I know it sounds oxymoronic, books that kept you wonderfully entertained, relishing the final outcome, only to finish off in the most crap-ola of ways; perhaps not by every reader, but by you -- and that's all that counts. I just finished Big Brother by Lionel Shriver and it had such an ending. I won't spoil it in case it's on your to-read list and it does have some great reviews, just not from me. I have to patch the hole in the wall and my dog has PTSD after my rant.
Though I wouldn't call them crappy endings, I think the endings to some of Dostoevsky novels aren't good compared to the rest of the book. Almost always his books end by some character embracing Christianity. It gets old fast.
Under the Dome - The ending left me uttering a number of expletives. Queen of the Damned - I barely finished it. The moment I got to the part where we're told who the first two vampires in history were, I threw the book against the wall. It was the most ridiculous idea I had ever read.
Now I am wondering, as readers, do you folks get irked when you feel like you got robbed of a good ending?
I do feel a bit robbed, but the end is only a small part of the story. A story, like life, is about the journey, not the destination. Although, unlike life, a story's destination isn't always death, so I'd prefer it be made a good one.
My take. The HG worked really well until the last book when she diminished the character of Katniss too far in favour of a message I didn't need to hear. It had a preachy, creepy kind of feel to it.
I'd hate writing a spoiler for you in an attempt to clarify myself. All things considered the series is still worth a read.
Harry Potter It was satisfying, all right, but I think I puked in my mouth a bit. Maybe it doesn't make it crappy, then, but at least it wasn't a good one, afaic.
I actually never finished the 5th book of Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire and it's an on-going series, but with all of the interesting (to me) characters dead, it kinda has to have a crappy ending from my perspective. And some of my favorite characters (7 altogether) met crappy endings. I don't mean their deaths were particularly gruesome (I guess you could say some were), but some felt just pointless; deaths that the characters could've avoided if they hadn't been so incredibly stupid in that one situation while they had survived so many, much worse situations. Some of them just didn't make sense from a logical standpoint. I, for one, didn't really enjoy the ending of The Dark Tower. I did like the first 4 books though. To me, the ending was, well, a bit stale and uneffective. I mean, I don't even remember much of the ending whereas I do remember the 5-6 first books and their endings, but then again, the series went downhill after Wizard, so there wasn't much the ending could salvage anyway.
I've actually heard this from so many people that I actually stopped reading The Dark Tower after book 4. I really can't see any reason to continue on.
I recently read a few of the novels by Diana Gabaldon, and have basically given up on them. The first book (Outlander) was okay, but I could have done without that ending. Then by the time I got to the third or fourth I had had enough for sure and was getting disgusted already. I guess they're classified as historical fiction (mostly), and I certainly appreciate the degree of research that went into them, but most definitely fell into the category of 'I wanted to throw this book at the wall' by the time I was finished reading it.
Iron Council by China Miéville. I've always known that Miéville is a very political creature and in the first two books of his Bas Lag series, which were very, very, very good, there were hints to this, no doubt. The handlingers, both dextrier and sinistrier were obvious metaphors. The Weaver. But in Iron Council he went full bore, and it only got thicker as the story went on. Even the fact that the protagonist was of LGBT interest, which he handled really rather well, was not really enough to hold me. I almost didn't finish it. It was like pulling teeth.
Harry Potter: The Deathly Hallows (series ending), like seriously there's better fan fic endings than the ending JK gave
Actually I threw the FIRST book at the wall, but that's another story... Totally agree with every word. Eddard's death was fantastic, served a purpose, got the story really going. But after that? Seems Martin was introducing characters just to kill them off, while the one character I would have like to see DIE early on was that wussy Danerys—who is still alive and kicking, if rumours are true. 7 books now, and still no end in sight. Still lots of people to kill, never mind the new ones he'll doubtless introduce. Shame. A really talented writer, lost in the maze of his own plotting shintangle.
