Related to this: endings where people are abruptly evicted from a world and may or may not remember what happened. I am trying to remember the name of the most horrible book to do this to me – it started in a very bleak modern England and had a spear and a unicorn… Anyone? It may have been by Garner, and I can see the cover. Exclusion: people leave of their own free will or in the fulness of time (Lewis).

Hate/love: Absolute endings, where all characters are dealt with, all loose ends are tied up and the author makes quite clear that although the ending is (if not happy) satisfactory. These, properly done, reduce me to a sobbing mess. See: Prydain.

hi, just friended the LJ feed of this blog if you don’t mind – I’ve read some of your books and am a writer myself.

An ending I hate? SF or non-SF, that has to be an ending which is just too sugary, too good-to-be-true, where all the characters who could possibly create any trouble in the future kick the bucket, and the MCs have everything exactly the way they want. An ending that leaves no ambiguity, no sense of ‘I wonder what they’ll do with the rest of their lives’, no opportunity for the reader to imagine further interesting things happening.

yeah – that’s what I hate.

Endings where a major story line is not resolved. Yes, sometimes the writer wants something unresolved for the next trilogy, but all major threads should be wound up by the end of the trilogy.

Endings where the character hasn’t solved the problem for him/herself, but instead it’s an act of God. (I’m using Act of God in insurance terms here, not literally.) It worked once, for H. G. Wells (War of the Worlds), but it hasn’t worked since (and it didn’t work for the movie).

Endings where you finish the book and go, “What? I don’t get it.”

The other kind of ending that really irritates me, that puts me off reading anything else by that author is the kind where, suddenly, after a nice story the main character, either in the process of or just after saving the day has an epiphany and the whole style of the writing chages and suddenly whatever they’ve been fighting for becomes irrevelvant or a side issue. I don’t think I’ve explained it that well, so for example Ender’s Game did this, which is a pity because the rest of the book was brilliant and if it had just ended a chapter or so earlier I would have read the sequels.

I didn’t even bother to read the sequel.

Like Kendall, there are very few books where I really hate the ending. There have been a few Fantasy trilogies where I’ve found the third book disappointing or ‘unsatisfying’, tailing off after the promise of the first two volumes, but that’s not the same thing.

I also dislike books that are really depressing, have some sort of ray of hope then end in a horrible way (eg character now becomes paralysed just to show us things can always be worse).

Finally (like everyone else here) I hate books where I am turn the page and am surprised that it has ended as there was no sign that the story had concluded. It’s like the story wandered along until the author met their word limit.

I’ve just finished re-reading your Glory Isles trilogy and they finished in a very satisfactory manner!