc that ends very nicely. There’s a lot of political maneuvering, but it’s not super-heavy on reveals, so that might disqualify, but it’s one of the best wrappings up of a series I’ve ever read. Cannot recommend it highly enough.
As far as anime goes I thought Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood came to a satisfying conclusion to its myriad plot lines that were fleshed out over 64 episodes.
I’m another person who thought that the ending of Battlestar Galactica was wonderful, and completely satisfying. One of the best TV show endings ever.
Also thought Deep Space Nine did a pretty good job with its ending, although it would have been nice if they’d tied up Bajor’s entry into the Federation. You know, the entire basis of the show at it’s beginning But that’s about all.
Babylon 5’s a bit of an odd case - there’s nothing about the ending, or even the final season, that makes it a bad ending per se, it’s just that the quality of most of the episodes in season 5 were so low compared to the previous seasons that it kind of feels that way. The ending itself - both “Sleeping In Light” filmed at the end of season 4, and the actual resolution of most of the ongoing plot lines in the final few episodes of season 5, was great.
I’m fairly optimistic about a great ending to Breaking Bad. And curious to see what they whip out for the ending of How I Met Your Mother.
I was perfectly fine with the actual ending, meaning the last page or so. I was definitely NOT fine with a lot of what came before.
It’s a 110-episode anime, based on a 10-volume bookseries. (There have been add-ons and prequels, but I’m not counting these right now). All together it’s over 38 hours of material, released from 1988 to 2000.
It’s pretty much the definition of a space opera in terms of scope, characters and story.
Quoting TVtropes:
The meat of the story is this: sometime in the 36th century, humanity has spread out amongst the stars and has split off into two great superpowers which are now sadly engaged in a decades-long knock-down, drag-out war with each other. Fighting in the forces of the Galactic Empire (whose government is based on 19th century Prussia,) is an ambitious young noble named Reinhard von Müsel, better known by the name granted to him later, Reinhard von Lohengramm. Fighting for the opposing Free Planets Alliance (a government which resembles a crumbling, bloated 20th Century democracy,) is Yang Wen-Li, an easygoing historian who reluctantly joined the military because he was broke. Together, these two men (both tactical geniuses) are destined to commit great deeds, eventually becoming the series’ titular Galactic Heroes.
The animation is dated. Between the space battles there’s loads of talking about tactics, history, the problems of leadership and so on. And it doesn’t matter, because it’s all so damn intricate and interesting.
You are correct!
Your standards are low.
Yikes–I completely missed that in the OP. Sorry!
Great thread, I’ll be keeping an eye on this one.
Avatar: The Last Airbender has a pretty complete and satisfying ending after three seasons, and never left any doubt that the writers had planned out everything. But I don’t think it’s complex enough for your OP though.
Roger Zelazny’s Amber series was excellent - lots of Machievellian twists and turns - though the last five books are arguable of lesser quality than the first five. Don’t bother with the dreadfully bad “prequels” by Bethancourt - I’ve seriously read better fan fiction.
I also really enjoyed Jim Butcher’s Codex Aleria books, and found myself regularly delighted by “throw away” plots from one book being brought in a couple books later, villains with, for the most part, understandable motivations, and in the end it all wrapped up pretty nicely.
Piers Anthony’s Incarnations of Immortality series might fit. It started as 5 books, ended up 7, each told from the perspective of a different character. (Wiki says there are 8 now). The premise is that various mythological gods/figures are held by humans who somehow take on the office and hold it for some time, then pass the office on and resume being mortal. They include Death, Time, Fate (3 incarnations), Nature, War, Good, and Evil.
The characters interact throughout the books, with a couple of them being related, and the events told overlap from different perspectives. I thought he did a good job of keeping the various overlapping details straight and making something of a coherent hole out of it.
Caveat - I actually tired of the series (mostly the premise) and stopped reading. I think I missed out on Nature and Good. But the parts I read were tied together well. IIRC from over a decade ago.
Jeff Smith’s Bone
Middlemarch, by George Eliot.
A bunch of Dickens’ ridiculously long works, too.
Being A Green Mother (Nature) was pretty rambling. And And Eternity was a mess, unfortunately, and not terribly tasteful…Anthony’s customary undercurrent of ephebephilia breaks the surface for long stretches. I’ve never read the last one about Nox.
Having just watched the finale of BSG last night, I will join what appears to be the minority. Aside from a few small missteps here and there, it stuck the landing nearly perfectly. Gives me hope that any ongoing story that seems to be floundering can still pull it out at the end (I’m looking at you WoT and ASoIaF…)