Books with terrible endings??

[Esioul]

I think endings should be kept short and sweet. When they drag on, I lose interest and never bother to finish them. Also endings which spell some moralistic idea out really annoy me- I think we readers are capable of working things out for ourselves.

 

[The Ace]

English language ? Yes, I had to do it at pre-university summer school, until I pointed out to the teacher that the plural of "Stadium," is "Stadia." It's a sad fact that neither the English nor the Scots have any appreciation for their own language, and their spelling is becoming even worse than that of the Yanks.

 

[j d worthington]

It's a sad fact that neither the English nor the Scots have any appreciation for their own language, and their spelling is becoming even worse than that of the Yanks.

"Say it ain't so, Joe; say it ain't so!"

 

[SpaceShip]

Stephen King has done a lot of great endings to book, but his bad endings outweigh the good!

He does good; he does bad. Don't we all? But does anyone know whether his short story (turned into a great film - in fact my fave of all time) Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption had it's ending changed? Haven't ready the book (obviously) but I'd be a wee bit upset if it was changed.

 

[BookStop]

Makes one wonder how authors can pen brilliant works just to have them end lamely. Do they get tired of the story and push ahead to wrap it up? I know I'm guilty of wanting to do that very thing, although I try not to (maybe that's why I have so many unfinished stories-hmmm).

 

[Lucien21]

He does good; he does bad. Don't we all? But does anyone know whether his short story (turned into a great film - in fact my fave of all time) Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption had it's ending changed? Haven't ready the book (obviously) but I'd be a wee bit upset if it was changed.

I'm fairly sure the ending is pretty much the same, but i'll check it at home.

Red finds the money and the address in Mexico under the tree and violates his parole to go to Mexico.

The biggest change in the film is that in the book Red is an Irishman.

The other changes can be found here The Shawshank Redemption - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Jack]

A few that I didn’t like, but terrible? That’s a hard one – Maggie Furey I remember as being really bad compared to the rest of the books. I suppose it’s a personal thing – Ian Irvine tends to over write them, Goodkinds are reasonably bad and the wheel of time has NO END!!!! But apart from that most are average to great. Some of the Pern books, Kerr, Modesett, Elliot and Hamilton’s are a bit lack lustre, but they make it up by having a good story.

 

[Paige Turner]

No work of art is ever finished. They are all merely abandoned.

 

[Briareus Delta]

My vote for crap ending of all time goes to -

IT by Stephen King ....

James

I have to agree with Spiritdragon and several others who have posted on this thread. The ending to IT by Stephen King was the worst. The disappointment was made worse by the fact that the rest of the book was so good. The build-up of suspense, the relationships between all the main characters - all excellent. But then - a spider. Wow.

 

[SpaceShip]

Thanx Lucien21, I'd appreciate knowing whether it is true to the story. I suppose Red could have been an Irishman who, through process of time, had acquired a new accent?!!!

 

[mosaix]

Something Happened by Joseph Heller, just not worth struggling through for the ending.

Strangely he has written Something Happened that was one of the most disappointing books I have ever read and Catch22 that is my most favourite book of all time.

 

[steve12553]

Hannibal was a dire ending in my opinion. That was one of the saving graces of the film - that they changed the ending

The whole mood of Hannibal was different from the two previous books, but the ending fit the book (if not the series). I thought the change in the movie was a copout and made the movie much weaker than it was intended. I was very irritated at the movie.

 

[j d worthington]

I'm afraid I have to agree with Steve on this. I find the entire film a copout, actually. The first part of the novel bothered me because it seemed to have extremely poor copyediting -- slipshod grammar, bad punctuation, even clumsy syntax (not like Harris at all). But when it came to the latter parts of the book, this improved vastly, and the story came together quite well. I found the development of some incipient themes from Silence of the Lambs to be a logical outcome of the sort of case we were dealing with, and was dead certain there'd be no way on earth an American studio would have the guts to do that ending ... and I was right.

 

[Quokka]

Guess I better add a 'Odd Thomas spoiler to follow' warning

Something Happened by Joseph Heller, just not worth struggling through for the ending.

Strangely he has written Something Happened that was one of the most disappointing books I have ever read and Catch22 that is my most favourite book of all time.

Catch22 is also one of my favourite books but if you want disapointing check out the sequel Closing Time . I've never been so let down by a book I was looking forward to reading.

As to the let down endings, I'll agree with alot of what's been said about King and add Koontz. Odd Thomas wasn't exactly ground breaking fiction but like most of his work it was easy to read and moved along fine... but how he wasn't sued by the creators of The Sixth Sense for the ending to this one I'll never know.

 

[HoopyFrood]

In defense of good old Stephen Kingy-Baby, from few posts back, I like his endings. Everyone likes a happy ending now and again, but I do like his ambiguous "everythings-not-sorted-but-deal-with-it" endings! I didn't even mind the ending of Dark Tower series, which I know has caused many a discussion. The ending of "Cell" seemed like an almost happy ending for once, giving a bit of hope for Clay's son.
But then, I do love Sk's books. He rocks.
Hmm...an ending that I've hated...well, ALMOST the ending...the part in the Hobbit when Smaug is killed by a totally unrelated character. What?! The bloke just strides in about 3/4 of the way through and claims all the glory!
I also cannot STAND the ending of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. I refuse to read the chapters when they go to the Ministry of Magic.
That's all I can think of at the moment, I shall probably return anon to rant some more!!

 

[Kettricken]

Personal worst ending goes to Memory Sorrow and Thorn, because it is such an absolute and fundamental betrayal of the whole style and theme of the series.

I agree, Werthead. Loved the series, but wished I hadn't read the last 2 chapters of the last book. There was a potential for an ending that was interesting if he had stopped before these last 2 chapters.

 

[JBI]

The Belgariad's ending. The series it self wasn't very good (My opinion, no need to take it personally, but his work really is trash) and throughout the whole thing we are anticipating this huge confrontation between good and evil. Wow, 4 seconds of a little boy fighting with a god and winning. Pathetic, I want my money back!@!
Oh, and all the marraiges were a little bit pointless. I mean, totally pathetic. Everyone lives happy ever after blah blah blah, bunch of kids trash that in my opinion should never have been published.

 

[hedgeknight]

Just about any book written by Douglas Niles - not only is it terrible most of the way through, but the endings.....GAWD help me!

Thinner by Stephen King - terrible.

Into the Labyrinth (the final book of the Death Gate Cycle) - Weis & Hickman - everything led up to this book and it sucked ass.

There's more, just can't think of them right now.
-g-

 

[bookfan]

Just about any book written by Douglas Niles - not only is it terrible most of the way through, but the endings.....GAWD help me!

Thinner by Stephen King - terrible.

Into the Labyrinth (the final book of the Death Gate Cycle) - Weis & Hickman - everything led up to this book and it sucked ass.

There's more, just can't think of them right now.
-g-

Niles' Dragonlance: The Puppet King was pretty solid all the way through. tHowever, I found The Last Thane, which was also set in the DL world during the Chaos War, to be so-so. Niles' Wathershed Trilogy is getting a reprint to be released later this year, so I might pick up a copy.

Into the Layrinth is the 6th book of the Death Gate Cycle. The Seventh Gate is the 7th and final book. If you really did stop a book 6, that may explain the bad ending.

 

[Sibeling]

Frederik Pohl - Gateway
The whole book was not particularly exciting, but I hoped that at least the end would provide some answers about who were the mysterious aliens, or maybe the hero (or rather, the protagonist, he wasn't a hero) would do something brave and important, but nothing of the kind happened.

I felt like the precious time of my life I used for reading the book were stolen. Writing such a disappointing ending is really cheating the reader.