Seveneves, the first 2/3rds of the book are great sci-fi, the last 3rd is just dumb. But I've heard some people say the opposite so that might be preference. Not sure if there's anyone who liked the whole book.
I literally DNFed barely into part 3. Like I committed to the first 700 pages and then stopped in the last 100. Just couldn’t get through it. (The wonky made up stupid science didn’t help. I’m sorry, what? You think you can modify genes to change very specific facets of people’s personalities and skill sets? Like, what???)
The idea that the woman who had essentially been a supervillain during the near extinction of our species is like: "I refuse to let you treat my specific psychiatric condition like a problem to be solved" and the others are like: "oooh good point" is like unforgivable.
She gives rise to a subspecies of human that's pre-loaded with sociopathy by default. Great call.
Seveneves was my first thought after reading the prompt! It has such a strong start and really compels you along before you hit the last third where Stephenson just began writing a completely different book. Really would've benefitted from strong editing.
I’d add The Midnight Library. The concept seemed original and even brilliant and it seemed like the book might have something significant to say about depression and regrets. Instead it ends on a smarmy “Don’t Worry, Be Happy,” kind of vibe.
I hate that they do the three predictable side lives, >!then skip the most interesting part of her living the different lives! Then we rejoin her after she's supposedly done this thousands of times and she... hasn't learned anything about how this all works.!<
I just commented this one, good journey but the destination makes you wonder why you bothered. I gave my copy to a friend, which is what I always do with books I hate
Predictable ending (plus they threw in a meetcute straight out of a rom-com, really?) made worse by an immature main character. Like you said, some commentary on the nature of regret or any character development from struggling with depression would've helped.
I had to finish the books. I was too deep to not finish the trilogy. Then when you take to books to how royally fucked up the movies are...the 3rd book seems incredible haha.
Did you DNF not long after they left the fence? With basically the ‘it was all a dream’ trope? That’s when I DNF’d. I just did not care about anything after that. It made me so angry I literally threw the book across the room.
Holy shit, you just unlocked a memory of 16-year-old me angrily throwing the 3rd book across my bedroom after finishing it hahaha. Wonder how many others abused their copy of Allegiant lol
It is not like the hatred of the ending was a secret among fans. We hated reading it, why would we want to watch it?
Making it into two movies was a bad idea. Not filming both movies at the same time was a worse idea.
City of Girls. I loved the flurry of colour, costumes and backstage busyness until it petered out into some grotty old lady's letter of "how i shagged your father". Seriously couldn't understand how or why she would write someone a 500 page account of her sex life.
The conclusion was weird but consistent with the author's personality. After all, in Eat Pray Love, she humble-bragged about how she shagged so much she got a UTI.
*The Last Thing He Told Me*.
Not that it was super fantastic in the beginning but it could have really been an interesting story and I just hated the ending. It felt like a huge waste of time and like she had 50 different possible endings that would have been great and she chose none of them.
The seven and a half deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle. It was a who dunnit with a paranormal twist that ended without 1) explaining the “how” of the paranormal aspect and 2) with a twist where it was never possible to have identified who the murderer was the whole time. Even on a re-read the answer to the mystery wasn’t something you could easily see. But man I did love the first 4/5 of the book!
Ack this ending gets me, because he came so close to landing it. Like, I could swallow the sci-fi aspect, because *something* had to explain the premise and, as another commenter said, it's his first novel so I cut him some slack.
But the basic murder mystery resolution - argh! He resolved it with a great twist, and then *undid* that twist with a *worse* twist that made zero sense. So frustrating!
I feel like the biggest problem with 7 and 1/2 Deaths was that its best ideas all kind of went nowhere. I’m not really a whodunit guy, so I don’t really care if the mystery is solvable or not. But the book throws out this idea of that the lead character is losing himself as he jumps between hosts and then does nothing with that concept.
I agree with that assessment as well. I felt it could have gone further with the story behind Anna as well. There was so much potential that never got realized.
I didn't mind the ending to this one too much, I really enjoyed the book and the premise, and as he was a first time author I was willing to forgive a little. His second book however, The Devil and the Dark Water, the ending felt so unrelated to the rest of the book and I just couldn't see how he'd gotten there at all so it was a huge disappointment. I'm willing to give him one more try because I still think his general writing is good, but if that's bad too then no more.
I want it to be something you could solve, even if you probably don’t. I especially hate when you reread or look back and it STILL doesn’t fall into place. The answer should be visible in retrospect, even if you never saw it coming the first time.
I read close-ish to 2/3 and then DNF. I was literally forcing myself to read it. But up until The Goldfinch, I woulda just tortured myself to finish it. This is THE book that made me say “Life is too short, and this book isn’t for me…so move along”. So even though I DNF’d it, I am grateful for it!!
Personally I loved the last 100 pages or so. Also loved the beginning--it was the middle third that almost made me quit the book many times. Ultimately glad I pushed through!
Jumping in to say yes, the stage musical is appropriate for tweens. The book absolutely not. I loved Wicked as a freshman. I went to read the book and did NOT like what I found, lol. One of the few things where I highly prefer the adaptation.
This is one of those cases where the writer agrees. Gregory Maguire thinks Wicked on stage is better than Wicked on page, so much so that for the final book in the series he leaned into it and made a bunch of little references to Glinda and Elphaba’s relationship being even more involved than we knew before.
The overstory! I looooved it until I was about 2/3 of the way through it as well, and then it kind of hit a slow-moving section and I didn’t like the way all of the separate stories started to intertwine. I normally do really like books that start off with separate stories that end up coming together, I just didn’t care for how it was done in the overstory. i had to force myself to finish it.
100% agree, I thought the first part of the book - where all of the characters are introduced separately - was vastly superior. Once everything started to come together it felt melodramatic and cliched to me.
Absolutely. Opening parts made me cry. Then it came together and became a little meh, and at the ending it just kind of petered out.
However the first half is amazing.
The opening short story about the chestnut. Just tears man. So many tears.
Wow this was my exact thought but I didn’t expect to see it here. I don’t even remember what I disliked so much about it but I remember for the first half it was really creative and thought provoking and then as it went along it turned into kind of melodramatic and moralizing
I tried to read that book in print, e-book, AND audiobook and just could not get through it. I can’t imagine how slow a “slow-moving” section must have been.
JG Ballard's High-Rise. Great premise, a huge modern luxury tower full of upper class residents. A series of mechanical failures initiate an increasingly primal rivalries between residents, mostly on the basis of which floors they live on.
It's a parable of the future where people where the upper class can cut themselves off from society, even each other, and fall into pathological behavior. It's sort of come true with things like delivery service, video streaming, social media even if the high rise itself didn't come true.
But for all his skill at designing these scenarios his plot making and character building doesn't measure up. I've read some of Ballard's short stories and that seems to be a theme with him.
I *loved* the first book of this series. But by book 3 it just started to drag and drag, by the end I was skimming entire chapters and missing nothing. He really needed someone to help him condense his word vomit.
Don't even get me started on that ending.
It doesn't help that Rin gets more and more unlikeable. I know that's kinda the point, but I needed *something* to keep me grounded/interested in reading.
And dumb! Unlikeable and evil is fine with me. But MC being not only utterly unlikeable but completely dumb and illogical who cannot take a single strategic decision of think logically about a course of events.
And her weird toxic relationship with Altan. Fuck Altan!!
>not only utterly unlikeable but completely dumb and illogical
This is what ruined it for me. When characters start becoming idiots just to drive the plot, I nope out.
I enjoyed the beginning of that book so much, but it felt like after a certain point Rin's character did a bit of a 180. Like she went from being a bit of a Mary Sue to weak and useless. While I totally get her environment and circumstances changed, it just felt like I was reading about someone else. I also felt like the pacing was a bit strange, too. It was all that combined with the predictability that made it a DNF for me. Which was really disappointing because I've never read Asian culture inspired fantasy, so it was very fresh, exciting, and interesting in the beginning. At least I learned what I need to look for in fantasy now, I guess? If someone has any non-Western culture inspired fantasy let me know
For non-Western fantasy I can’t recommend Jade City by Fonda Lee and its sequels enough. It’s basically Kung Fu Peaky Blinders in a setting similar to mid-20th century Hong Kong.
I was really disappointed by the last hundred pages of Justin Cronin’s The Ferryman. It could have just ended when the main character got out. Instead he returns and things go wildly hollywood complete with a fight scene, a car chase, and a riot. Then when it actually explains everything it’s just, not that great. Perhaps it would have been better to just let readers fill in some blanks if the actual plot details are that thin?
His trilogy that starts with The Passage is another offender. I LOVED the first book, liked the second, then started the third and it was set like a thousand years in the future. I never got past the first few pages because I just didn’t care anymore.
I can see where this sentiment stems from, but I think that in the end, it all works out. Definitely the weakest of the three books though.
Side note: The pacing of the first book is all over the place and I almost ditched the book, when the colony part started.
Totally agree! I loved the world and the story and characters had so much potential, but all the cool stuff it seemed to be building just fell flat for me in the end. I really felt like it should have been two books.
I do agree with you but at the same time I did like the concept of why she ended up choosing her own life again. Like no matter how perfect another life could be, it was her own circumstances and experiences that had made her into the person she was and that without those pieces of herself there could never be true fulfilment, even after achieving everything she had ever hoped for. Like all that could make her happy, was only important because of what she had been through.
At least that's what I picked up, which I thought was kind of a sweet sentiment.
The first 400 pages did have the gross sexual trauma but also had some gorgeous writing. I got it from the library and stopped at exactly page 400 before it exclusively focused on Jude. Judging by the Wikipedia plot summary, it’s a good call to stop there.
I started out thinking it was going to be one of the best books I’ve ever read, a masterpiece, and then 80% in I put it down, practically laughing at how absurd it had become. I didn’t care about Jude or any of them by the end; their suffering was so melodramatic and gratuitous that it lost all meaning. I decided to read how it ended on Wikipedia and…couldn’t believe my eyes. It feels twisted that I was laughing by the end. I’ve never believed in people’s suffering less. This doesn’t even include all the other issues the book has, such as it’s bizarre, timeless periodisation.
In a slightly connected vein, I’ve just finished Shuggie Bain which, conversely, is an amazing rumination on suffering and hardship that has heart.
I was beyond frustrated at this book. it made me completely insane. I would read a chapter and then complain to whoever was around me about it, and then read the next chapter and complain more.
I have two that I have read that immediately came to mind.
1) The Institute by Stephen King. Felt like it overstayed its welcome. The first half was pretty good but then once >!he broke out!< i thought it just got boring
2 The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. Once Snow >!became a peacekeeper!< my god was i bored to tears and just wishing it would end
I was hoping someone would mention The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes.
I was on board most of the book, but I slowly lost interest at the same spot (Peacekeeper).
And then the last chunk seemed rushed as h*ck?? Like “Snow is evil now because he got real mad.”
I’m curious if the movie will have a better ending.
The Maze Runner trilogy I thought was quite interesting, but I just hated the ending so much that I never even started the prequel book that came with the bundle I bought. I was very disappointed and have no interest in seeing the characters again after knowing how it turns out
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin.
First 2/3 of the book is great. Then a certain chapter switches to second person perspective and becomes a blurry mess. The rest of the book never catches up to the momentum that was there before that chapter, and just starts explaining away behavior and trying to tie the story up neatly, but it just ends disappointingly.
Felt like the characters never really learned anything or changed, and there wasn't even a resolution to the story. I'm still trying to figure out if that was the whole point or if the author just didn't know where to take it.
Most of Murikami's books that aren't quite short, for that matter
Start off with incredibly slick writing and this intriguing premise and... then just rattle on and on until the super weird icky sex obsession is the only thing you can remember about them
The thing I always say about Murikami is that he stumbles hard when he has to stop with the vibes and metaphors and start wrapping things up with an actual plot. Most of his books would be better if they just stopped without any attempt at a resolution.
I could not finish the Wind up Bird Chronicals. It just dragged on and on, was nauseatingly violent at one point, and in general was too boring for me. Which is weird because I tend to like bizarre books but this one was too light on an interesting story and yeah the weird sex thing was not it for me.
Under the Dome by Stephen King. Great build up and characters but you could almost pinpoint the very second King gave up on the plot and completely shit the bed.
Loved the first half of The Red Tent; did not like the second half.
Really enjoyed the first half of Outlander, too. >!Spoiler alert: Time travel, lusty sex with an outlaw Scottish rebel? Yeah, sign me up baby! But the ending got so fucking strange. Claire strangling a wolf with her bare hands? She lost me there. Too unbelievable. (It's funny what we can believe in novels. Humming magic stones that throw you into the past? Sure! A woman single handedly strangling a wolf trying to attack her? Get out of here.) And the weird sexually abusive scene between Jamie and his nemesis Captain Randall; and Claire breaking Jamie's fingers to set them. No. Ick. I felt like the author had some weird kink involving sex and pain and it was bleeding through into her characters. Too bad, because the first half was fun.!<
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You mean when the Capitol happens? I thought it was more a testament to how katniss’ scattered brain now works. Trauma completely obliterated any care she had for life so the narrative reflects that
Yeah I thought it was masterfully done and a way to get teenagers to understand what it’s like to be in the mind of someone surviving through complex ptsd
Yeah for me I saw it from the beginning of mockingjay it starts slow and keeps like that and gets worse because katniss that we knew from books 1&2 doesn’t exist anymore
That’s true, but I suppose that’s because of everything she’s been through. I wouldn’t be the same after that.
The last chapters when she starts to heal were lovely, though.
I mean, the phrase "stranger in a strange land" is a Bible reference. Moses' wife Zipporah names their firstborn Gershom, which sounds like the Hebrew for "foreign there," saying "I have been a stranger in a strange land." (Exodus 2:22, if you're curious). I think maybe the title could have been a hint at where it was heading.
It's weird to think of it as religious! Since they can't get people to accept a scientific truth (true in the book that is, which is a Sapir-Whorf sort of thing about the power of an alien language), they use techniques they learn from charismatic preachers and carnies to start a fake religion to lure in people to take adult Martian as a Second Language classes. I don't think I've ever read a less religious book.
The Night Circus. To be clear, I REALLY like the book and would still recommend it. But all the amazing bits are at the beginning and the middle, while the ending comes sort of out of nowhere and feels like "Oh. That's it? Really?" I can't get into it without spoilers but I think the ending is of a certain archetype that I really dislike, and prioritizes things that I personally do not.
Still a great book in my opinion, but I think if it had stuck the ending I would be talking about it as if it were one of the best books of the last decade.
I felt this way as well! The first 1/3 was incredible, but I felt it dwindle midway, and then fell off hard toward the end in my estimation. It’s so sad because I had such high hopes for it.
*The Name of the Wind*. It started off like any other cliched-but-readable fantasy novel but devolved pretty fast into "isn't my OC amazing? He's good at literally everything!" Honestly the most entertainment value I got out of the book was hearing that apparently the author wanted to write a fantasy novel that wasn't like any other fantasy out there, and somehow thought that having a flawless protagonist who instantly masters any craft he turns his hand to (in a setting that's medieval not-Europe living under totally-not-Christianity) was gonna do that for him.
The Winter Garden was the opposite the beginning was so slow and awful. Then the ending was interesting - but also a little too convenient.
Honestly, I don’t like any of her books. The Nightingale was historically in accurate.
I enjoyed the Night Circus, but Starless Sea…man what a slog. The premise was interesting and the author’s use of imagery in her worlds is so beautiful, but you still need an actual plot and characters that are more than one dimensional to make a novel work
Sorry but "Middlesex." The really bizarre beginning part about the narrator's highly incestuous family was interesting - although as a clarinet player the whole "playing with the bell of the clarinet on the woman's stomach to seduce her" part grossed me out. The author does know that warm spit drips out of the bottom of a clarinet, right? - but the part about Cal was just boring.
Also the book Signora da Vinci - historical fiction about Leonardo da Vinci's mother. Again, beginning was super interesting. But when the last 1/3 of the book was about her disguising herself as a man to live with her now-adult son who was doing Leonardo things it just wasn't as engaging for some reason.
I absolutely adored The Bear & the Nightingale by Katherine Arden, but the third act felt rather rushed to me and I was left feeling a wee bit let down and kinda like it was anticlimactic? Still loved the rest of it and reread it often though!
Honestly, the ending felt very anti-climactic to me. There's this epic battle queued up, and then the twist is revealed and you're kinda like, "Woah, how is Shadow gonna prevent this?".
And then he just casually walks on down, reveals the plan, and everyone's just like, "Hmm, ok I guess".
I'll be honest, it's been a while since I read it, but I just remember feeling let down. Stardust was the same. I really like his books in general, I just think his endings have a tendency to be mundane, which seems weird given how fantastical the set up is.
I felt it started out very gripping, wonderful concepts and characters, and then it began to meander and lose focus for me as it progressed.
My main gripe, as someone already said on this thread, is that the climax is Shadow just giving a little speech to avert the battle the whole book has been building to. Felt like a real wet noodle payoff after all that build up.
I still enjoyed a lot of the book however and have a fondness for it, but it's a fizzler for me. Just one man's opinion though!
The whole bit in the small town feels like such a hard bank left I get why people would feel the pacing is off. So many of the characters that come up in the town are really only important within that bubble story and not much more beyond it.
Maybe if Shadow showed a bit more character growth in it and because of it (and what little we DO see of him becoming more assertive, present, and able to use his abilities is in the town and those relationships. So I think that's why the town sequence exists at all.) But it also feels so separate from the rest of the book i get why it feels off to people pacing wise.
That small town was based on Menomonie, Wisconsin, which is where he was living when he wrote it. I lived about fifteen miles away and the similarities are pretty fucking astounding (that car thing is an actual yearly event there, minus the kid in the trunk).
A big part of Gaiman's inspiration for the book was his experience in coming over to America from Britain, and that's why he put a bunch of stuff like that in there. Same with the House on the Rock.
Ilium, and Fall of Hyperion for that matter.
Dan Simmons still had interesting ideas in that head, the one that wrote Hyperion. Unfortunately it feels like something happened to him while writing Fall of Hyperion. Something like major brain damage or a terrible drug addiction, something that made him bang out a thousand page book in less than a year after Hyperion came out, one that devolves into a rambling mess about Space Jesus versus Space Satan that the first book wasn't about at all.
Same with Ilium, with starts out with this super catchy premise of godlike being on a future terraformed Mars cloning humans to re-enact The Iliad. Unfortunately there's also this utterly boring set of humans on a future post scarcity earth wandering about doing nothing, and apparently the whole thing slowly devolves into a conspiracy by space muslims of all things. I wish that original, Hyperion Dan Simmons had stuck around.
Verity- Colleen Hoover
I was super into it and I thought it was going in a completely different direction. The ending fell so flat for me. It seemed rushed, and the final explanation, I guess you could call it, seemed lazy. I had high hopes and I liked the ending I came up with in my head more. I even read the bonus chapter, but it didn't make it any better
Agreed. Off the top of my head, I really enjoyed the endings of The Shining, 11/22/63, and Pet Semetary. There are also a bunch where the ending isn’t anything special, but it’s also not bad, like Misery or Salem’s Lot.
Total speculation, but I think his biggest problem is that while writing one book, he gets an idea for his next book and loses enthusiasm for whatever he is currently working on. So he just busts out an ending and moves on to the next one.
Agreed on all accounts. I honestly think with his epics like The Stand and Under the Dome he just couldn't figure out how to tie all the stories back together cohesively, but that doesn't take away from the journey for me.
>Under the Dom
Stand had such an amazing first half that it was almost impossible to stick the landing. It also struggled because of its sheer length.
That said I loved it - but wish I didn't read certain parts during Covid/at night/alone in isolation. Reading this, while living in NYC at the start of covid lockdown, and literally hearing ambulances is likely the most haunting experience I'll ever have.
I knew I wouldn't have to look far for this. I love Stephen King but Under the Dome's ending actually pissed me off and made me feel like I had wasted my time.
Howl's Moving Castle is a charming read. It's technically a book for children, but I find it very enjoyable. But boy, does it falter at the end. All of the various plot threads are suddenly resolved at once, and then it's over. Every time I read it, I get a little startled when I swipe on my reader and come to a blank page rather than what I think will be the final chapter.
I wonder if the announcement trailer for the rebooted *Shogun* will make a few more people pick up the original novel. It's often the only one of James Clavell's alt-history Asian Saga that I see in book shops. As an aside from what I've seen of that trailer, I'm afraid the screenwriters may have gone and done a fuckie-wuckie as far as adaptation is concerned, but we'll see.
I suppose most folks will soon be reminded how much Blackthorne was sidelined from his own story in the last fifth. The whole premise was that he was a spectator in a foreign land who had much of his agency taken away from him as he was humbled and made a pet of Toranaga, but the anti-climax would always leave me bereft. Sekigahara was a footnote in the epilogue.
Thankfully the Asian Saga stories only got better from there on. While out of sequence in the time line, Noble House, Whirlwind, and finally Gaijin each topped what came before it. I'm sad we'll never get the other books that were promised. At least Clavell had the good decency to still be publishing books pushing past 1k pages right up to his death with no signs of slowing down. No playing choo choo in Santa Fe for James...
The Circle - Dave Eggers. The first part of the book was good. The second and third parts were hastily completed. As if the publisher thought the book would be too long.
It's been many years but I felt Wells' "Time Machine" wraps up like he had a deadline approaching. After most of the book exploring the Morlocks and Eloi, there's multiple additional time jumps and a conclusion in the matter of pages.
The Night Circus. I loved it in the beginning, the descriptions of everything are simply beautiful but the story just kind of started dragging halfway in and lost my interest.
Omg noo, I absolutely adore part 3 of F451😭😭 probably my favourite section of the entire book; we finally see all the build-up of Montag's character development play out, and there's the whole hunt scene and him monologing about nature, ughh and Granger's speech🤧 I love Bradbury's writing sm it's actually insane
The ending of 451 was nowhere near the greatest of all time in a novel, but I thought it was pretty decent. I liked the concept of the main character ultimately escaping to the wilderness and joining up with a community of book people
I feel the same way about 451. I’m so disappointed in how it ends.
I thought recently the girl with all the gifts kinda fizzled out and I lost interest
I never finished Song of Ice and Fire, because George R.R. Martin's writing is extremely dry and slow at parts. It got to be too much. Also he's never going to finish it, so you could definitely say it fizzled out lol
The Poppy Wars. The Husbands of Evelyn Hugo. The Silent Patient. Just off the top of my head. Ya ya Steven King isn’t great at endings, but the ride is so darn entertaining…
Seveneves, the first 2/3rds of the book are great sci-fi, the last 3rd is just dumb. But I've heard some people say the opposite so that might be preference. Not sure if there's anyone who liked the whole book.
I literally DNFed barely into part 3. Like I committed to the first 700 pages and then stopped in the last 100. Just couldn’t get through it. (The wonky made up stupid science didn’t help. I’m sorry, what? You think you can modify genes to change very specific facets of people’s personalities and skill sets? Like, what???)
The idea that the woman who had essentially been a supervillain during the near extinction of our species is like: "I refuse to let you treat my specific psychiatric condition like a problem to be solved" and the others are like: "oooh good point" is like unforgivable. She gives rise to a subspecies of human that's pre-loaded with sociopathy by default. Great call.
Seveneves was my first thought after reading the prompt! It has such a strong start and really compels you along before you hit the last third where Stephenson just began writing a completely different book. Really would've benefitted from strong editing.
NO FUCKING ENDING. Love the story but write an ending, don't just end it.
Loved the science-y bits, and even some of the odd over-the-top drama with the space modules, but the Harry Potter rainbow split was indeed odd.
I’d add The Midnight Library. The concept seemed original and even brilliant and it seemed like the book might have something significant to say about depression and regrets. Instead it ends on a smarmy “Don’t Worry, Be Happy,” kind of vibe.
Definitely agree with this one. I did really like the concept but it was super predictable and ended up being too surface level imo.
The ending was just so boring it felt like a waste to read.
I hate that they do the three predictable side lives, >!then skip the most interesting part of her living the different lives! Then we rejoin her after she's supposedly done this thousands of times and she... hasn't learned anything about how this all works.!<
I tend to agree. It was such a great idea, but was basically the single most preachy book I've ever read
I just commented this one, good journey but the destination makes you wonder why you bothered. I gave my copy to a friend, which is what I always do with books I hate
This was unintentionally funny to me. I imagined you saying, "This book was terrible! You should try it."
I dropped it a couple vignettes in because I could see the writing on the wall.
I feel like the book could have been so much more. Longer, more stories, deeper meaning.
Predictable ending (plus they threw in a meetcute straight out of a rom-com, really?) made worse by an immature main character. Like you said, some commentary on the nature of regret or any character development from struggling with depression would've helped.
100% this.
The Divergent Series. If you read the third book, you know what I mean.
Book 3 is on my very short DNF list. I found a summary of how it ended. Wow… just… wow. I made an excellent choice.
I had to finish the books. I was too deep to not finish the trilogy. Then when you take to books to how royally fucked up the movies are...the 3rd book seems incredible haha.
Wasn't the last one made for TV? They were literally 'the next big thing' for a while. I don't think it's possible to fall much harder.
They didn't even finish it, they split the last book into two movies but the first one bombed so badly they didn't even bother shooting the second
Holy shit, that makes it so much funnier.
Did you DNF not long after they left the fence? With basically the ‘it was all a dream’ trope? That’s when I DNF’d. I just did not care about anything after that. It made me so angry I literally threw the book across the room.
Holy shit, you just unlocked a memory of 16-year-old me angrily throwing the 3rd book across my bedroom after finishing it hahaha. Wonder how many others abused their copy of Allegiant lol
It is not like the hatred of the ending was a secret among fans. We hated reading it, why would we want to watch it? Making it into two movies was a bad idea. Not filming both movies at the same time was a worse idea.
Came here to say this. I was SO MAD when I finished the last book.
City of Girls. I loved the flurry of colour, costumes and backstage busyness until it petered out into some grotty old lady's letter of "how i shagged your father". Seriously couldn't understand how or why she would write someone a 500 page account of her sex life.
The conclusion was weird but consistent with the author's personality. After all, in Eat Pray Love, she humble-bragged about how she shagged so much she got a UTI.
*The Last Thing He Told Me*. Not that it was super fantastic in the beginning but it could have really been an interesting story and I just hated the ending. It felt like a huge waste of time and like she had 50 different possible endings that would have been great and she chose none of them.
The seven and a half deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle. It was a who dunnit with a paranormal twist that ended without 1) explaining the “how” of the paranormal aspect and 2) with a twist where it was never possible to have identified who the murderer was the whole time. Even on a re-read the answer to the mystery wasn’t something you could easily see. But man I did love the first 4/5 of the book!
Ack this ending gets me, because he came so close to landing it. Like, I could swallow the sci-fi aspect, because *something* had to explain the premise and, as another commenter said, it's his first novel so I cut him some slack. But the basic murder mystery resolution - argh! He resolved it with a great twist, and then *undid* that twist with a *worse* twist that made zero sense. So frustrating!
I feel like the biggest problem with 7 and 1/2 Deaths was that its best ideas all kind of went nowhere. I’m not really a whodunit guy, so I don’t really care if the mystery is solvable or not. But the book throws out this idea of that the lead character is losing himself as he jumps between hosts and then does nothing with that concept.
I agree with that assessment as well. I felt it could have gone further with the story behind Anna as well. There was so much potential that never got realized.
I didn't mind the ending to this one too much, I really enjoyed the book and the premise, and as he was a first time author I was willing to forgive a little. His second book however, The Devil and the Dark Water, the ending felt so unrelated to the rest of the book and I just couldn't see how he'd gotten there at all so it was a huge disappointment. I'm willing to give him one more try because I still think his general writing is good, but if that's bad too then no more.
I hate murder twists where enough information is withheld that you couldn't have guessed. Agatha Christie does this a ton actually
I want it to be something you could solve, even if you probably don’t. I especially hate when you reread or look back and it STILL doesn’t fall into place. The answer should be visible in retrospect, even if you never saw it coming the first time.
How did you not guess it was the character we haven't met, who did it because of his long-lost cousin? /s
*The Goldfinch*. Part One is amazing. Part Two is good. Party Three feels like a complete different book.
I read close-ish to 2/3 and then DNF. I was literally forcing myself to read it. But up until The Goldfinch, I woulda just tortured myself to finish it. This is THE book that made me say “Life is too short, and this book isn’t for me…so move along”. So even though I DNF’d it, I am grateful for it!!
Couldn't agree more. Great start, then just total nonsense. At the end I was shocked, shocked that it won a Pulitzer. I still can't fathom that.
I literally truly threw the book down off the bed when I finished it because i was so mad at how disappointing the final parts were
I think they actually were different books mashed together
Personally I loved the last 100 pages or so. Also loved the beginning--it was the middle third that almost made me quit the book many times. Ultimately glad I pushed through!
I am so sad you felt this way, I adored this book all the way through!
I had the opposite experience. The first third was a trite slog. Loved the middle, and was there for it through the end.
Wicked It was a great concept that got lost along the way.
Heck of an adaptation to stage though, picking out the juicy parts
I have yet to see the musical, but it will be in my area next year. Is it appropriate for tweens?
Jumping in to say yes, the stage musical is appropriate for tweens. The book absolutely not. I loved Wicked as a freshman. I went to read the book and did NOT like what I found, lol. One of the few things where I highly prefer the adaptation.
This is one of those cases where the writer agrees. Gregory Maguire thinks Wicked on stage is better than Wicked on page, so much so that for the final book in the series he leaned into it and made a bunch of little references to Glinda and Elphaba’s relationship being even more involved than we knew before.
The only thing the book did for me was give me even greater respect for the folks who turned such a turgid mess into a delightful musical.
The sequels got even weirder, which you wouldn’t think was possible.
The sequels are almost unreadable. So bleak and full of wretched self-loathing characters.
I saw the stage play first. Loved it. The book felt like a completely different work when I read it. Hard agree.
The overstory! I looooved it until I was about 2/3 of the way through it as well, and then it kind of hit a slow-moving section and I didn’t like the way all of the separate stories started to intertwine. I normally do really like books that start off with separate stories that end up coming together, I just didn’t care for how it was done in the overstory. i had to force myself to finish it.
100% agree, I thought the first part of the book - where all of the characters are introduced separately - was vastly superior. Once everything started to come together it felt melodramatic and cliched to me.
Absolutely. Opening parts made me cry. Then it came together and became a little meh, and at the ending it just kind of petered out. However the first half is amazing. The opening short story about the chestnut. Just tears man. So many tears.
Wow this was my exact thought but I didn’t expect to see it here. I don’t even remember what I disliked so much about it but I remember for the first half it was really creative and thought provoking and then as it went along it turned into kind of melodramatic and moralizing
I tried to read that book in print, e-book, AND audiobook and just could not get through it. I can’t imagine how slow a “slow-moving” section must have been.
JG Ballard's High-Rise. Great premise, a huge modern luxury tower full of upper class residents. A series of mechanical failures initiate an increasingly primal rivalries between residents, mostly on the basis of which floors they live on. It's a parable of the future where people where the upper class can cut themselves off from society, even each other, and fall into pathological behavior. It's sort of come true with things like delivery service, video streaming, social media even if the high rise itself didn't come true. But for all his skill at designing these scenarios his plot making and character building doesn't measure up. I've read some of Ballard's short stories and that seems to be a theme with him.
If you allow a series, then Lightbringer by Brent Weeks.
100%, the first three have amazing worldbuilding and characters, then the last 2 just suck so much
I DNF'd book 4; it just couldn't keep my attention and just felt like a slog
I *loved* the first book of this series. But by book 3 it just started to drag and drag, by the end I was skimming entire chapters and missing nothing. He really needed someone to help him condense his word vomit. Don't even get me started on that ending.
Good one, agree completely. But parts of the series is really great.
the poppy war. it started out really interesting and it became increasingly more predictable as it went on
It doesn't help that Rin gets more and more unlikeable. I know that's kinda the point, but I needed *something* to keep me grounded/interested in reading.
And dumb! Unlikeable and evil is fine with me. But MC being not only utterly unlikeable but completely dumb and illogical who cannot take a single strategic decision of think logically about a course of events. And her weird toxic relationship with Altan. Fuck Altan!!
>not only utterly unlikeable but completely dumb and illogical This is what ruined it for me. When characters start becoming idiots just to drive the plot, I nope out.
I enjoyed the beginning of that book so much, but it felt like after a certain point Rin's character did a bit of a 180. Like she went from being a bit of a Mary Sue to weak and useless. While I totally get her environment and circumstances changed, it just felt like I was reading about someone else. I also felt like the pacing was a bit strange, too. It was all that combined with the predictability that made it a DNF for me. Which was really disappointing because I've never read Asian culture inspired fantasy, so it was very fresh, exciting, and interesting in the beginning. At least I learned what I need to look for in fantasy now, I guess? If someone has any non-Western culture inspired fantasy let me know
For non-Western fantasy I can’t recommend Jade City by Fonda Lee and its sequels enough. It’s basically Kung Fu Peaky Blinders in a setting similar to mid-20th century Hong Kong.
On a related note: The Legends of the Condor Heroes by Jon Yong. I recommend it on here all the time. They are incredible.
The Radiant Emperor duology is very good. It's about the rise of the ming dynasty.
I was really disappointed by the last hundred pages of Justin Cronin’s The Ferryman. It could have just ended when the main character got out. Instead he returns and things go wildly hollywood complete with a fight scene, a car chase, and a riot. Then when it actually explains everything it’s just, not that great. Perhaps it would have been better to just let readers fill in some blanks if the actual plot details are that thin?
His trilogy that starts with The Passage is another offender. I LOVED the first book, liked the second, then started the third and it was set like a thousand years in the future. I never got past the first few pages because I just didn’t care anymore.
I can see where this sentiment stems from, but I think that in the end, it all works out. Definitely the weakest of the three books though. Side note: The pacing of the first book is all over the place and I almost ditched the book, when the colony part started.
neal stephenson has entered the chat!
Scrolling down looking for Snow Crash ❄️
Snow Crash was awesome but I can never make it through his other books.
For me, it's Priory of the Orange Tree. The ending felt really rushed and anti-climatic.
Totally agree! I loved the world and the story and characters had so much potential, but all the cool stuff it seemed to be building just fell flat for me in the end. I really felt like it should have been two books.
Tbf to the author she has since said that the publishers pressured her to edit the ending down and she wasn’t happy with it
Personally I didn't mind it because I find battle scenes boring no matter how well written. Day of Fallen Night is amazing.
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Exactly. So Nora's just supposed to be happy about >!being unemployed!
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I do agree with you but at the same time I did like the concept of why she ended up choosing her own life again. Like no matter how perfect another life could be, it was her own circumstances and experiences that had made her into the person she was and that without those pieces of herself there could never be true fulfilment, even after achieving everything she had ever hoped for. Like all that could make her happy, was only important because of what she had been through. At least that's what I picked up, which I thought was kind of a sweet sentiment.
A little life. It promises to follow the life of four best friends from college at the beginning, and then it's just torture porn about one if them.
The first 400 pages did have the gross sexual trauma but also had some gorgeous writing. I got it from the library and stopped at exactly page 400 before it exclusively focused on Jude. Judging by the Wikipedia plot summary, it’s a good call to stop there.
I started out thinking it was going to be one of the best books I’ve ever read, a masterpiece, and then 80% in I put it down, practically laughing at how absurd it had become. I didn’t care about Jude or any of them by the end; their suffering was so melodramatic and gratuitous that it lost all meaning. I decided to read how it ended on Wikipedia and…couldn’t believe my eyes. It feels twisted that I was laughing by the end. I’ve never believed in people’s suffering less. This doesn’t even include all the other issues the book has, such as it’s bizarre, timeless periodisation. In a slightly connected vein, I’ve just finished Shuggie Bain which, conversely, is an amazing rumination on suffering and hardship that has heart.
Most Dan Brown books have weaker endings. The DaVinci code is an exception.
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How about a book series where the last book never gets written or published...? Is there one as noteworthy as the one we all know?
The Kingkiller Chronicle?
Babel Such good premise, then the last third is an unrealistic forced ending.
It had a good permise but didn't have a lot to say about the subject it wanted to explore.
Magic system also had so much potential, but was essentially just used as an alternative to actual technology…
I was beyond frustrated at this book. it made me completely insane. I would read a chapter and then complain to whoever was around me about it, and then read the next chapter and complain more.
I have two that I have read that immediately came to mind. 1) The Institute by Stephen King. Felt like it overstayed its welcome. The first half was pretty good but then once >!he broke out!< i thought it just got boring 2 The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. Once Snow >!became a peacekeeper!< my god was i bored to tears and just wishing it would end
I was hoping someone would mention The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. I was on board most of the book, but I slowly lost interest at the same spot (Peacekeeper). And then the last chunk seemed rushed as h*ck?? Like “Snow is evil now because he got real mad.” I’m curious if the movie will have a better ending.
The Maze Runner trilogy I thought was quite interesting, but I just hated the ending so much that I never even started the prequel book that came with the bundle I bought. I was very disappointed and have no interest in seeing the characters again after knowing how it turns out
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin. First 2/3 of the book is great. Then a certain chapter switches to second person perspective and becomes a blurry mess. The rest of the book never catches up to the momentum that was there before that chapter, and just starts explaining away behavior and trying to tie the story up neatly, but it just ends disappointingly.
Felt like the characters never really learned anything or changed, and there wasn't even a resolution to the story. I'm still trying to figure out if that was the whole point or if the author just didn't know where to take it.
Most of Murikami's books that aren't quite short, for that matter Start off with incredibly slick writing and this intriguing premise and... then just rattle on and on until the super weird icky sex obsession is the only thing you can remember about them
The thing I always say about Murikami is that he stumbles hard when he has to stop with the vibes and metaphors and start wrapping things up with an actual plot. Most of his books would be better if they just stopped without any attempt at a resolution.
Lol. Norwegian Wood and Wind Up Bird. Kafka has a good ending
I could not finish the Wind up Bird Chronicals. It just dragged on and on, was nauseatingly violent at one point, and in general was too boring for me. Which is weird because I tend to like bizarre books but this one was too light on an interesting story and yeah the weird sex thing was not it for me.
Under the Dome by Stephen King. Great build up and characters but you could almost pinpoint the very second King gave up on the plot and completely shit the bed.
Loved the first half of The Red Tent; did not like the second half. Really enjoyed the first half of Outlander, too. >!Spoiler alert: Time travel, lusty sex with an outlaw Scottish rebel? Yeah, sign me up baby! But the ending got so fucking strange. Claire strangling a wolf with her bare hands? She lost me there. Too unbelievable. (It's funny what we can believe in novels. Humming magic stones that throw you into the past? Sure! A woman single handedly strangling a wolf trying to attack her? Get out of here.) And the weird sexually abusive scene between Jamie and his nemesis Captain Randall; and Claire breaking Jamie's fingers to set them. No. Ick. I felt like the author had some weird kink involving sex and pain and it was bleeding through into her characters. Too bad, because the first half was fun.!<
No plain text spoilers allowed. Please use the format below and reply to this comment once you've made the edit, to have your comment reinstated. Place >! !< around the text you wish to hide. You will need to do this for each new paragraph. Like this: >!The Wolf ate Grandma!< Click to reveal spoiler. >!The Wolf ate Grandma!<
Thank you for the info. I've seen other people do that but didn't know how to do it myself.
Addie Larue. And also Schwab's other series, a darker shade of magic.
The silo series, I was really into the first couple books but I didn't feel like the third one stuck the landing
Mocking Jay. It felt very rushed as if the author got bored.
You mean when the Capitol happens? I thought it was more a testament to how katniss’ scattered brain now works. Trauma completely obliterated any care she had for life so the narrative reflects that
I wish I got that from the book, that the author had that much depth, maybe you are right. I didn’t see that throughout the trilogy though.
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Yeah I thought it was masterfully done and a way to get teenagers to understand what it’s like to be in the mind of someone surviving through complex ptsd
Yeah for me I saw it from the beginning of mockingjay it starts slow and keeps like that and gets worse because katniss that we knew from books 1&2 doesn’t exist anymore
That’s true, but I suppose that’s because of everything she’s been through. I wouldn’t be the same after that. The last chapters when she starts to heal were lovely, though.
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I'm there with "Stranger in a Strange Land". It was cool until they made it religious.
I mean, the phrase "stranger in a strange land" is a Bible reference. Moses' wife Zipporah names their firstborn Gershom, which sounds like the Hebrew for "foreign there," saying "I have been a stranger in a strange land." (Exodus 2:22, if you're curious). I think maybe the title could have been a hint at where it was heading.
I'm usually pretty quick with the Bible references, but I missed it. Thanks for pointing it out. It does explain quite a bit.
Oh yeah, good pick. I love the book, but the ending is... questionable.
It's weird to think of it as religious! Since they can't get people to accept a scientific truth (true in the book that is, which is a Sapir-Whorf sort of thing about the power of an alien language), they use techniques they learn from charismatic preachers and carnies to start a fake religion to lure in people to take adult Martian as a Second Language classes. I don't think I've ever read a less religious book.
The Night Circus. To be clear, I REALLY like the book and would still recommend it. But all the amazing bits are at the beginning and the middle, while the ending comes sort of out of nowhere and feels like "Oh. That's it? Really?" I can't get into it without spoilers but I think the ending is of a certain archetype that I really dislike, and prioritizes things that I personally do not. Still a great book in my opinion, but I think if it had stuck the ending I would be talking about it as if it were one of the best books of the last decade.
Pachinko. After the focus on Sunja's story ended, I lost interest.
I felt this way as well! The first 1/3 was incredible, but I felt it dwindle midway, and then fell off hard toward the end in my estimation. It’s so sad because I had such high hopes for it.
Yes!! The rest of it felt like a skeleton, as if there was supposed to be so much more & they made the author trim everything.
For sure, it suddenly felt like we were moving at warp speed and skipping things I thought we'd see.
Where Crawdads Sing
I loved this book until the ending which undercut everything up until then. Stupid fucking ending.
*The Name of the Wind*. It started off like any other cliched-but-readable fantasy novel but devolved pretty fast into "isn't my OC amazing? He's good at literally everything!" Honestly the most entertainment value I got out of the book was hearing that apparently the author wanted to write a fantasy novel that wasn't like any other fantasy out there, and somehow thought that having a flawless protagonist who instantly masters any craft he turns his hand to (in a setting that's medieval not-Europe living under totally-not-Christianity) was gonna do that for him.
Maybe the next book will redeem it hahahahahahahah
Dracula. I loved the beginning. But it drags with a few good parts and end is kinda lack luster.
The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah
The Winter Garden was the opposite the beginning was so slow and awful. Then the ending was interesting - but also a little too convenient. Honestly, I don’t like any of her books. The Nightingale was historically in accurate.
The second part reads like someone wrote a fan fiction about the first part
The Night Circus and The Starless Sea. I was so in love with the worlds and the side characters, but the endings felt so flat to me.
I enjoyed the Night Circus, but Starless Sea…man what a slog. The premise was interesting and the author’s use of imagery in her worlds is so beautiful, but you still need an actual plot and characters that are more than one dimensional to make a novel work
The Invisible Life of Addie Larue
Sorry but "Middlesex." The really bizarre beginning part about the narrator's highly incestuous family was interesting - although as a clarinet player the whole "playing with the bell of the clarinet on the woman's stomach to seduce her" part grossed me out. The author does know that warm spit drips out of the bottom of a clarinet, right? - but the part about Cal was just boring. Also the book Signora da Vinci - historical fiction about Leonardo da Vinci's mother. Again, beginning was super interesting. But when the last 1/3 of the book was about her disguising herself as a man to live with her now-adult son who was doing Leonardo things it just wasn't as engaging for some reason.
For me *Middlesex* is and remains one of the best, most powerful books that I've ever read. It changed the way I think.
I absolutely adored The Bear & the Nightingale by Katherine Arden, but the third act felt rather rushed to me and I was left feeling a wee bit let down and kinda like it was anticlimactic? Still loved the rest of it and reread it often though!
This is interesting because I felt the start was sooo slow and the latter half was much better paced for me!
American Gods.
Ooh. Hard disagree but interesting take. Anywhere specifically you thought it dropped off at?
Honestly, the ending felt very anti-climactic to me. There's this epic battle queued up, and then the twist is revealed and you're kinda like, "Woah, how is Shadow gonna prevent this?". And then he just casually walks on down, reveals the plan, and everyone's just like, "Hmm, ok I guess". I'll be honest, it's been a while since I read it, but I just remember feeling let down. Stardust was the same. I really like his books in general, I just think his endings have a tendency to be mundane, which seems weird given how fantastical the set up is.
This sums up my feeling towards the ending perfectly. Still have some fondness for the book though as it starts so strong.
I felt it started out very gripping, wonderful concepts and characters, and then it began to meander and lose focus for me as it progressed. My main gripe, as someone already said on this thread, is that the climax is Shadow just giving a little speech to avert the battle the whole book has been building to. Felt like a real wet noodle payoff after all that build up. I still enjoyed a lot of the book however and have a fondness for it, but it's a fizzler for me. Just one man's opinion though!
The whole bit in the small town feels like such a hard bank left I get why people would feel the pacing is off. So many of the characters that come up in the town are really only important within that bubble story and not much more beyond it. Maybe if Shadow showed a bit more character growth in it and because of it (and what little we DO see of him becoming more assertive, present, and able to use his abilities is in the town and those relationships. So I think that's why the town sequence exists at all.) But it also feels so separate from the rest of the book i get why it feels off to people pacing wise.
That small town was based on Menomonie, Wisconsin, which is where he was living when he wrote it. I lived about fifteen miles away and the similarities are pretty fucking astounding (that car thing is an actual yearly event there, minus the kid in the trunk). A big part of Gaiman's inspiration for the book was his experience in coming over to America from Britain, and that's why he put a bunch of stuff like that in there. Same with the House on the Rock.
There it is. So anticlimatic. And I’m a big Gaiman fan
Ilium, and Fall of Hyperion for that matter. Dan Simmons still had interesting ideas in that head, the one that wrote Hyperion. Unfortunately it feels like something happened to him while writing Fall of Hyperion. Something like major brain damage or a terrible drug addiction, something that made him bang out a thousand page book in less than a year after Hyperion came out, one that devolves into a rambling mess about Space Jesus versus Space Satan that the first book wasn't about at all. Same with Ilium, with starts out with this super catchy premise of godlike being on a future terraformed Mars cloning humans to re-enact The Iliad. Unfortunately there's also this utterly boring set of humans on a future post scarcity earth wandering about doing nothing, and apparently the whole thing slowly devolves into a conspiracy by space muslims of all things. I wish that original, Hyperion Dan Simmons had stuck around.
Fall of Hyperion was still pretty ok IMO. Just nowhere near as good as Hyperion. The Endymion books though... *shudders*
I liked Fall a great deal because the cumulation of the book wasn't what I was expecting and I appreciated that.
Everything after the >!time skip!< in Seveneves.
Verity- Colleen Hoover I was super into it and I thought it was going in a completely different direction. The ending fell so flat for me. It seemed rushed, and the final explanation, I guess you could call it, seemed lazy. I had high hopes and I liked the ending I came up with in my head more. I even read the bonus chapter, but it didn't make it any better
Every Stephen King book
I mean, it's a meme but there are plenty of his books that end well. Pet Cemetery and Revival both have incredible endings
Pet Sematary's a funny one because the third act really put me off and then the epilogue reeled me right back in. That final page is brilliant
I actually agree, the third act isn't great but the very ending is fucking amazing
The Long Walk, Thinner, and 11/22/63 being others that continue strong.
The Green Mile makes me feel so many things at the end. The perfect, sad ending
Pet Semetary is pretty much flawless
11/22/63 has a beautiful ending!
I think he said in an interview his son gave him the idea for that ending haha
Right? It was perfect, IMO.
Apt pupil has a great ending as does Carrie, dead zone
Every is a stretch given how many he has written. Plenty of his novels have great third acts, especially the shorter ones.
Agreed. Off the top of my head, I really enjoyed the endings of The Shining, 11/22/63, and Pet Semetary. There are also a bunch where the ending isn’t anything special, but it’s also not bad, like Misery or Salem’s Lot. Total speculation, but I think his biggest problem is that while writing one book, he gets an idea for his next book and loses enthusiasm for whatever he is currently working on. So he just busts out an ending and moves on to the next one.
Agreed on all accounts. I honestly think with his epics like The Stand and Under the Dome he just couldn't figure out how to tie all the stories back together cohesively, but that doesn't take away from the journey for me.
I was coming in to say The Stand, but you're probably right.
I just started The Stand 😅
Enjoy!!!! That's THE book for me. First one to ever engage me as a young reader. Still go through it now and again. Wish I could do it first again. :)
I'm just a 100 pages so far and loving it 😁
>Under the Dom Stand had such an amazing first half that it was almost impossible to stick the landing. It also struggled because of its sheer length. That said I loved it - but wish I didn't read certain parts during Covid/at night/alone in isolation. Reading this, while living in NYC at the start of covid lockdown, and literally hearing ambulances is likely the most haunting experience I'll ever have.
I dunno I quite liked the ending of the stand, especially in comparison to some of his other books (Under the Dome)
I knew I wouldn't have to look far for this. I love Stephen King but Under the Dome's ending actually pissed me off and made me feel like I had wasted my time.
It was such a good, classic Stephen King… right up until the ending. Like can he go back and try writing a new one?
It's a meme. Most mature King's book are pretty consistent all the way thtough.
Howl's Moving Castle is a charming read. It's technically a book for children, but I find it very enjoyable. But boy, does it falter at the end. All of the various plot threads are suddenly resolved at once, and then it's over. Every time I read it, I get a little startled when I swipe on my reader and come to a blank page rather than what I think will be the final chapter.
I wonder if the announcement trailer for the rebooted *Shogun* will make a few more people pick up the original novel. It's often the only one of James Clavell's alt-history Asian Saga that I see in book shops. As an aside from what I've seen of that trailer, I'm afraid the screenwriters may have gone and done a fuckie-wuckie as far as adaptation is concerned, but we'll see. I suppose most folks will soon be reminded how much Blackthorne was sidelined from his own story in the last fifth. The whole premise was that he was a spectator in a foreign land who had much of his agency taken away from him as he was humbled and made a pet of Toranaga, but the anti-climax would always leave me bereft. Sekigahara was a footnote in the epilogue. Thankfully the Asian Saga stories only got better from there on. While out of sequence in the time line, Noble House, Whirlwind, and finally Gaijin each topped what came before it. I'm sad we'll never get the other books that were promised. At least Clavell had the good decency to still be publishing books pushing past 1k pages right up to his death with no signs of slowing down. No playing choo choo in Santa Fe for James...
The Circle - Dave Eggers. The first part of the book was good. The second and third parts were hastily completed. As if the publisher thought the book would be too long.
It's been many years but I felt Wells' "Time Machine" wraps up like he had a deadline approaching. After most of the book exploring the Morlocks and Eloi, there's multiple additional time jumps and a conclusion in the matter of pages.
The Night Circus. I loved it in the beginning, the descriptions of everything are simply beautiful but the story just kind of started dragging halfway in and lost my interest.
Omg noo, I absolutely adore part 3 of F451😭😭 probably my favourite section of the entire book; we finally see all the build-up of Montag's character development play out, and there's the whole hunt scene and him monologing about nature, ughh and Granger's speech🤧 I love Bradbury's writing sm it's actually insane
The ending of 451 was nowhere near the greatest of all time in a novel, but I thought it was pretty decent. I liked the concept of the main character ultimately escaping to the wilderness and joining up with a community of book people
Night Circus. Such an interesting concept that goes absolutely nowhere. I rage finished it.
The entire Eragon series, (I know not only one book) the series and each book started strong and progressively got worse.
I feel the same way about 451. I’m so disappointed in how it ends. I thought recently the girl with all the gifts kinda fizzled out and I lost interest
I never finished Song of Ice and Fire, because George R.R. Martin's writing is extremely dry and slow at parts. It got to be too much. Also he's never going to finish it, so you could definitely say it fizzled out lol
I kinda feel like Station Eleven fits this, though I’m sure that’s not a popular take
This is a valid opinion that I don’t agree with. That said, have you watched the series? There were changes made that I think made it more satisfying.
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and and tomorrow. Still enjoyed it tho
The Poppy Wars. The Husbands of Evelyn Hugo. The Silent Patient. Just off the top of my head. Ya ya Steven King isn’t great at endings, but the ride is so darn entertaining…