A book without an ending is like a riddle with no answer, it’s just cheating.
The ending is what wraps it together. Anyone can write a great story if he doesn’t have to bother planning for a conclusion. That’s the hard part, and that’s the part that makes the rest of the story interesting, trying to figure out how it’s going to end.
Given the enormity of Stephen King’s success, it can’t be that important.
(And given that I keep reading his books…)
I’m okay with all kinds of endings – happy, sad, bad guys win, questions left unanswered, new questions raised, etc. – as long as the ending isn’t silly, and in this case “silly” means an ending that disrespects/shows contempt for the reader and the characters. The two books I’m thinking of are The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova and The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wrobleski. Kostova couldn’t help it – the whole premise of the book was silly. But Wrobleski certainly could have paid homage to Hamlet without making his characters act like idiots.
That ending was awful, but I loved the book up to then, and still think of Almondine going to ask “the travellers” where Edgar went to :(.
The opening of a book hooks you into it.
The ending of a book gets you to buy the writer’s next book.
It depends on how much I liked the rest of the story. If it was middle of the road I’ll be satisfied with any old resolution. If it’s something I’m really wrapped up in a shitty ending will taint the whole thing.
Stephen King has been mentioned a lot in this thread and I think he’s a great example. Dumb ending for Insomnia or Dreamcatcher? No big deal. I enjoyed the ride but I never expected anything fantastic so whatever.
Dumb ending for The Stand or The Dark Tower? He’s a rotten hack who shouldn’t be allowed within a mile a typewriter or pen ever again.
Giving credit where it’s due, it’s extremely impressive to write any story with a truly engrossing start and middle. But, if you can’t pull of that last bit, the contrast is just going to be that much more glaring.
The worst book ending ever, IMHO, was a series of six or seven very long sci-fic/fantasy books, the Chung Kuo series by David Wingrove. It was a really interesting, gripping series: the concept is that China now rules the entire world, based on ancient Chinese forms (emperor, not Communist!) I read through the whole damn thing, only to find at the end it was all set up as a “parallel universe” and the good guys built a machine to escape their universe and bring them into ours. It was totally deus-ex-machina, there was not the slightest hint in any of the preceding six volumes of “parallel universes” until the super-brain built a parallel-universe-travelling machine.I was so annoyed, I threw out the books (I had actually bought them all in hardcover because the early ones were very excellent.)
I agree, and would go a step further. Occasionally I’ll read a book in which the ending is, from a wrapping-up-loose-ends perspective, completely inadequate: you get no satisfaction of the story arc’s resolution. Some folks can’t stand these endings, but sometimes I love them.
China Mieville does this to a degree: two of the five books I’ve read by him end with important characters having their entire plot thread left hanging. But it’s entirely deliberate on his part, and he makes it work somehow. It may work because he resolves enough of his other plotlines that the reader can stomach a few danglers.
But when an author appears not to know how to finish a story, I rarely end up feeling positive toward the story. The ending is my final impression of a book, and if it sucks, I walk away from the book with that suckitude fresh in my mind.
Heh…this is pretty much what I came in to post, down to the snark. So +1. Or “This”. Or whatever the kids are posting as agreement these days.
You’re right about the Patrician, but most of the others are bad. Soul Music, Moving Pictures, any Witch book, Sourcery.
Important. I’m still annoyed about God of Clocks, the third book in Alan Campbell’s Deepgate Codex trilogy.
Great worldbuilding, nifty characters, story that kept me reading for the most part although it bogged down gradually. But the ending? That’s colored my perception of the entire trilogy, unfortunately.
All important. A dealbreaker. The single most important element.
Yes. The ending is the most important part of a book or movie, but it’s also the hardest part. Most artists get it wrong; a great ending is rare.
My theory is because the concept of an ending is a totally artificial one. In real life, there’s no such thing as an ending; there’s always something next. So to create such an artificial construct, and have it work, takes real talent.