Happy Endings?

[Calandra]

As many of the series I read are unfinished, it's been a while since I've gotten to the "end" of one. However, I just did finish one, and predictably, everything ended up just as one would wish - the good end happily and the bad unhappily.

Well, maybe I'm a sadist, but I found myself wishing for something a bit more true to life. I mean, if every series has a happy ending, it takes a way a bit of the suspense doesn't it? I'm not saying that its necessary that a main character get killed off (as this too would become cliche if it happened in every book) but overall, the books that have stuck with me the most are the ones where the heros do not all live happily ever after.

What do people think about happy endings?

[Eurytus]

I often like bittersweet endings. I guess that's why I like the films Carlito's Way, Heat and Donnie Brasco.

Somehow if the hero dies it seems more poignant and memorable to me.

I like the ending to the Seven Samurai too. Where only the farmers have won and the Samurai lose. "we always lose".

[Calandra]

Mods - This thread is about books not Film & TV - please can you move to fantasy section.

Thanks.

[Iskaral Pust]

I love a good depressing ending, makes the book a lot more vivid, I think. It needs to be some kind of beauty, not just a mass cull type think. These books really get you thinking more, for example, Deadhouse Gates by Steven Erikson, wonderful ending and hardly what you would call happy.

[Gildor]

Not sure about happy endings in books prefer them morbid and depressing makes it a much more satisfying finish, and when you think that the author your reading has got the balls to do this. It makes it all the more satisfying that it won't be a happy ending all the time.





ASOIAF Spoiler





Especially in a Clash of Kings when winterfell has been razed to the ground, it gives out such a sense of loss when bran compares it to himself, yet I can't really call it an unhappy ending as there is still the foundations left :(
And yet it still manages to be a satysfying if sombre ending!