[chokipokilo]

For me the ending can either either make or break the story. Unfortunately, most of the fantasy I've read is either incomplete or has a weak ending. Thus far I've really only read two finished series where the ending was satisfying (LoTR and Mistborn series). So this thread is just to get opinions on which complete series/standalone novels have the best endings in fantasy.

[Esmenet]

Robin Hobb. Any of her series', but mainly the Tawny Man. Not then ending I wanted, but the best ending it could be.

[ChrisW]

You series? Crikey!

Of the top of my head without much thought, umm The Empire trilogy by Feist and Wurts and the Sundering duology by Carey. One happy, one sad.

[E_Moon]

Robin McKinley's Deerskin. Not a book for the fainthearted, though.

[Fred Gallney]

I think its the journey to the ending that really counts. Isn't that a widely known philosophy? Its the journey that counts more than the destination. To me a great journey would make up for a poor ending. A poor journey and a poor ending equates to...well...not the most desirable outcome.

[SLASH]

[QUOTE=Fred Gallney;550575]I think its the journey to the ending that really counts. /QUOTE]

Agreed
That being said Joe Abercrombie had some good unexpected endings with The First Law and Best Served Cold

[E_Moon]

Yes and no. In real-life journeys, the pleasant journey can be as good as--even better than--its ending. The classic road trip, for instance. That's when it doesn't really matter where you end up, or when, as long as you don't get sick, hurt, robbed, or stranded among people who eat stuff you can't stand.

But if your journey has a purpose--let's say, to finally meet and take home the child you are adopting from a foreign country...and though all the flights and ferries and whatever go fine, the end result is that some bureaucrat says "No," then it doesn't matter that the flight was smooth, customs waved you through, etc.

Episodic fictional narratives do not have the "shape" of what is generally called Story...they're just one thing after another strung together (travel-experience books, for instance Stevenson's "Travels with a Donkey," are the nonfiction or semi-fiction version of this.) If the incidents are interesting enough, if the "terrain" is interesting enough, then that's fine.

But Story has a purpose, a goal, and in Story the ending does matter--and all the pleasant scenery, all the good companions, all the pleasant or amusing incidents are not enough if what the reader wanted was a Story. It comes back to the implied contract between writer and reader: the writer says (in various ways, some written and some provided by the publisher and the cover art) that this is a Story, and it's a murder mystery or a war story or a spy story or a science fiction story. If I got to the end of a murder mystery, and the solving-the-murder plot disappeared and it turned into rambling disquisition on the detective's hobby of cooking with wild mushrooms...I'd be annoyed.

It's OK to want good strong endings to Stories. It's also OK to like (or even prefer) non-Story fiction. It's plums and mangos.

[molybdenum]

Oh no! Not the implied contract again. There is no implied contract between the writer of the book and the reader. The writer writes what he wants to write, and the reader reads it. The writer is under no obligation to give an ending that satisfies the reader, though it would behoove the author to do so, for obvious reasons.

The best author at ending books that I've read was mentioned in the original post. Brandon Sanderson. Mistborn had a great ending to every book in the series, Elantris had a good ending, and though the rest of the book was disappointing, Warbreaker may have had the best ending of them all. Even the Gathering Storm, which isn't really his book, had possibly the most satisfying ending of the entire series.

I liked the ending to "The Scar" as well, but I can understand how some people may have been frustrated with it.

[E_Moon]

Afraid we're going to have to disagree on that one. Here's my reason, though I won't belabor it in a long wrangle.

Writing for publication (unlike writing for merely personal pleasure with no intention of every showing it to anyone else) is a social activity. A performance activity, in fact, because what we have in written form now was once performed orally for the listener...stories were (and still are in some settings) told. As soon as an activity becomes social, all the people involved are...involved. Readers are active participants in creating what the words on the page become in their minds (one reason mis-reading can be so extreme...the reader veers off the text and constructs something that never existed.) From my POV, there is such a thing as a social contract that motivates cooperation...and part of that social contract involves mutuality in meeting expectations.

Anyway. Writers who want to be read write what they want--but then they choose the right audience for their work (sometimes with the help of publishers, sometimes not.) It's not that you write to an audience, but that you're honest about what's in the work--and thus help select the right audience. People who come to hear bluegrass don't want rock; people who come to hear rock don't want a piano recital. And people who pick up a fantasy want a fantasy (or SF or mystery or whatever their favorite kind of book is.) They expect honesty in the advertising and they get seriously annoyed if the book isn't what they thought it was going to be. (As witness multiple discussions online.) It's foolish to attempt to mislead people into buying the book...there are enough problems already, with the fuzzy definitions of genre boundaries, literary terms, etc., and making more people mad is bad for the bottom line...and the ego.

Writers are free to attempt to alienate readers, frustrate them, etc., if they want to--they can intentionally mislead readers about the kind of work they've done. What happens, in practical terms, is that they lose the readers they annoy or disappoint--and may or may not gain others. We can't help it when readers toss the book because of that reader's cootie-phobias. We can't help it when readers never pick it up because they just don't like that kind of book (genre, setting, whatever.) But we can help promising one kind of thing and handing them something else...at least, we can help doing it on purpose...we can choose not to do bait-and-switch on purpose.

But it's every writer's decision. I merely point out the consequences.

[Jeroen]

Episodic fictional narratives do not have the "shape" of what is generally called Story...they're just one thing after another strung together (travel-experience books, for instance Stevenson's "Travels with a Donkey," are the nonfiction or semi-fiction version of this.) If the incidents are interesting enough, if the "terrain" is interesting enough, then that's fine.


I'm not at all sure I know what you mean. In conventional narratology (it exists) people talk about the fabula, which is the chronological sequence of events. A writer can choose to jumble the fabula if it serves his/her purpose to write a good story, or he/she can stick to it and write an episodic, chronological story that is still as you call it a "story" with a purpose. I think what you are refering to is a traveloque, where the travel is all that matters.


Anyway. Writers who want to be read write what they want--but then they choose the right audience for their work (sometimes with the help of publishers, sometimes not.) [...] It's foolish to attempt to mislead people into buying the book...there are enough problems already, with the fuzzy definitions of genre boundaries, literary terms, etc., and making more people mad is bad for the bottom line...and the ego.


Well, I agree with you that readers are involved and that editors and publishers (because it is often they who are responsible for the marketing and not the writer) are wrong in mismarketing so that consumers are mislead. But the modern genres as we know it have grown out of the actions of booksalers and publishers to better sell stuff and writers have adapted to it. In the 19th century, most genres didnt exist and writers did not feel committed to a single one. Committing oneself to a single genre can constrict art. The same way that modern sciences are overlapping and cooperating to make new discoveries. Some writers intentionally cross genre boundaries because they want to expand and create, like mainstream authors venturing into SF territory, and if publishers don't know how to handle it, books get mismarketed. Those writers still choose a certain audience for their work, namely the onces that see the possibilities of crossing genre boundaries.