Quote:
Originally Posted by pwalker8
Ah, I see, the flip side of the neverending series.
I feel the same way about Michael Stackpole. He's written several books where I thought it was going really well, then had an ending where I wanted to throw the book against the wall. It's like a great joke that has an incredibly lame punch line.
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I know, right? It's just...wrong. I feel like we should call that Reichenbach-Falls-ing a series. "Oh, yeah, screw it, I'm tired of writing this character/arc/whatever and so, omg, here are 10 empty pages, let's end this sucker."
That's how it feels. It's just...infuriating. His last one,
Shadows Fall, had this massively entertaining premise. Basically, that people and characters from fiction, myth, religion, et al who had been brought to life via
belief needed a place to retire to, when the populace stopped believing in them. Whether old Gods, or action-adventure characters, fables, you-name-it, they all end up at this town. This "place" had started out as a mere mention in his
Nightside series, which was fine, and then, he writes this standalone.
Fantastically entertaining and then, sort of like the absurdity of that Batman v. Superman movie, where they decide
and the whole ending abruptly shifts, the protagonist does something, and voila, in
seriously, like 2 pages. It's as though the second act took up to the last two pages of the book, and the third act was that two pages. Absolutely infuriating.
In several of his other series, he just (do NOT read if you haven't read his various series!!!!)
Talk about tooth-grinding.
Anyway...I get it. The author doesn't "owe" me anything. Basically, they owe us one good read, for our dollars. They aren't obligated to continue a series, etc. But daaaayam, when people invest in a series, it's not just a dollar investment; obviously, they're investing in the characters as well. Is it too much to ask for at least a complete, competently-done ending, when that time comes?
Hitch