Friday 6 July 2012

Novel Endings

Last night, at about half midnight, I finished Rapture by Lauren Kate, and like every book in her Fallen series, I loved it. The characters were absolutely wonderful and relatable, the writing was immaculate and hooked me in, and of course, the love story couldn't have been better. But, I found myself disappointed with the end. Don't read on if you haven't read Rapture, by the way: *SPOILER ALERT* The ending, I found, was what had me disappointed. It had nothing to do with the any of my favourite characters dying (Gabbe!) or that another of my favourite characters seemed to disappear (Cam...) or even that I actually felt pity for the baddie (Lucifer). It was because after all Luce and Daniel went through, all the memories Luce had to go through and watch all over again and remember, they still managed to lose their memories and be put on Earth as mortals.

Okay, yeah, it was refreshing to have a new and totally not predictable ending, but I felt that it made the series pointless. What was the point of going through all of that if they weren't going to remember it anyway? What was the point in Gabbe and Molly dying if all that Luce and Daniel did was forget everything?


I guess you could say the ending didn't satisfy me, but whatever. There's another book to read now about Shelby and Miles, Roland, Arriane and Luce and Daniel again, so my 'un-satisfaction' would probably be gone by then. Still, it was a pretty pointless ending to an otherwise perfect series.

Then after coming to that solution, this morning after reminiscing about it, I thought about all the other novels I'd read, and their endings. Some of them were amazing, and I felt like they fit the series or book perfectly, like The Last Sacrifice by Richelle Mead. Yeah, it left a few questions about the future - What will happen to Adrian and his broken heart? Will Lissa succeed being the Queen? And what of Rose and Demetri? Is their relationship going to last? - but for some reason I felt like it ended the series wonderfully. I somehow knew that that was the end of Rose and Demetri's story. 

It turned out all right for my questions, anyway, since the lovely Richelle Mead ended up doing a spin-off series about Sydney (one of my favourite characters) and Adrian (my favourite character of all time) and Jill and Eddie, so everything turned out all right in the end. 

Some endings made me thirsty for more. For example, The Host by Stephanie Meyer. If you've read this novel, then you'll probably know exactly what I mean. I wanted to read more after I read the last word, I wanted to know what happened after Wanderer got given her new body. Whether her love life continued with Ian. And what of Burns? The ending just made me crave for a sequel, and yet none has come. Maybe in the future. Although, the book is being turned into a film, for all you Host lovers.

Rapture wasn't the only ending that disappointed me, however. I found that, personally, Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins wasn't that good. Actually, I was disappointed with that series. After the first book, the series kind of went downhill. But, anyway, the ending disappointed me because of the slow ending, I guess. However, I had hated that Finnick was dead, and that had probably clouded my opinion of the ending. That was the first time I actually hated the author for killing off a character. I mean, I was fine with Prim, maybe a little sad, but Finnick? That was just... ugh. Not right.

Anyway, the ending - I keep getting side-tracked - was too... complete? for my tastes. It's hard to explain. Basically, I thought that the ending could have been better. I didn't like the whole ending with Peeta and their kids. I think that Katniss was too sad, too robotic near the end. Well, I suppose I would if I had gone through all of what she'd been through, but she'd got what she'd wanted in the end: Peeta. Freedom. She should have been happier, even if she lost people along the way.

So, that's the end of my rant about endings. What about you guys? Is there any endings you hated, or particularly liked? Which endings, if you're an author, would you change in your own books, and why?

No comments:

Post a Comment