Books with dissapointing endings

[MinDonner]

The Hyperion Cantos. And by that I mean anything revealed after the first brilliant novel. I have never read a series that explains so little, or has so many contradictory answers or re-writes.

Ugh, yeah. It's like Simmons wasn't even trying to tie up his loose ends. As fantastic as the first book is, and much as I loved reading the series through once, the hanging plot threads and unresolved mysteries were just too annoying. And I say this as someone who dislikes the recentish trend to shy away from open-ended books (not everything needs a sequel!) - there's ways of doing this successfully that don't make it so damn obvious that the author just forgot about stuff.

I loved the ending to The First Law. It may be my favourite ending EVER. I was underwhelmed by The Blade Itself, but I felt the story really picked up in Before They Are Hanged. At the end of Last Argument of Kings I was blown away.

:agree: The ending of The First Law was brilliant, and really served to set it apart from similar fare.

[Bastard of Godsgrace]

Yeah, Hyperion was bad, but Heaven's Reach by David Brin is IMHO even worse offender. I know Brin was supposed to write more books in Uplift universe, but then he lost interest, but come on, this is supposed to be the ending? :dunno:

[sologdin]

As for bad endings, I can sort of agree with Perdido Street Station, since it had a bit too much Deus Ex Machina

cerys--

gotta pick on you for this, by reposting something i wrote in disputing this point several years ago in the mieville thread:

i didn't read the weaver as a deus ex machina, at least in the macro-sense, even if it worked that way on the micro-level at times. seemed to me that the crisis engine stuff, which is just a gloss on marxian dialectical theses, is the real resolution to the most immediate narrative developments.

curiously, that "engine" is a machine per se, and furthermore, because it is a hegelian-like metaphor for the Great Stalin's Historical Dialectic, it is like an idealist's god descending to rescue the protagonists--peculiarly here by interacting with robot characters i.e., more machines. so--the literal deus ex machina device of classical drama is inverted: the crisis engine itself is the machine that descends, upon other machines (especially if we read the non-robot characters as deleuze & guattari's "desiring machines"), in order to produce a eucatastrophe, courtesy of a seeming apotheosized dialectic. in this regard, the book really ends on a machina ex deo, and it is not at all irrational like the classical device proper.

[Shryke]

Is there any way you could translate that to english for us Solo?

[The Marquis de Leech]

Is there any way you could translate that to english for us Solo?

Marxist theory: technological change causes a crisis in the old economic way of doing things (in turn precipitating a crisis in the old political way of doing things). Thus Mieville's notion of a crisis engine: the engine feeds off the social crises descended from machines.

What solo is getting at is that whereas deus ex machina ("God out of a machine") are classically used to resolve plots, in this case, it is not a "god" that acts as the motivator, but rather an actual machine. Hence machina ex deo ("Machine out of God").

[Horselover Fat]

Bag of Bones by Stephen King. I know other people have mentioned King's generally crappy endings but this one has got to take the cake. what an absolutely awesome, brilliant...um...9/10 of a book it was. the ending was utter crap. I was actually angry at him for writing that ending. Damn you Stephen King

[Medieval Housefly]

The Dark Tower. It failed on so many levels. The worst was probably King's "OK, here's the ending, but you better not read it, and if you do and dislike it, it's your fault" rant just before it.

On second thought, the fact that the main villain was literally erased out of existence by some random guy who appeared out of nowhere in the plot towards the end of the last book of a 7 book series, was even worse.

I think The Dark Tower ending is one of the best endings I've ever read in a series. It was almost too perfect. I thought it was bold, daring, and a justified climax for Roland.

[Astra]

I think The Dark Tower ending is one of the best endings I've ever read in a series. It was almost too perfect. I thought it was bold, daring, and a justified climax for Roland.

Could not agree more.

It is took me a couple of days to digest then re-read the last chapters, but ultimately I came to the same conclusion. One of the best endings ever.

Yes, I can add The First Law to the list.

I think here is a clear difference between a new writer and a master.

The Dark Tower ended where it started? Almost. Subtle difference. The journey well worth the ending.

The First Law? 3 books of the same? Well entertaining the same, I loved it, in the hope it will lead to some sort of conclusion. Did it? Nope. This time no subtleties though.

[Lyanna Stark]

Regarding PSS:

Marxist theory: technological change causes a crisis in the old economic way of doing things (in turn precipitating a crisis in the old political way of doing things). Thus Mieville's notion of a crisis engine: the engine feeds off the social crises descended from machines.

What solo is getting at is that whereas deus ex machina ("God out of a machine") are classically used to resolve plots, in this case, it is not a "god" that acts as the motivator, but rather an actual machine. Hence machina ex deo ("Machine out of God").

Yes, that is a good way of explaining it.

However, I think compared to China's other endings (of which I think both "The Scar" and "Iron Council" are brilliant) it just comes up short.

Don't get me wrong soggy, I think PSS is a marvellous novel, and certain facets of the ending I could absolutely get along with, but the ending just didn't work as well as the endings in TS and IC.

Perhaps I just need to get educated in Marxist theory and it will all make more sense. :)