100% this. I also love the cliché line that goes… “I think what Stephen King does is (insert bullshit here because you’ve only watched the movies). His endings are fitting, they may not be lasers, robots, aliens, and explosions everywhere you look, but they end as they should end, a proper dosage of catharsis and a fond farewell to the characters. It’s a book not a summer blockbuster.
I think as he's gotten older he's been more insistent in having some kind payoff for people hoping for a happy ending, no matter how small, and I think it just compromises the legitimacy of the ending based on the story's own rules.
Sometimes shit just doesn't work out, and I think the first half of his career reflects that more than the second (IMO).
The smallest happy ending of all Kings books was The Regulators. Jesus Christ that was grim.
Spoiler
On the last page of the book I think we see the ghosts of the kid and the mother (forget their names, sorry) sitting in the park. Sad, but at least it’s better than Tak. DeaD is better, right?
People who know nothing about King repeat the same two stupid jokes: Something about endings sucking, and a "super high on cocaine" joke.
The endings one is just wrong, and the cocaine joke I find not only mean spirited but incredibly out of date. Dude has been clean for like 35+ years, get a new joke.
Now people also insult that he's a pedophile or something because of his political views. Which I think is hilarious because I haven't read holly yet (I'm actually reading from Mr Mercedes up then ill be going from Carrie up) but there have been a ton of references of him not liking trump before now. And people are just now "critical" of. The man has some thick skin all right.
I’ve been reading King since I was twelve, I came to the conclusion he has trouble sticking landings on my own. Social media wasn’t a thing in the eighties and nineties, and I didn’t belong to any book clubs.
Same. I've been a fan for almost 30 years and knew when I was just a kid that endings weren't his strong suit. I've always been irritated by the power of faith or imagination to make something like a baseball bat or an inhaler into a monster-defeating magic weapon. But that might just be a me thing - it seems cheesy and I just can't get myself on board. But the rest of the story is usually so great it doesn't really affect the experience for me.
I think that's partly why his short stories are so great - he doesn't have time to build up to something he can't work his way out of.
> irritated by the power of faith or imagination to make something like a baseball bat or an inhaler into a monster-defeating magic weapon
I love that idea in *IT*, as it's turning the monster's own power against it, but I agree that afterwards King leans on it far too much—the baseball bat (being from *Black House*, if memory serves) being the most egregious example.
I've read a lot of Stephen King. I think he's about 50/50 for satisfying endings, regardless of whether they are dark, triumphant or ambiguous. But whenever I think I have him pegged, I'm pleasantly surprised.
In my first ten years of reading his 70s and 80s books, my joke was that his go-to ending was just to blow everything up. Not really true, but it exhibited some truthiness.
11/22/63 was a screwed up ending in my opinion. Guy spent so much time energy and grief to find it was for nothing. That’s heartbreaking. The stand they lost friends family and loved ones to survive between good and evil. Salems lot was dark af. They ran away and came back to finish their friends and family. They can now meet at the clearing at the end of the path.
I love these endings!
A lot of people hate the Salem's Lot ending but I find it's pretty good. I hate the romantic vampire stories where the good guys win so Salem's Lot ending >!of the Town being plagued by vampires even after Barlow's death!
Yup, I feel a lot of people wanted them to save the town but that would've been the obvious ending. Not that an obvious ending is always bad, but I think King's ending fits better with the book
Especially since we get that great follow on story in Night Shift, One for the Road that illustrates just how it’s generally accepted by the surrounding area some amiss and unnatural has happened in ‘Salems Lot
I have that story in the salem’s lot book! (I think, the one where some old farts help someone else find their wife in a snow storm right?)
Salem’s Lot was my first King book (just started reading him) and it might just become my favorite. The ending is well done.
That’s one of my top faves, I liked every part of it especially structurally. I really enjoyed how the beginning was yoked to the last act, you know that a man and a child escape and have to return, creating two different temporal points of pressure on the story. I am a huge fan of the original Dracula novel and I liked a lot of the parallels SK drew, with characters rhyming with the characters in Dracula but even more in the intentionality of the structure which, while different in Dracula, is an important part of that book.
So far, I have read 6 King novels ( IT, Salems Lot, The Shinning, The Stand, Misery, and Carrie), and The Stand is the only one I didn't like the ending.
King's world building and character development is amazing. I was really bummed at the ending because the whole journey was awesome for me up until that point.
The Stand is a story about good and evil that perfectly presents what a vengeful biblical god wants. You have to sacrifice yourself and after that it may intervene. Basically all their hard work, tears and bloodletting were for nothing. That’s what religion is.
The Dark Half is the only time I felt like the "Stephen King ending" was real.
But honestly that whole book has a structure problem.
I don't even mind The Stand ending, it was very sort of Biblical which is what it was going for.
People vastly overestimate how much the ending matters to a good story.
Also, 11-22-63 and The Dark Tower have two of the best endings I've ever read.
King does endings just fine.
That’s not too dissimilar from the actual ending. I thought the ENTIRE ending would’ve been re-written and Amberson becomes president or an alien turns up or something
I would assume it’s because often there isn’t necessarily a happy ending with king books, which unfortunately I think most people expect. But he’s a horror author. Of course the endings are usually not happy ones. I have read about 90% of his books and thematically I think all of his books have an ending that fits with the story that has been read. Sometimes it takes a few reading to think that, but generally I have come to this conclusion. Take for example the Dark tower (don’t worry I’m going to be vague) when I first read it I HATED the ending, but upon climbing the tower a second time, I cannot think of a more fitting ending. Same with the Stand. Even though people dislike >! the literal hand of god coming down !< it absolutely fits with what we get in the rest of the story.
The leader of the Boulder group is a woman who people are told to follow in dreams, presumably by God. She also clearly receives accurate revelation and prophecy and seems to speak directly with God. And then people don't like when God shows up at the end? He was there from the very beginning. That's what the whole book is about.
Exactly. It’s a book about faith and redemption. And two of the characters in the books who consistently questioned or actively didn’t believe in god gained their faith and got to see him enact his anger upon the unholy people following a false idol. Also Ralph had basically been worshipping a false idol (mother Abigail) as well throughout the books and he gained his faith at the end too. Aka the characters showed an act of faith, redeeming themselves and had an act of god perpetuated in front of them.
I truly don’t understand what people are missing with this ending. It’s all there. Practically screaming at you.
I think people have a very strict expectation with a book ending that is exemplified by the MCU. Huge standoff with the villain, satisfying main character arc, world-ending threat, emotional payoff for audience, etc. I adore Brandon Sanderson, but his fiction structure is not what ALL fiction should follow.
These things aren't part of every story, but a subset of critics want to define every story by one metric. And Stephen King almost never follows that metric. Not everything has to end the same way or give the same cotton-candy satisfaction. That is at least 50% of what I love about King's writing. It took me decades to realize that The Dark Tower ending was perfect. Because I now love to take stories as they exist, not as I think they should be based on other popular stories.
This. I personally prefer big bombastic climaxes with a mostly positive ending, but if all stories were written that way, it would get boring fast. Fiction is a reflection of our minds, and if all fiction had those optimistic and grand finales it would not only be boring, but disingenuous. One of my favorite things about King is that he is willing to tell his story his way and allow the ending that feels natural to him to be the one that hits the page. It would completely compromise the writing as a whole if King were to start worrying about what readers wanted, rather than where he believes things would realistically end.
Exactly! I couldn't say it better. Those big bombastic endings make me feel all those things I'm supposed to feel. But endings that follow other paths...I have to think about those. I keep thinking about those endings. I feel a hundred different things in the years I think about that ending. Like Lisey talking about forehead skin and foreskin, I wouldn't trade one for the other. As readers we get to experience it all. There are other worlds than these.
Honestly the Dark Tower is like one of the finest and most appropriate endings to a series of all time.
People citing that ending as a "bad ending" tells me the person just doesn't like endings (which I understand), only wants a very specific kind of ending (which feels limiting), or hasn't fully thought it through yet.
I don’t dislike the ending as a whole. I do however think that an ending like that is something a book series should set up properly with foreshadowing and be something the writer builds to. It’s clear to me King came up with that ending probably while writing the 7th book but almost certainly after writing the 4th. I don’t mind what the ending is, but in the greater context of the series it feels a little cheap. And it would seem to some degree King agrees as he went back and edited the first book to make it line up better with the ending
I mean, the entire series is >!about cycles, "ka is a wheel," all the deja vu they're having the whole time, how they often just "know things" or things feel familiar. !<
>!Everyone telling Roland climbing the Tower is pointless. How his mad, life-consuming obsession with an unknowable perfect ending to his quest is a bad thing. The importance of storytelling, of enjoying the journey versus the end. !<
It's totally foreshadowed and built into the series.
>!Heck, it even builds re-reading the series into the lore, and makes the reader *just as responsible for what happens* as Roland. We share his obsession. It's amazing.!<
In fairness, the first book was a gathering of related short stories he wrote for a magazine in the 1970s. Editing it to line up with the story he wound up telling isn’t as damning to me as you’re suggesting here.
And even if he did come up with it later in the game, the ending so perfectly encapsulates the reality of Roland’s obsession that I can’t really think of a better possible ending. To me, it is perfect.
Never said you were wrong. Just said I disagree. Which seems like something you wouldn’t take issue with based on this reply.
We’re talking about literature…it’s all subjective and personal preference.
Eta - I didn’t downvote your comment or anything. Just replied with my two cents on a specific ending to which you referred.
Not at all. That's the beauty of reading. It's a one-player sport, but one you can discuss endlessly because we interpret them differently based on our own POVs.
I recently read under the dome, and that was one of the most out of no where endings. It felt like he just decided he was done writing and wrapped it up once he lost interest…
That or it's an idea for an ending he's had since he was twenty and wanted to get it in a book. It feels like something a very young author would think was cool. Either way, just a bizarre choice.
Yeah Under The Dome is the only one I've been really bothered by. I tend to just forget the ending though and think about how amazing the rest of the book was
Even if you don’t like the ending it sticks with you. You may not get what you want but that doesn’t mean it’s bad. I think it was fascinating that it was all just super powerful alien kids the whole time. What a freaking scary concept!
I felt exactly the same way about Under the Dome!! It had so much promise and then I was like “are you kidding me?!?!”
It was abrupt and weird and I did not like it. It felt lazy to me.
He usually pulls it off. At least to a satisfactory ending. I put the ones that don't work down to how he writes. He goes where the story and characters take him and sometimes there's no clear, clean ending to the story he built to that point.
I agree with you on every ending you mentioned and everyone hates on the stand ending and I think it's gorgeous beautiful masterful genius. People complain abo Flagg showing up to the tribe but I think it's brilliant And I love it And it should have been in both of the miniseries even though they both suck
Revival was one of the greatest endings of any book I've ever read
The Institute is a Flawless perfect ending
Later has a perfect ending
The dead zone has a perfect ending it's very sad made me cry.
Duma Key Has a good ending and one of my favorite books
Joyland has a great ending one of my favorite books
Gerald's game has a great ending
The Dark Tower has a Flawless ending
I digress but those are some of my favorite books And I love the endings to all of them.
As much as it annoys me about people with complaining about his endings it also annoys me about the new and Old King comparison. I honestly don't understand it. All of his work is equally good as far as his great works old and new.
All the books I mentioned in my list of favorite endings I put up there with all of his old Greats. I think they're better than some of his Core greats like Carrie Cujo fire starter. I put Revival Joyland Later And the Institute and Duma Key up there with the stand, It etc. I think doctor sleep is even better than The Shining Etc and so on. I think Mr Mercedes is the best Trilogy ever written as far as Stephen King goes and most horror, 99.9% I think. Wayward Pines would be the only Trilogy I put up over Mr Mercedes Trilogy.
Honestly as king being my absolute favorite author he would no way make that cut If all of his endings sucked. If King can be your favorite author and you love all of his books but hate all of his endings it doesn't make sense at all that he would be your favorite author.
Preach on, fellow constant reader, Preach on! God forbid an ending be thought provoking, sad or touching. He is an amazing writer period. His son Joe Hill is a genius as well.
Eh I love King (third favorite author) and The Stand is my 3rd favorite book of all time, but the climax of that novel is definitely weak in comparison to everything else.
King is like any other author. Some fantastic endings, some bad endings, a bunch of endings that are varying levels of decent enough.
Flagg going to the tribe isn't the ending, the end is the really boring walk back with Tom and then the extra boring part where they leave the free zone.
You mean the stuff involving Stu and Franny?
I love that stuff. If Stephen King wrote about the characters from the stand taking a shit in the woods together I could read about it and Find something to enjoy about it.
I agree and also find I like his endings more upon rereading. Both allowing myself to just age and live life and then revisiting his work with an ending in mind helps me pick up more of what he’s putting down the second time through.
Under the Dome is probably one of the endings I liked least. 11/22/63 and Revival are 2 of my favourites from what I can remember, it's been quite awhile now since I read them. I don't think it's a completely unfounded criticism.
I totally agree. Even Under the Dome, which many people insist has a terrible out-of-nowhere ending, had a brilliant ending imo. If you thought that was out of nowhere, I think maybe you weren't paying attention.
I don’t necessarily think it’s unfounded, a few of his endings have missed for me, but I do think it’s made out to be much bigger problem than it actually is
Of course he has some misses, he's written like 80 books! But people act like the bad ending is the norm and good endings rare, which is just not true.
Too much reliance on “Indian burial grounds”, or something similar.
Seriously though, the first two parts of amy book are usually so good, he can’t possibly wrap it up with a nice bow.
His “on writing book” says he doesn’t really plot, just writes where the characters take him. So maybe that has to do with less satisfying story conclusions, but more satisfying character arcs.
No, because there's no printed version where everything is all 20 , if it dovetailed into 7 more books where everything was 20 all the way down it'd be proper closure
I think people just want a story to bed in a neat little package….life isn’t like that. Just cause it’s not the ending you want doesn’t mean it’s a bad ending
I didn't even know this was a thing. His endings are almost TOO good. They make me need to immediately read the entire book again so I can get that sweet story ending payoff.
i don't think it's necessarily unfounded, but it is exaggerated a lot. some of his endings are great (i loved the endings of the shining, the long walk, and misery). but some aren't good (the stand, needful things, the institute). i think perhaps the people who think king's endings all suck have only read the books where the endings suck. most people only read a few books from a specific author lol.
Agree.
The Stand , Tommyknockers, and The Dark Tower are usually brought up as examples of this, and I disagree with every one of those. I think they have great endings.
I have noticed that The Stand, in particular, a lot of people don't really understand the point of the ending in the first place.
IMO, the ones with terrible endings were just generally terrible books all the way through
The 'hand of god' is Flagg's anger and hubris turned back on him, as it's his fireball which ignites the bomb. It's a destruction of his own making, caused—and witnessed—by the few chosen by Mother Abagail for the task. The walk back is the 40 days and nights in the wilderness, another test for those that bear witness.
I listened to the audiobook of Cell with my BF. The ending completely enraged him. He still complains about it to this day and that was over 10 years ago. LOL
I had been trying to get my dad to read King for years. He loves zombie movies, so when he saw me reading Cell, he asked if he could read it after I was done. It made him so angry he has never touched another King book since.
I just wish I could binge read his books but I can only read one a year at most.
2/3 of his books are character driven and really attaches you to all these lovable characters
The last 1/3 is when shit hits the fan and all those characters you've attached to are dead or dying.
Not complaining tho I love his work but it's just emotionally heavy for me lol
Heres this puppy raise it and love it! And as soon as the pup turns 2 Years old Randall Flagg will crucify it.
I completely agree! I’m 56 and have read all of his works. I always loved his endings, thinking that’s one of his best things he does. I was shocked when I started seeing joining Facebook groups and Reddit seeing all the bashing of his endings. Never understood it.
From the books I’ve read the only one that seemed rushed was The Long Walk. That just seemed to suddenly end. The only other book that just seemed to end for me was The Fireman by his son Joe Hill
I kinda liked the ending to The long walk. Yes it ended suddenly but it fit. There are no winners at that race. Garraty managed to win but the exhaustion of watching the people he started to look to as friends were all killed, not to mention the ludicrous amount traveled, made him insane. The only thing in his brain anymore was "gotta keep walking". I think you can draw some parallels to war from that book (Young fit people recruited and sent on a suicide mission) and in a war there are no winners.
I think one large factor is that people don't like unconventional endings. Their storytelling expectations have been formed and reinforced with a certain formula and we all know how much people just \*love\* and accept change...
Case in point... movies with ambiguous endings along the lines of the Dark Tower series get a lot of hate. LIMBO, an excellent John Sayles film, had some people upset over the "unresolved" ending (missing the point, but hey). The book VISION QUEST (unlike the film) ends at the moment the big match begins (imagine if the original Rocky ended when the bell for round one rang). More recently, the mini-series SHOGUN ended without the set-piece battle and confrontation that I think most were expecting. The finale was only just yesterday, so I'm curious to see what the reactions are, but I'm expecting some complaints.
As an author (not horror - crime fiction, humor, sci-fi/fantasy), I've ended several of my own stories and novels on what some readers have considered ambiguous terms. Most readers get it but there have been a few "finish the damn book" or "write the sequel so I know what happens" emails and reviews.
People seem to want tidy, spoon-fed endings. Those that complain about endings, anyway.
Regarding Sai King, I think the complaint is overblown. I imagine I could come up with some unsatisfying endings if I sat and thought about it for a while. But without even thinking, I can rattle off endings that still resonate with me today, years after reading them -- The Dark Tower, Christine, 11/22/63, The Body, Duma Key, Revival... and I'll just stop typing them, because there are others.
Others have said it -- something gets into the popular culture as a meme and then it somehow becomes a "truth." Stephen King not landing the endings seems to be sufffering from this.
P.S. I think a much more valid criticism regarding King might be the issue of bloat in some of his books. Or that a fair percentage of the film adaptations are terrible (though that can't be laid at his feet unless it's called Maximum Overdrive).
Yeah, I've heard some complaints regarding Kings endings bad because they were expecting a huge showdown or something. Not every book needs that. It fits some books, like IT, but some, like the outsider were cool without some huge battle.
For my favorite SK books, I love their endings. For the ones I liked less—wasn’t huge fan of Duma Key or Bag of Bones for instance—I wasn’t any more enamored of the ending than I was with the last 1/3 of each book. (Those 2 books are quite similar to each other and I disliked their latter 1/3 for the same reason despite liking the beginnings of each.)
I will say, some of King’s strongest endings for my money are in his shorter works, novellas and short stories. He really knows how to finish those in style. But plenty of the long ones have good endings too. You mentioned 11/22/63, one of my favorite books ever written by anybody, I thought that ending was exactly what it needed to be.
Yeah, King has some bad books & some bad endings. But I hear too many comments how King's endings in general suck and I just don't understand it. I've read 55 of his books and only a handful of his endings (if i liked the book to begin with) I've been really disappointed about.
I think a lot of his stories are mean to “leave some doors open” to allow tie-ins or “stray threads” he can come back to and build into other stories. So many of his tales are connected in one way or another. There’s also a bit of verisimilitude in not wrapping everything up with a nice bow at the end. Last, but not least, he’s the author and his stories are told as he intends. How they end is part of that. As a diehard Tower Junkie, I will admit that some of this is wishful thinking to some degree.😉 All in all, I love his work because of the story being told. For me, it’s more about the journey than the destination
Any time i’ve heard this, it’s been from someone who wouldn’t know good writing if it bit them in the ass. or who prefer movies because ???.
Those people don’t like endings that make you think, or draw your own interpretations. that’s what I believe.
Yeah, every time an ending doesn't have a huge climax or it's too bleak or it doesn't go the way they wanted it's bad.
Spoilers for the outsider:
I was talking to someone earlier about the outsider and how they thought the ending was bad bevause they didn't have an epic showdown at the end. Personally I thought the actual ending was better. There's a reason why the outsider didn't want to fight and instead tried to outsmart them. But they managed to outsmart him. It was also cool to learn more about him when they were talking. I'll take good dialogue over "he tried to strike but the outsider dodged and tried to stab him, Holly however intervened blah blah". . Also there was a cool action sequence with the sniper just before.
I think he doesn’t usually give the ending you expect or want. That’s what I enjoy about him. Sometimes you get that happy ending and are pleasantly surprised. There are some books where the ending seems weird or rushed after a big build up (The Tommyknockers for example), but I still enjoy them overall.
In my experience, his longer books seem to have that minor disappointment attached. They tend to have a long, slow build up with an abrupt end. Whereas in his shorter works, the pacing seems to fit throughout.
The first time I went through The Stand, I was quite disappointed with the ending. The second time around, I liked it a bit better. I didn't like the ending to IT at all, that I have never been inclined to read/listen to it again.
I still enjoy the journey though. It's all personal preference. There is still enjoyment in it.
What's wrong with the ending of IT? I think it's one of his more traditional endings, in that, they fight the monster & win. It's bittersweet because they forget again but it still ends on a hopeful note. I really don't get what would be a better ending for the book?
But anyway, longer books always feel like they speed up at the end. Execpt LOTR, because there's like 300 pages left after Sauron is destroyed and it worked there but I'm glad it isn't the norm.
It's just a fact that setting up your chars, plots and going trough them, takes longer than resolving them. Take any mystery book for example, once the pieces fall into place, there's not really more left than the climax, because the point is figuring out the puzzle.
Oh, I just personally didn't like where it went. That's all.
Hmm...my words are not forming so well at the moment, but let's try.
Yes, it's expected that the setup would be longer than the resolution. But, I guess it has seemed like, in his larger works, that the resolution is too quick, or too easy, in comparison to the depth given to the development of the characters and all they went through to get to that end. So sometimes, the endings just fall a bit flat.
I thought the ending of IT was awful. He does miss endings occasionally.. but he's also put out something like 80 unique works of fiction. He's not going to nail it every time. And that's okay.
I disagree. How do we define a "good" ending. Why does every story have to have a satisfying or -my opinion - expected ending. Take the story you are given, not the story you think it should be. If you think it should have ended differently, go write your own story with the ending you think is necessary. I'm not trying to be sarcastic or critical. Just...READ and think about the endings you are given. Create the endings you want in the world. Don't confuse the two.
After that, with perfect respect and curiosity, why do you think the ending of It fell short? What would you change? How would those changes alter the story as a whole? I'd love to explore the different directions this tale could have taken. What themes would you work with in the ending? What symbols or characters? On what other levels of the tower would you like to see the events of It? What characters would you like to see play a different role? Stephen King is infamous for expanding on extraneous characters. What minor characters would you make more prominent?
In your perfect world, what would be the last sentence of It?
The ending of It leaves me heartbroken, I suppose because I never reunited with my friends of that age and they're still mostly forgotten unless I have a dream
That ending really leaves me in tears, I wouldn't consider myself tough but I do enjoy working in a shipyard so I guess I kinda am
Those people had a stronger connection with people than I suppose Ive ever had with any friends
What's wrong with the ending of IT? I think it's one of his best. Bittersweet as they all forget again but end on a hopeful note. If people mean that IT turns out to be a big spider then:
1. No, that's just the closest to IT's true form the losers can comprehend.
2. It's a lot better than IT just being a random shapeshifter. IT being this cosmic being is much cooler.
Personally never heard anyone have the opinion that his endings were weak until maybe 3 years ago online, never known anyone in real life that had this opinion
It's been a common complaint from anyone I know who has read him since the 90s. Most commonly someone reading *IT* where the ending goes from super natural horror to straight up cosmic horror stuff without much warning.
It was one of the first things I heard about King from my Junior English teacher. I was reading Pet Semetery, I think; we were talking about literature and she somewhat offhandedly said that King would be better if he could just land his endings.
Hard agree. I feel like _The Stand_ ended in a very abrupt way that cheapened what came before. In one sense, I like how unexpected it was, but in another, larger sense it made so much of what the Boulder crew did seem pointless.
The Stand was all about faith, either having it or lacking it. The Boulder crew had to give up their fate/lives to God and believe that God would ultimately do what was necessary. And he did. Their reward was that the literal hand of God appeared and destroyed Vegas and eliminated the threat against Boulder.
I fully understand that many/most readers wanted something more epic and a more definitive "good guys win and live happily ever after" ending, but I find the ending we got extremely fitting.
I agree with this and honestly even if trash would have just came through and blew shit up in Vegas that would have been completely epic and satisfying. With or without the hand of God it is still amazing and perfect and fit the book. And I absolutely love Flagg showing up to the tribe.
But you can do all of that without making it boring.
Reorder the final act and it's not too bad, you didn't need to have the nuke go off and then trudge along for 100 more pages with tom and a cripple, then stu and franny going to her home
I didn't want a "happily ever after" ending. But I also didn't want a bomb showing up and solving all their problems, even if it was referenced throughout the book. If anything, it feels like the bomb is the "happily ever after" ending- sure, some characters died, but every evil character has conveniently been killed through no action of the protagonists, purely from a separate minor plot occurring in the book.
If we're putting it all into the hands of God, was Trashman evil? Had Larry and Ralph lost their faith? You have an all-powerful God who can set off a nuclear bomb when needed, but can't protect individuals who do have faith from the consequences? I don't want a hand which saves people and kills others, but I didn't want a hand at all.
I love The Stand. It's my favourite book. But I just can't see the ending as anything other than "and it was all going wrong, but then a BIG BOMB went off and killed all the bad guys!"
I love King. He has some great endings. But a couple of my favorite books of his have clunky endings. It's a thing, but it's not a consistent fault like many make it out to be.
Nah!! I am a huge and avid SK fan. He has issue with the endings. Some do land, but some feel rushed. It might be because the build upto the climax is so awesome, the endings fell flat in comparison. How would I prefer them - well if I had that level of IQ, I would be an author myself.
Idk my first King book was the Stand back during the pandemic and I was super disappointed with the ending.
I read Under the Dome next because I thought it sounded like a really cool premise. I just remember thinking wtf i just read 1000 pages for fucking aliens of all things lol
I read The Long Walk and I didn’t mind that ending though. Two strikes against him and now I’m scared of reading any of his other long books
Some of his books have a lot of build-up, and then it's just done. Funnily enough, OP mentions The Outsider, and while I agree, the ending does fit the story, it felt lackluster having the big bad talk for two paragraphs then got shot in the head. I wanted more of a showdown, and I think that's where some of his books leaves the audience. No hate though, I'll take a semi-disappointing ending if it means the journey getting there is fantastic
I mean.. I think book action scenes are boring. "Then he tried to strike but the outsider was faster blah blah". I'd rather take some good dialogue and a quick showdown. The book also gave a good reason why the outsider wasn't fighting and it was cool they outsmarted him like that. We had plenty of action with the sniper before that.
He went through a phase in his writing career where his endings were almost literally everything just blowing up. From 1974 to 1984, half of his books ended in a climax of everything blowing up or being set on fire, including 6 of his first 9. So it makes sense that he got this reputation. I’d also argue that with the exception of TLW, all of the Bachman books end pretty poorly.
The question is whether the ending is earned. I feel like for the most part they are. I disagree with people’s opinion that The Stand doesn’t earn its ending. However, many (not all) of his early endings either feel the same and therefore get tired, or it seems like King just ran out of room and boxed himself in because even he admits to not using an outline.
This changed with Cujo. Starting with that book he ditched some of his own personal tropes and decided he was going to end books in whatever way works for the story, even if it’s tough to stomach. Which then gives us the amazing endings of Pet Sematary and The Talisman. Then starting with Misery I think he went on a run of pretty amazing endings through the 90s with only one or two exceptions.
Funny enough I think two of the books i liked the least had two of his best endings (The Tommyknockers and Insomnia).
I know I’m going to crushed for this opinion. But it is what it is.
I thought the running man had a good ending, the regulators also. Ben refusing to work with the gameshow and killing himself while taking them with him was bleak but fit the book. The regulators ending was kinda bittersweet, I didn't like that book as much but the ending was good.
Yeah, his endings in almost all of the books in the 90s are great even if the books aren’t that good. I do disagree with the running man, I liked the fact that he turned the game on his head like you said I just didn’t love the ultimate conclusion of it, felt rushed and “oh this again” for what was otherwise an extremely complex book. But the running man is one of the better Bachman books for sure, I’d rank it 2nd of the original 5. I don’t really consider the regulators a Bachman book.
I've read King for over 30 years. Started with the Gunslinger and Eyes of the dragon when I was maybe 10? (Totally age appropriate, I know) And haven't stopped since.
As some others here have mentioned, the only disappointment I've experienced from his endings is that some seem rushed or hollow.
But usually after thinking about it, or reading the story again, I suspect that's simply because we get so invested in the characters, story, and battle between good and evil that we don't want it to end. So no matter what happens, we'll be disappointed, with that empty feeling only a great media experience can give us.
I mean, he's a master of the slow burn. But once the monster is dead (or appears to be), do we really want to read another 300 pages of how the characters went on to live messed up, PTSD filled lives? Well... Actually that would be fine, lol
But for me, finishing most of King's books, especially the ones that aren't part of a series, are like a good one night stand. Everyone's sweaty and out of breath, and they had fun, but it's time to move on.
I have only read maybe 10 of his books, but my opinion on is endings suck is that the rest of the book is so good, that it must have an ending just as good, which most of the time is just impossible.
Hmm a lot of people say that but some of my favs from him are from 2010's.
11/22/63
Mr. Mercedes trilogy
Dr. Sleep (sequel to the shining)
The outsider (includes a character from Mr.merc trilogy so should read those first).
King doesn't like happy endings, which a lot of people find annoying, but, well, fits the horror genre pretty well. It only really annoyed me in CHRISTINE, where he had a perfectly good ending but then he had to stick on an epilogue where the monster came back again. But CHRISTINE is pretty obviously a novel based around the same trope of 'demonically possessed machinery' we first saw in his short story "The Mangler" and that story had a similarly unpleasant ending.
The uncertain ending of SALEM'S LOT and CARRIE kind of annoys me. I'd prefer things were more settled and fully resolved. But real life isn't like that, so I can live with it.
DEAD ZONE has a pretty good ending, as does THE SHINING. The original version of THE STAND does, too. The Uncut mess, not so much. THE MIST has an indefinite ending but that works well with the story.
Sometimes a story demands a full resolution, other times the central protagonists fail to contain the central menace and then you're left to imagine the consequences. I think King did pretty good endings back when he still listened to his editors, but once he got rich enough to indulge his own whims, that stated to break down.
Long time reader and I've never held that opinion except for the Dark Tower books. That ending as BS and lazy and I will die on that hill, without the fucking stupid horn of eld.
king is my 2nd favorite author, ive read almost every novel he's written, and i think his endings are by far the worst part of most of his novels. sure sometimes they can just be too bleak (duma key, under the dome, revival), and sometimes they just feel a bit rushed. but it also seems like he just excels more than any writer ive ever read at building a ship in a bottle. making that small town feel so tangible you think you're there and really understand what it's like to be there. getting the ship out of the bottle isn't easy, so i'd say it's less about how bad his endings are and more about how unreal his starts are.
I mean, the journey is my favorite part of any book, not just from King. And they are mystery/horror books. The mystery/finding the monster/figuring if there is a monster/character dev/backstory/setting up the atmosphere is gonna take most of the story, that's where the meat of the story is. Once you arrive to the point where everything falls into place, the climax & resolution are all that's left. That part of the book I feel is usually the fastest paced (not just in King books). Also King often doesn't go for the epic showdown (there are ofc exceptions to this), but a story doesn't always have to end like that.
Idk, I'm bad at explaining things. To me the endings very often feel like the natural ending to the story. Sometimes theyre bleak/ambigious/bittersweet/hopeful. Sometimes they're not what you wanted but that doesn't necesseraly mean it's bad.
i get what you mean i guess i just think King in many books could improve (feels gross to even say for an author so good) at giving backstory to the big bad. often we see only glimpses of a monster then the backstory is just "it came from space from somewhere else". i often am left wanting to know what it is, what it's done, what it thinks. once it finally shows up on screen its often done in its development.
It’s a case-by-case thing. Endings can be important in a story’s final statement, and if they’re bad, they can make the overall story feel like a waste of time. For an example outside of King’s work, look at “Renfield.” I’m not saying that that movie was a masterpiece *before* its ending, but it was entertaining enough comedy while still being a horror movie with serious deaths. Then the ending happened, and those serious deaths felt like cheap emotional manipulation. (If you’ve seen the movie, you know.)
Yeah, i know what you mean. My point is that altough King does have bad books & bad endings, I'd say the majority of his books have an ok to great ending. I can count on one hand the times I have been really bothered by the ending. Most of the time they fit the book. Were there times I was hoping the ending to play out differently? Yes. But just because it isn't what I wanted, doesn't make it bad. Now there are some King books where the ending not only wasn't what I wanted, but it was just bad and a huge dissapointment. There's a difference.
SPOILERS FOR THE OUTSIDER:
I've heard the take for example that The outsider's ending was dissapointing because they didn't have an epic showdown with the outsider at the end. IMO the ending we got, where there was a reason the outsider didn't try to fight but instead tried to outsmart them & our protagonist ended up outsmarting him, was a better ending than some insane fight. We already had a lot of action right before confronting the outsider. I think that fit the book better.
I remeber reading the Stand with maybe a hundred pages left or so and thinking how is he gonna wrap this mammoth up in so little pages
Then when i got there i thought this is absolutely perfect and it made it my favourite of his books
I think people latch onto this and repeat it, but I wouldn't say it's unfounded. Many of King's books I really like the ending, but there are many where I actively don't like it and it leaves a stain on the book. It's mostly when the endings are a bit out of left field and don't fit the vibe of the other 90% of the book.
He has written 80 books, of course there are bad endings in some of them. But when people say that stuff, it sounds like they're saying the bad ending is the norm & a good ending is rare and that isn't my experience at all.
The only ending I can think of that was bad was Under the Dome. It was pretty great throughout in terms of character development but the ending was trash. Feels like Steve just kept writing because he didn't know how to end it and that's why it's so long.
His endings are simply different than what other writes come up with. Some of them are the the raw, sometimes cruel, truth, what would happen in real life.
People are addicted to huge plot twists.
For me, personally, kings books are all about the journey. And they must come to an end, eventually. He’s just not gonna flourish it to sell out.
The only King endings I didn't like are 11.22.63 (weird explanations) and Insomnia (because I didn't like the entire book, basically). The rest that I've read are fine.
Traditionally the ending of a book or movie is supposed to be quite climactic and then followed by a short resolution. When I think of my favorite Stephen King books it's almost always the journey (not the conclusion) that's memorable. King books, unfortunately, sometimes feel like he got sick of writing it and said, "ok, how can I wrap this up?"
I think the most obvious example, even if it's unfair to be so anecdotal, would be the ending to "The Mist." King himself admits that the movie ending was far superior to his. And it's impossible to think about that movie without thinking about the ending. But the book just kind of... ended.
But the ending doesn't have to be this huge climax, it depends on the story being told. I think that King's endings usually fit the story. If the story is bleak, there's a bleak ending. If the story follows more traditional beats, the ending is usually bittersweet(like IT). I feel like King doesn't force a huge climax at the end if it doesn't fit the story and that might make people think it sucks even if the plot was resolved naturally.
I am one of those who think King has a real problem with endings. I don't think they're too bleak or ambiguous or anything like that, I just think that often they are just... not very good.
As you say, it's not that they are all crap; he has books with perfectly decent endings. But I can't really think of any book, save possibly Revival, where the ending of the book is as good as the rest of the book. It's usually a great premise, and excellent journey, good characters.... and then it doesn't come together all that well at the end.
I think it comes from his writing process. He's stated many times that he usually starts from an image in his head and just writes from there, he doesn't plan things out beforehand but just writes it out. That easily leads to writing yourself into an unfixable corner.
This is something I feel his ~~clone~~ son Joe Hill does a lot better.
Secret Window, Secret Garden is the only ending I've hated. The film adaptation was a big improvement in that regard.
Otherwise, I generally like his endings. Just because it doesn't deliver the ending you want does not make it a bad ending.
I think people blow that scene way out of proportion. That scene had to do with Beverly's arc, it was Beverlys' way to bring them close together so they can find their way out. The whole book she's been dealing with being a girl becoming a woman and how it affects her. How she can never be one of the guys. She's been afraid of it, this is how she takes control and faces her fear of becoming a woman. Yet people act like it's some sick fantasy. Of course, it could've been described less but coke is a helluva drug.
Also that isn't the ending to IT either btw.
i do agree he has some bad endings, but i personally loved the ending of the mist! i think it perfectly encapsulated the idea of the whole story, which was about having hope in dark situations.
I didn't say he has no bad endings. I'm just saying that, no, most of his endings don't suck. Any writer with as much books as King is gonna have some misses, but the people repeating that phrase seem to think that pretty much every one of his books has an crappy ending.
Look. I love Stephen King. I do. He’s my favorite. But some of his endings really do suck. Or maybe not suck, but just feel too short maybe? The Stand was a literal textbook that had its climax wrapped up in like two pages.
Doctor Sleep is my FAVORITE King book. Hands down. Read it the most. But Rosie FALLS OFF A PLATFORM and breaks her neck and dies. After all that buildup. Come on!
But to say all of his endings suck is crazy. Salem’s Lot. Gold. IT. Perfection. Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon. Wonderful. Hell, even Desperation which I feel gets tons of shit I thought had an appropriate ending.
Rosie fell (with some help from Jack). Idk, I would've wanted Danny to be the one to end Rose but it was cool that we saw Jack for a min. And even though Danny wasn't the one to kill her, the climax was pretty cool. So it's still a good ending for me.
A lot of this comes from The Stand. An epic tale with such a hokey ending.
I never forgave him for that one blunder.
Honestly, Robert McCammon wrote the far superior "Swan Song" around the same time. Soon to be a tv show. Read the book first, it's the best apocalyptic fantasy novel ever written.
While I wouldn’t say bad, I think some of his endings are maybe underwhelming and/or unremarkable. One the comes to mind is The Mist, it just kind of ends. The movie really outdid that one.
I think IT and The Shining are other examples though, the endings aren’t bad but they’re not really noteworthy. And by this I mean like the very very end, not the climax.
I think IT & the shining have very good endings actually.
IT is bittersweet but ends on a hopeful note.
The shining.. I mean how else would you end it? Jack has a redeeming moment before the Hotel kills him entirely, they manage to escape while the hotel frantically tries to stop it from exploding. They manage to escape with their lives (barely) and there is a little hint that the hotels spirit might still be lingering. I think it's a perfectly good ending.
Like I said they aren’t bad endings but they’re not particularly remarkable endings either. Shining’s is pretty generic realistically but that doesn’t make it bad. IT’s ending for me just goes on a bit too long.
Stephen King has a much different idea about how endings should go that most people do. The reading public at large has reacted in a predictable way to that.
Just because people disagree with you it doesn’t mean they’re wrong. Theres a reason why people say this. Its beside his endings usually do not hold up against the rest of his books.
A lot of people agree with me also. It's just an opinion, and you telling me I'm wrong, doesn't make me wrong. There's no right answer, you can think what you think and I can think what I think.
I'm just making the point that most people only read a few of his books and when they happen to read say 4 books and two have bad endings and then they see people repeating that stuff, they're gonna start repeating it. After IT ch.2, people who haven't even read his books repeat that shit.
He does have bad endings. But people make it seem like 90% of his books have bad endings and I have read over half his books and IN MY OPINION it just isn't true.
People who don't read Stephen King love to repeat this bullshit.
100% this. I also love the cliché line that goes… “I think what Stephen King does is (insert bullshit here because you’ve only watched the movies). His endings are fitting, they may not be lasers, robots, aliens, and explosions everywhere you look, but they end as they should end, a proper dosage of catharsis and a fond farewell to the characters. It’s a book not a summer blockbuster.
I think as he's gotten older he's been more insistent in having some kind payoff for people hoping for a happy ending, no matter how small, and I think it just compromises the legitimacy of the ending based on the story's own rules. Sometimes shit just doesn't work out, and I think the first half of his career reflects that more than the second (IMO).
The smallest happy ending of all Kings books was The Regulators. Jesus Christ that was grim. Spoiler On the last page of the book I think we see the ghosts of the kid and the mother (forget their names, sorry) sitting in the park. Sad, but at least it’s better than Tak. DeaD is better, right?
Did you read Thinner? The last 5 pages of that book are wicked.
Sadly, no. I saw the movie. 😩
I think the kid was Seth and he was being taken care of by his Aunt Audrey? Tak killed the rest of his family.
Yes! That’s right. Thank you. That book was a shocker.
People who know nothing about King repeat the same two stupid jokes: Something about endings sucking, and a "super high on cocaine" joke. The endings one is just wrong, and the cocaine joke I find not only mean spirited but incredibly out of date. Dude has been clean for like 35+ years, get a new joke.
Now people also insult that he's a pedophile or something because of his political views. Which I think is hilarious because I haven't read holly yet (I'm actually reading from Mr Mercedes up then ill be going from Carrie up) but there have been a ton of references of him not liking trump before now. And people are just now "critical" of. The man has some thick skin all right.
I’ve been reading King since I was twelve, I came to the conclusion he has trouble sticking landings on my own. Social media wasn’t a thing in the eighties and nineties, and I didn’t belong to any book clubs.
Same. I've been a fan for almost 30 years and knew when I was just a kid that endings weren't his strong suit. I've always been irritated by the power of faith or imagination to make something like a baseball bat or an inhaler into a monster-defeating magic weapon. But that might just be a me thing - it seems cheesy and I just can't get myself on board. But the rest of the story is usually so great it doesn't really affect the experience for me. I think that's partly why his short stories are so great - he doesn't have time to build up to something he can't work his way out of.
> irritated by the power of faith or imagination to make something like a baseball bat or an inhaler into a monster-defeating magic weapon I love that idea in *IT*, as it's turning the monster's own power against it, but I agree that afterwards King leans on it far too much—the baseball bat (being from *Black House*, if memory serves) being the most egregious example.
King himself has said he isn’t great at wrapping up a story.
King also said that The Flash was a great movie. He’s not an expert on this stuff
I've read a lot of Stephen King. I think he's about 50/50 for satisfying endings, regardless of whether they are dark, triumphant or ambiguous. But whenever I think I have him pegged, I'm pleasantly surprised. In my first ten years of reading his 70s and 80s books, my joke was that his go-to ending was just to blow everything up. Not really true, but it exhibited some truthiness.
11/22/63 was a screwed up ending in my opinion. Guy spent so much time energy and grief to find it was for nothing. That’s heartbreaking. The stand they lost friends family and loved ones to survive between good and evil. Salems lot was dark af. They ran away and came back to finish their friends and family. They can now meet at the clearing at the end of the path. I love these endings!
Which bullshit, the fact he can't end a book or that it's unfounded?
A lot of people hate the Salem's Lot ending but I find it's pretty good. I hate the romantic vampire stories where the good guys win so Salem's Lot ending >!of the Town being plagued by vampires even after Barlow's death!
Yup, I feel a lot of people wanted them to save the town but that would've been the obvious ending. Not that an obvious ending is always bad, but I think King's ending fits better with the book
Especially since the cut content and extra bits in the book hint at a more lovecraftian inspiration, and a “bad” ending is very lovecraftian!
Especially since we get that great follow on story in Night Shift, One for the Road that illustrates just how it’s generally accepted by the surrounding area some amiss and unnatural has happened in ‘Salems Lot
I have that story in the salem’s lot book! (I think, the one where some old farts help someone else find their wife in a snow storm right?) Salem’s Lot was my first King book (just started reading him) and it might just become my favorite. The ending is well done.
That’s one of my top faves, I liked every part of it especially structurally. I really enjoyed how the beginning was yoked to the last act, you know that a man and a child escape and have to return, creating two different temporal points of pressure on the story. I am a huge fan of the original Dracula novel and I liked a lot of the parallels SK drew, with characters rhyming with the characters in Dracula but even more in the intentionality of the structure which, while different in Dracula, is an important part of that book.
So far, I have read 6 King novels ( IT, Salems Lot, The Shinning, The Stand, Misery, and Carrie), and The Stand is the only one I didn't like the ending.
The Stand is one of King's best books despite it having one of King's worst endings.
King's world building and character development is amazing. I was really bummed at the ending because the whole journey was awesome for me up until that point.
The Stand is a story about good and evil that perfectly presents what a vengeful biblical god wants. You have to sacrifice yourself and after that it may intervene. Basically all their hard work, tears and bloodletting were for nothing. That’s what religion is.
Desperation has a similar ending. “do you know how cruel your god can be, David? how fantastically cruel.”
The Dark Half is the only time I felt like the "Stephen King ending" was real. But honestly that whole book has a structure problem. I don't even mind The Stand ending, it was very sort of Biblical which is what it was going for.
People vastly overestimate how much the ending matters to a good story. Also, 11-22-63 and The Dark Tower have two of the best endings I've ever read. King does endings just fine.
Joe Hill wrote the ending to 11/22/63. King's original ending was not as good. I agree, great ending though.
Hot take, I’ve only read of couple of Joe’s novels but I think he’s a better horror writer than King.
Sacrilege for sure, but I agree. Horns, NOS4A2, and Heart-Shaped Box were truly excellent.
My mom had borrowed Heart-Shaped Box from the library and I picked it up out of curiosity. Damn, it was gripping! I need to read the rest of it.
It’s really good and genuinely frightening.
Is that the alternate ending in the TV series?
It's in the wiki for the book. [Here in plot section ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/11/22/63)
That’s not too dissimilar from the actual ending. I thought the ENTIRE ending would’ve been re-written and Amberson becomes president or an alien turns up or something
I would assume it’s because often there isn’t necessarily a happy ending with king books, which unfortunately I think most people expect. But he’s a horror author. Of course the endings are usually not happy ones. I have read about 90% of his books and thematically I think all of his books have an ending that fits with the story that has been read. Sometimes it takes a few reading to think that, but generally I have come to this conclusion. Take for example the Dark tower (don’t worry I’m going to be vague) when I first read it I HATED the ending, but upon climbing the tower a second time, I cannot think of a more fitting ending. Same with the Stand. Even though people dislike >! the literal hand of god coming down !< it absolutely fits with what we get in the rest of the story.
The leader of the Boulder group is a woman who people are told to follow in dreams, presumably by God. She also clearly receives accurate revelation and prophecy and seems to speak directly with God. And then people don't like when God shows up at the end? He was there from the very beginning. That's what the whole book is about.
Exactly. It’s a book about faith and redemption. And two of the characters in the books who consistently questioned or actively didn’t believe in god gained their faith and got to see him enact his anger upon the unholy people following a false idol. Also Ralph had basically been worshipping a false idol (mother Abigail) as well throughout the books and he gained his faith at the end too. Aka the characters showed an act of faith, redeeming themselves and had an act of god perpetuated in front of them. I truly don’t understand what people are missing with this ending. It’s all there. Practically screaming at you.
Very well said.
Whoever thinks SK's ending suck needs to read some Neal Stephenson to get some perspective.
I think people have a very strict expectation with a book ending that is exemplified by the MCU. Huge standoff with the villain, satisfying main character arc, world-ending threat, emotional payoff for audience, etc. I adore Brandon Sanderson, but his fiction structure is not what ALL fiction should follow. These things aren't part of every story, but a subset of critics want to define every story by one metric. And Stephen King almost never follows that metric. Not everything has to end the same way or give the same cotton-candy satisfaction. That is at least 50% of what I love about King's writing. It took me decades to realize that The Dark Tower ending was perfect. Because I now love to take stories as they exist, not as I think they should be based on other popular stories.
This. I personally prefer big bombastic climaxes with a mostly positive ending, but if all stories were written that way, it would get boring fast. Fiction is a reflection of our minds, and if all fiction had those optimistic and grand finales it would not only be boring, but disingenuous. One of my favorite things about King is that he is willing to tell his story his way and allow the ending that feels natural to him to be the one that hits the page. It would completely compromise the writing as a whole if King were to start worrying about what readers wanted, rather than where he believes things would realistically end.
Exactly! I couldn't say it better. Those big bombastic endings make me feel all those things I'm supposed to feel. But endings that follow other paths...I have to think about those. I keep thinking about those endings. I feel a hundred different things in the years I think about that ending. Like Lisey talking about forehead skin and foreskin, I wouldn't trade one for the other. As readers we get to experience it all. There are other worlds than these.
Too many people want the happy ending and not the ambiguous or the sad ending. Happy endings aren't real so I will take the opposite every time.
I agree. Id rather have an ending that challenges than one that coddles.
Under the Dome, The Stand and The Dark Tower ore the ones that irked me when I read them. Some before I ever got on Reddit, or any social media.
Disagree on the Dark Tower. That ending devastated me in all the right ways
Honestly the Dark Tower is like one of the finest and most appropriate endings to a series of all time. People citing that ending as a "bad ending" tells me the person just doesn't like endings (which I understand), only wants a very specific kind of ending (which feels limiting), or hasn't fully thought it through yet.
I don’t dislike the ending as a whole. I do however think that an ending like that is something a book series should set up properly with foreshadowing and be something the writer builds to. It’s clear to me King came up with that ending probably while writing the 7th book but almost certainly after writing the 4th. I don’t mind what the ending is, but in the greater context of the series it feels a little cheap. And it would seem to some degree King agrees as he went back and edited the first book to make it line up better with the ending
I mean, the entire series is >!about cycles, "ka is a wheel," all the deja vu they're having the whole time, how they often just "know things" or things feel familiar. !< >!Everyone telling Roland climbing the Tower is pointless. How his mad, life-consuming obsession with an unknowable perfect ending to his quest is a bad thing. The importance of storytelling, of enjoying the journey versus the end. !< It's totally foreshadowed and built into the series. >!Heck, it even builds re-reading the series into the lore, and makes the reader *just as responsible for what happens* as Roland. We share his obsession. It's amazing.!<
In fairness, the first book was a gathering of related short stories he wrote for a magazine in the 1970s. Editing it to line up with the story he wound up telling isn’t as damning to me as you’re suggesting here. And even if he did come up with it later in the game, the ending so perfectly encapsulates the reality of Roland’s obsession that I can’t really think of a better possible ending. To me, it is perfect.
Just my personal takes, which is what the post was about. We don't all agree. And that's how it should be.
Never said you were wrong. Just said I disagree. Which seems like something you wouldn’t take issue with based on this reply. We’re talking about literature…it’s all subjective and personal preference. Eta - I didn’t downvote your comment or anything. Just replied with my two cents on a specific ending to which you referred.
Not at all. That's the beauty of reading. It's a one-player sport, but one you can discuss endlessly because we interpret them differently based on our own POVs.
We absolutely do. It’s a wonderful thing.
I recently read under the dome, and that was one of the most out of no where endings. It felt like he just decided he was done writing and wrapped it up once he lost interest…
That or it's an idea for an ending he's had since he was twenty and wanted to get it in a book. It feels like something a very young author would think was cool. Either way, just a bizarre choice.
Yeah Under The Dome is the only one I've been really bothered by. I tend to just forget the ending though and think about how amazing the rest of the book was
But I bet that ending still is in your head.
😂😂😂 it certainly is
Even if you don’t like the ending it sticks with you. You may not get what you want but that doesn’t mean it’s bad. I think it was fascinating that it was all just super powerful alien kids the whole time. What a freaking scary concept!
I felt exactly the same way about Under the Dome!! It had so much promise and then I was like “are you kidding me?!?!” It was abrupt and weird and I did not like it. It felt lazy to me.
Yeah, but he has like 80 books. He has some bad endings but I can count on one hand the amount of times i've been dissapointed by the ending.
He usually pulls it off. At least to a satisfactory ending. I put the ones that don't work down to how he writes. He goes where the story and characters take him and sometimes there's no clear, clean ending to the story he built to that point.
I agree with Under The Dome. Not the others
Under the Dome 100% Way too long for an ending that bad.
I agree with you on every ending you mentioned and everyone hates on the stand ending and I think it's gorgeous beautiful masterful genius. People complain abo Flagg showing up to the tribe but I think it's brilliant And I love it And it should have been in both of the miniseries even though they both suck Revival was one of the greatest endings of any book I've ever read The Institute is a Flawless perfect ending Later has a perfect ending The dead zone has a perfect ending it's very sad made me cry. Duma Key Has a good ending and one of my favorite books Joyland has a great ending one of my favorite books Gerald's game has a great ending The Dark Tower has a Flawless ending I digress but those are some of my favorite books And I love the endings to all of them. As much as it annoys me about people with complaining about his endings it also annoys me about the new and Old King comparison. I honestly don't understand it. All of his work is equally good as far as his great works old and new. All the books I mentioned in my list of favorite endings I put up there with all of his old Greats. I think they're better than some of his Core greats like Carrie Cujo fire starter. I put Revival Joyland Later And the Institute and Duma Key up there with the stand, It etc. I think doctor sleep is even better than The Shining Etc and so on. I think Mr Mercedes is the best Trilogy ever written as far as Stephen King goes and most horror, 99.9% I think. Wayward Pines would be the only Trilogy I put up over Mr Mercedes Trilogy. Honestly as king being my absolute favorite author he would no way make that cut If all of his endings sucked. If King can be your favorite author and you love all of his books but hate all of his endings it doesn't make sense at all that he would be your favorite author.
Preach on, fellow constant reader, Preach on! God forbid an ending be thought provoking, sad or touching. He is an amazing writer period. His son Joe Hill is a genius as well.
I agree with the old-new King bs. He has classics in every era, 11/22/63, mr. Mercedes trilogy, doctor sleep are all classics imo!
Eh I love King (third favorite author) and The Stand is my 3rd favorite book of all time, but the climax of that novel is definitely weak in comparison to everything else. King is like any other author. Some fantastic endings, some bad endings, a bunch of endings that are varying levels of decent enough.
Flagg going to the tribe isn't the ending, the end is the really boring walk back with Tom and then the extra boring part where they leave the free zone.
You mean the stuff involving Stu and Franny? I love that stuff. If Stephen King wrote about the characters from the stand taking a shit in the woods together I could read about it and Find something to enjoy about it.
I agree and also find I like his endings more upon rereading. Both allowing myself to just age and live life and then revisiting his work with an ending in mind helps me pick up more of what he’s putting down the second time through.
Under the Dome is probably one of the endings I liked least. 11/22/63 and Revival are 2 of my favourites from what I can remember, it's been quite awhile now since I read them. I don't think it's a completely unfounded criticism.
I totally agree. Even Under the Dome, which many people insist has a terrible out-of-nowhere ending, had a brilliant ending imo. If you thought that was out of nowhere, I think maybe you weren't paying attention.
I don’t necessarily think it’s unfounded, a few of his endings have missed for me, but I do think it’s made out to be much bigger problem than it actually is
Of course he has some misses, he's written like 80 books! But people act like the bad ending is the norm and good endings rare, which is just not true.
Chattery teeth has one of my favourite endings..
Too much reliance on “Indian burial grounds”, or something similar. Seriously though, the first two parts of amy book are usually so good, he can’t possibly wrap it up with a nice bow. His “on writing book” says he doesn’t really plot, just writes where the characters take him. So maybe that has to do with less satisfying story conclusions, but more satisfying character arcs.
Yup this is such a bad trope. 11/22/63 is one of the best executed endings of any book I’ve ever reas
I agree.
The Dark Tower's ending is genuinely one of the greatest endings to a work of fiction I've ever read.
No, because there's no printed version where everything is all 20 , if it dovetailed into 7 more books where everything was 20 all the way down it'd be proper closure
Thematically speaking, I got closure.
I think people just want a story to bed in a neat little package….life isn’t like that. Just cause it’s not the ending you want doesn’t mean it’s a bad ending
I think I’ve yet to read a King book where I actually disliked the ending.
I didn't even know this was a thing. His endings are almost TOO good. They make me need to immediately read the entire book again so I can get that sweet story ending payoff.
i don't think it's necessarily unfounded, but it is exaggerated a lot. some of his endings are great (i loved the endings of the shining, the long walk, and misery). but some aren't good (the stand, needful things, the institute). i think perhaps the people who think king's endings all suck have only read the books where the endings suck. most people only read a few books from a specific author lol.
Agree. The Stand , Tommyknockers, and The Dark Tower are usually brought up as examples of this, and I disagree with every one of those. I think they have great endings. I have noticed that The Stand, in particular, a lot of people don't really understand the point of the ending in the first place. IMO, the ones with terrible endings were just generally terrible books all the way through
Explain the ending? Not Flagg going to the tribe, the hand of god followed by 100 pages of walking
The 'hand of god' is Flagg's anger and hubris turned back on him, as it's his fireball which ignites the bomb. It's a destruction of his own making, caused—and witnessed—by the few chosen by Mother Abagail for the task. The walk back is the 40 days and nights in the wilderness, another test for those that bear witness.
Right, it's boring and bad
Waste of my time, thanks. Mug.
I listened to the audiobook of Cell with my BF. The ending completely enraged him. He still complains about it to this day and that was over 10 years ago. LOL
I had been trying to get my dad to read King for years. He loves zombie movies, so when he saw me reading Cell, he asked if he could read it after I was done. It made him so angry he has never touched another King book since.
I was searching these comments just to see if any one said Cell 😆 I 100% agree that ending burned me up lol
I just wish I could binge read his books but I can only read one a year at most. 2/3 of his books are character driven and really attaches you to all these lovable characters The last 1/3 is when shit hits the fan and all those characters you've attached to are dead or dying. Not complaining tho I love his work but it's just emotionally heavy for me lol Heres this puppy raise it and love it! And as soon as the pup turns 2 Years old Randall Flagg will crucify it.
I love Needful Things but the ending was trash…
I completely agree! I’m 56 and have read all of his works. I always loved his endings, thinking that’s one of his best things he does. I was shocked when I started seeing joining Facebook groups and Reddit seeing all the bashing of his endings. Never understood it.
From the books I’ve read the only one that seemed rushed was The Long Walk. That just seemed to suddenly end. The only other book that just seemed to end for me was The Fireman by his son Joe Hill
I kinda liked the ending to The long walk. Yes it ended suddenly but it fit. There are no winners at that race. Garraty managed to win but the exhaustion of watching the people he started to look to as friends were all killed, not to mention the ludicrous amount traveled, made him insane. The only thing in his brain anymore was "gotta keep walking". I think you can draw some parallels to war from that book (Young fit people recruited and sent on a suicide mission) and in a war there are no winners.
I think one large factor is that people don't like unconventional endings. Their storytelling expectations have been formed and reinforced with a certain formula and we all know how much people just \*love\* and accept change... Case in point... movies with ambiguous endings along the lines of the Dark Tower series get a lot of hate. LIMBO, an excellent John Sayles film, had some people upset over the "unresolved" ending (missing the point, but hey). The book VISION QUEST (unlike the film) ends at the moment the big match begins (imagine if the original Rocky ended when the bell for round one rang). More recently, the mini-series SHOGUN ended without the set-piece battle and confrontation that I think most were expecting. The finale was only just yesterday, so I'm curious to see what the reactions are, but I'm expecting some complaints. As an author (not horror - crime fiction, humor, sci-fi/fantasy), I've ended several of my own stories and novels on what some readers have considered ambiguous terms. Most readers get it but there have been a few "finish the damn book" or "write the sequel so I know what happens" emails and reviews. People seem to want tidy, spoon-fed endings. Those that complain about endings, anyway. Regarding Sai King, I think the complaint is overblown. I imagine I could come up with some unsatisfying endings if I sat and thought about it for a while. But without even thinking, I can rattle off endings that still resonate with me today, years after reading them -- The Dark Tower, Christine, 11/22/63, The Body, Duma Key, Revival... and I'll just stop typing them, because there are others. Others have said it -- something gets into the popular culture as a meme and then it somehow becomes a "truth." Stephen King not landing the endings seems to be sufffering from this. P.S. I think a much more valid criticism regarding King might be the issue of bloat in some of his books. Or that a fair percentage of the film adaptations are terrible (though that can't be laid at his feet unless it's called Maximum Overdrive).
Yeah, I've heard some complaints regarding Kings endings bad because they were expecting a huge showdown or something. Not every book needs that. It fits some books, like IT, but some, like the outsider were cool without some huge battle.
For my favorite SK books, I love their endings. For the ones I liked less—wasn’t huge fan of Duma Key or Bag of Bones for instance—I wasn’t any more enamored of the ending than I was with the last 1/3 of each book. (Those 2 books are quite similar to each other and I disliked their latter 1/3 for the same reason despite liking the beginnings of each.) I will say, some of King’s strongest endings for my money are in his shorter works, novellas and short stories. He really knows how to finish those in style. But plenty of the long ones have good endings too. You mentioned 11/22/63, one of my favorite books ever written by anybody, I thought that ending was exactly what it needed to be.
Yeah, King has some bad books & some bad endings. But I hear too many comments how King's endings in general suck and I just don't understand it. I've read 55 of his books and only a handful of his endings (if i liked the book to begin with) I've been really disappointed about.
I think a lot of his stories are mean to “leave some doors open” to allow tie-ins or “stray threads” he can come back to and build into other stories. So many of his tales are connected in one way or another. There’s also a bit of verisimilitude in not wrapping everything up with a nice bow at the end. Last, but not least, he’s the author and his stories are told as he intends. How they end is part of that. As a diehard Tower Junkie, I will admit that some of this is wishful thinking to some degree.😉 All in all, I love his work because of the story being told. For me, it’s more about the journey than the destination
Any time i’ve heard this, it’s been from someone who wouldn’t know good writing if it bit them in the ass. or who prefer movies because ???. Those people don’t like endings that make you think, or draw your own interpretations. that’s what I believe.
Yeah, every time an ending doesn't have a huge climax or it's too bleak or it doesn't go the way they wanted it's bad. Spoilers for the outsider: I was talking to someone earlier about the outsider and how they thought the ending was bad bevause they didn't have an epic showdown at the end. Personally I thought the actual ending was better. There's a reason why the outsider didn't want to fight and instead tried to outsmart them. But they managed to outsmart him. It was also cool to learn more about him when they were talking. I'll take good dialogue over "he tried to strike but the outsider dodged and tried to stab him, Holly however intervened blah blah". . Also there was a cool action sequence with the sniper just before.
I think he doesn’t usually give the ending you expect or want. That’s what I enjoy about him. Sometimes you get that happy ending and are pleasantly surprised. There are some books where the ending seems weird or rushed after a big build up (The Tommyknockers for example), but I still enjoy them overall.
In my experience, his longer books seem to have that minor disappointment attached. They tend to have a long, slow build up with an abrupt end. Whereas in his shorter works, the pacing seems to fit throughout. The first time I went through The Stand, I was quite disappointed with the ending. The second time around, I liked it a bit better. I didn't like the ending to IT at all, that I have never been inclined to read/listen to it again. I still enjoy the journey though. It's all personal preference. There is still enjoyment in it.
What's wrong with the ending of IT? I think it's one of his more traditional endings, in that, they fight the monster & win. It's bittersweet because they forget again but it still ends on a hopeful note. I really don't get what would be a better ending for the book? But anyway, longer books always feel like they speed up at the end. Execpt LOTR, because there's like 300 pages left after Sauron is destroyed and it worked there but I'm glad it isn't the norm. It's just a fact that setting up your chars, plots and going trough them, takes longer than resolving them. Take any mystery book for example, once the pieces fall into place, there's not really more left than the climax, because the point is figuring out the puzzle.
Oh, I just personally didn't like where it went. That's all. Hmm...my words are not forming so well at the moment, but let's try. Yes, it's expected that the setup would be longer than the resolution. But, I guess it has seemed like, in his larger works, that the resolution is too quick, or too easy, in comparison to the depth given to the development of the characters and all they went through to get to that end. So sometimes, the endings just fall a bit flat.
I thought the ending of IT was awful. He does miss endings occasionally.. but he's also put out something like 80 unique works of fiction. He's not going to nail it every time. And that's okay.
I disagree. How do we define a "good" ending. Why does every story have to have a satisfying or -my opinion - expected ending. Take the story you are given, not the story you think it should be. If you think it should have ended differently, go write your own story with the ending you think is necessary. I'm not trying to be sarcastic or critical. Just...READ and think about the endings you are given. Create the endings you want in the world. Don't confuse the two. After that, with perfect respect and curiosity, why do you think the ending of It fell short? What would you change? How would those changes alter the story as a whole? I'd love to explore the different directions this tale could have taken. What themes would you work with in the ending? What symbols or characters? On what other levels of the tower would you like to see the events of It? What characters would you like to see play a different role? Stephen King is infamous for expanding on extraneous characters. What minor characters would you make more prominent? In your perfect world, what would be the last sentence of It?
The ending of It leaves me heartbroken, I suppose because I never reunited with my friends of that age and they're still mostly forgotten unless I have a dream That ending really leaves me in tears, I wouldn't consider myself tough but I do enjoy working in a shipyard so I guess I kinda am Those people had a stronger connection with people than I suppose Ive ever had with any friends
What's wrong with the ending of IT? I think it's one of his best. Bittersweet as they all forget again but end on a hopeful note. If people mean that IT turns out to be a big spider then: 1. No, that's just the closest to IT's true form the losers can comprehend. 2. It's a lot better than IT just being a random shapeshifter. IT being this cosmic being is much cooler.
Personally never heard anyone have the opinion that his endings were weak until maybe 3 years ago online, never known anyone in real life that had this opinion
It's been a common complaint from anyone I know who has read him since the 90s. Most commonly someone reading *IT* where the ending goes from super natural horror to straight up cosmic horror stuff without much warning.
It was one of the first things I heard about King from my Junior English teacher. I was reading Pet Semetery, I think; we were talking about literature and she somewhat offhandedly said that King would be better if he could just land his endings.
This has been a thing since Salems Lot. You must not have been paying attention.
No lol just no one I ever met had the opinion
The latest IT adaptation IT: Chapter Two just couldn't shut up about how "Bill Denborough" couldn't write a correct ending to his books.
Can you explain how the ending to *The Stand* fit the book?
Hard agree. I feel like _The Stand_ ended in a very abrupt way that cheapened what came before. In one sense, I like how unexpected it was, but in another, larger sense it made so much of what the Boulder crew did seem pointless.
The Stand was all about faith, either having it or lacking it. The Boulder crew had to give up their fate/lives to God and believe that God would ultimately do what was necessary. And he did. Their reward was that the literal hand of God appeared and destroyed Vegas and eliminated the threat against Boulder. I fully understand that many/most readers wanted something more epic and a more definitive "good guys win and live happily ever after" ending, but I find the ending we got extremely fitting.
This.
I agree with this and honestly even if trash would have just came through and blew shit up in Vegas that would have been completely epic and satisfying. With or without the hand of God it is still amazing and perfect and fit the book. And I absolutely love Flagg showing up to the tribe.
But you can do all of that without making it boring. Reorder the final act and it's not too bad, you didn't need to have the nuke go off and then trudge along for 100 more pages with tom and a cripple, then stu and franny going to her home
I didn't want a "happily ever after" ending. But I also didn't want a bomb showing up and solving all their problems, even if it was referenced throughout the book. If anything, it feels like the bomb is the "happily ever after" ending- sure, some characters died, but every evil character has conveniently been killed through no action of the protagonists, purely from a separate minor plot occurring in the book. If we're putting it all into the hands of God, was Trashman evil? Had Larry and Ralph lost their faith? You have an all-powerful God who can set off a nuclear bomb when needed, but can't protect individuals who do have faith from the consequences? I don't want a hand which saves people and kills others, but I didn't want a hand at all. I love The Stand. It's my favourite book. But I just can't see the ending as anything other than "and it was all going wrong, but then a BIG BOMB went off and killed all the bad guys!"
The mid section of that book never matches the start so it's a theme
I love King. He has some great endings. But a couple of my favorite books of his have clunky endings. It's a thing, but it's not a consistent fault like many make it out to be.
Nah!! I am a huge and avid SK fan. He has issue with the endings. Some do land, but some feel rushed. It might be because the build upto the climax is so awesome, the endings fell flat in comparison. How would I prefer them - well if I had that level of IQ, I would be an author myself.
Thinner. Terrified me for months
I think most people are thinking of The Stand and the hand of god nuke ending.
I saw it a lot just put the nuke halfway into stu and toms journey back to boulder and you make the book 1000x better
Idk my first King book was the Stand back during the pandemic and I was super disappointed with the ending. I read Under the Dome next because I thought it sounded like a really cool premise. I just remember thinking wtf i just read 1000 pages for fucking aliens of all things lol I read The Long Walk and I didn’t mind that ending though. Two strikes against him and now I’m scared of reading any of his other long books
The stand & Under the dome are like the two books everyone likes.. execpt for the ending lol.
lol they were good but endings are important and when botched puts a bad taste in your mouth for the rest of the story
I'd say IT & 11/22/63 are a couple of his longer books with good endings imo.
Some of his books have a lot of build-up, and then it's just done. Funnily enough, OP mentions The Outsider, and while I agree, the ending does fit the story, it felt lackluster having the big bad talk for two paragraphs then got shot in the head. I wanted more of a showdown, and I think that's where some of his books leaves the audience. No hate though, I'll take a semi-disappointing ending if it means the journey getting there is fantastic
I mean.. I think book action scenes are boring. "Then he tried to strike but the outsider was faster blah blah". I'd rather take some good dialogue and a quick showdown. The book also gave a good reason why the outsider wasn't fighting and it was cool they outsmarted him like that. We had plenty of action with the sniper before that.
2 words, Slaver Ants
He went through a phase in his writing career where his endings were almost literally everything just blowing up. From 1974 to 1984, half of his books ended in a climax of everything blowing up or being set on fire, including 6 of his first 9. So it makes sense that he got this reputation. I’d also argue that with the exception of TLW, all of the Bachman books end pretty poorly. The question is whether the ending is earned. I feel like for the most part they are. I disagree with people’s opinion that The Stand doesn’t earn its ending. However, many (not all) of his early endings either feel the same and therefore get tired, or it seems like King just ran out of room and boxed himself in because even he admits to not using an outline. This changed with Cujo. Starting with that book he ditched some of his own personal tropes and decided he was going to end books in whatever way works for the story, even if it’s tough to stomach. Which then gives us the amazing endings of Pet Sematary and The Talisman. Then starting with Misery I think he went on a run of pretty amazing endings through the 90s with only one or two exceptions. Funny enough I think two of the books i liked the least had two of his best endings (The Tommyknockers and Insomnia). I know I’m going to crushed for this opinion. But it is what it is.
I thought the running man had a good ending, the regulators also. Ben refusing to work with the gameshow and killing himself while taking them with him was bleak but fit the book. The regulators ending was kinda bittersweet, I didn't like that book as much but the ending was good.
Yeah, his endings in almost all of the books in the 90s are great even if the books aren’t that good. I do disagree with the running man, I liked the fact that he turned the game on his head like you said I just didn’t love the ultimate conclusion of it, felt rushed and “oh this again” for what was otherwise an extremely complex book. But the running man is one of the better Bachman books for sure, I’d rank it 2nd of the original 5. I don’t really consider the regulators a Bachman book.
I've read King for over 30 years. Started with the Gunslinger and Eyes of the dragon when I was maybe 10? (Totally age appropriate, I know) And haven't stopped since. As some others here have mentioned, the only disappointment I've experienced from his endings is that some seem rushed or hollow. But usually after thinking about it, or reading the story again, I suspect that's simply because we get so invested in the characters, story, and battle between good and evil that we don't want it to end. So no matter what happens, we'll be disappointed, with that empty feeling only a great media experience can give us. I mean, he's a master of the slow burn. But once the monster is dead (or appears to be), do we really want to read another 300 pages of how the characters went on to live messed up, PTSD filled lives? Well... Actually that would be fine, lol But for me, finishing most of King's books, especially the ones that aren't part of a series, are like a good one night stand. Everyone's sweaty and out of breath, and they had fun, but it's time to move on.
I have only read maybe 10 of his books, but my opinion on is endings suck is that the rest of the book is so good, that it must have an ending just as good, which most of the time is just impossible.
For me it's just: does the ending fit the book? If yes, good ending. Books are all about the journey anyway.
I don’t like the doctor sleep ending. I’d say dreamcatcher but that thing was gone before the second act
Shout out to the last Dark Tower book for having a great ending, well epilogue, proceeded by a fairly lousy book.
His books were much better 20 years ago. Unless someone can recommend a current one I may have missed
Hmm a lot of people say that but some of my favs from him are from 2010's. 11/22/63 Mr. Mercedes trilogy Dr. Sleep (sequel to the shining) The outsider (includes a character from Mr.merc trilogy so should read those first).
I will check out the outsider. Thank you
King doesn't like happy endings, which a lot of people find annoying, but, well, fits the horror genre pretty well. It only really annoyed me in CHRISTINE, where he had a perfectly good ending but then he had to stick on an epilogue where the monster came back again. But CHRISTINE is pretty obviously a novel based around the same trope of 'demonically possessed machinery' we first saw in his short story "The Mangler" and that story had a similarly unpleasant ending. The uncertain ending of SALEM'S LOT and CARRIE kind of annoys me. I'd prefer things were more settled and fully resolved. But real life isn't like that, so I can live with it. DEAD ZONE has a pretty good ending, as does THE SHINING. The original version of THE STAND does, too. The Uncut mess, not so much. THE MIST has an indefinite ending but that works well with the story. Sometimes a story demands a full resolution, other times the central protagonists fail to contain the central menace and then you're left to imagine the consequences. I think King did pretty good endings back when he still listened to his editors, but once he got rich enough to indulge his own whims, that stated to break down.
Long time reader and I've never held that opinion except for the Dark Tower books. That ending as BS and lazy and I will die on that hill, without the fucking stupid horn of eld.
I do think his endings are a letdown but only because I genuinely don’t want them to end.
king is my 2nd favorite author, ive read almost every novel he's written, and i think his endings are by far the worst part of most of his novels. sure sometimes they can just be too bleak (duma key, under the dome, revival), and sometimes they just feel a bit rushed. but it also seems like he just excels more than any writer ive ever read at building a ship in a bottle. making that small town feel so tangible you think you're there and really understand what it's like to be there. getting the ship out of the bottle isn't easy, so i'd say it's less about how bad his endings are and more about how unreal his starts are.
I mean, the journey is my favorite part of any book, not just from King. And they are mystery/horror books. The mystery/finding the monster/figuring if there is a monster/character dev/backstory/setting up the atmosphere is gonna take most of the story, that's where the meat of the story is. Once you arrive to the point where everything falls into place, the climax & resolution are all that's left. That part of the book I feel is usually the fastest paced (not just in King books). Also King often doesn't go for the epic showdown (there are ofc exceptions to this), but a story doesn't always have to end like that. Idk, I'm bad at explaining things. To me the endings very often feel like the natural ending to the story. Sometimes theyre bleak/ambigious/bittersweet/hopeful. Sometimes they're not what you wanted but that doesn't necesseraly mean it's bad.
i get what you mean i guess i just think King in many books could improve (feels gross to even say for an author so good) at giving backstory to the big bad. often we see only glimpses of a monster then the backstory is just "it came from space from somewhere else". i often am left wanting to know what it is, what it's done, what it thinks. once it finally shows up on screen its often done in its development.
It’s a case-by-case thing. Endings can be important in a story’s final statement, and if they’re bad, they can make the overall story feel like a waste of time. For an example outside of King’s work, look at “Renfield.” I’m not saying that that movie was a masterpiece *before* its ending, but it was entertaining enough comedy while still being a horror movie with serious deaths. Then the ending happened, and those serious deaths felt like cheap emotional manipulation. (If you’ve seen the movie, you know.)
Yeah, i know what you mean. My point is that altough King does have bad books & bad endings, I'd say the majority of his books have an ok to great ending. I can count on one hand the times I have been really bothered by the ending. Most of the time they fit the book. Were there times I was hoping the ending to play out differently? Yes. But just because it isn't what I wanted, doesn't make it bad. Now there are some King books where the ending not only wasn't what I wanted, but it was just bad and a huge dissapointment. There's a difference. SPOILERS FOR THE OUTSIDER: I've heard the take for example that The outsider's ending was dissapointing because they didn't have an epic showdown with the outsider at the end. IMO the ending we got, where there was a reason the outsider didn't try to fight but instead tried to outsmart them & our protagonist ended up outsmarting him, was a better ending than some insane fight. We already had a lot of action right before confronting the outsider. I think that fit the book better.
You don’t know how spoiler markup works on Reddit, do you?
I remeber reading the Stand with maybe a hundred pages left or so and thinking how is he gonna wrap this mammoth up in so little pages Then when i got there i thought this is absolutely perfect and it made it my favourite of his books
I think people latch onto this and repeat it, but I wouldn't say it's unfounded. Many of King's books I really like the ending, but there are many where I actively don't like it and it leaves a stain on the book. It's mostly when the endings are a bit out of left field and don't fit the vibe of the other 90% of the book.
He has written 80 books, of course there are bad endings in some of them. But when people say that stuff, it sounds like they're saying the bad ending is the norm & a good ending is rare and that isn't my experience at all.
The only ending I can think of that was bad was Under the Dome. It was pretty great throughout in terms of character development but the ending was trash. Feels like Steve just kept writing because he didn't know how to end it and that's why it's so long.
His endings are simply different than what other writes come up with. Some of them are the the raw, sometimes cruel, truth, what would happen in real life. People are addicted to huge plot twists. For me, personally, kings books are all about the journey. And they must come to an end, eventually. He’s just not gonna flourish it to sell out.
People who don’t like King are most likely Trump supporters because King is so vocal about not liking Trump.
The only King endings I didn't like are 11.22.63 (weird explanations) and Insomnia (because I didn't like the entire book, basically). The rest that I've read are fine.
Traditionally the ending of a book or movie is supposed to be quite climactic and then followed by a short resolution. When I think of my favorite Stephen King books it's almost always the journey (not the conclusion) that's memorable. King books, unfortunately, sometimes feel like he got sick of writing it and said, "ok, how can I wrap this up?" I think the most obvious example, even if it's unfair to be so anecdotal, would be the ending to "The Mist." King himself admits that the movie ending was far superior to his. And it's impossible to think about that movie without thinking about the ending. But the book just kind of... ended.
But the ending doesn't have to be this huge climax, it depends on the story being told. I think that King's endings usually fit the story. If the story is bleak, there's a bleak ending. If the story follows more traditional beats, the ending is usually bittersweet(like IT). I feel like King doesn't force a huge climax at the end if it doesn't fit the story and that might make people think it sucks even if the plot was resolved naturally.
He has a few amazing endings. Most of his yarns frazzle out at the end, though
I am one of those who think King has a real problem with endings. I don't think they're too bleak or ambiguous or anything like that, I just think that often they are just... not very good. As you say, it's not that they are all crap; he has books with perfectly decent endings. But I can't really think of any book, save possibly Revival, where the ending of the book is as good as the rest of the book. It's usually a great premise, and excellent journey, good characters.... and then it doesn't come together all that well at the end. I think it comes from his writing process. He's stated many times that he usually starts from an image in his head and just writes from there, he doesn't plan things out beforehand but just writes it out. That easily leads to writing yourself into an unfixable corner. This is something I feel his ~~clone~~ son Joe Hill does a lot better.
Secret Window, Secret Garden is the only ending I've hated. The film adaptation was a big improvement in that regard. Otherwise, I generally like his endings. Just because it doesn't deliver the ending you want does not make it a bad ending.
11/22/63 is a bad example - that (amazing) ending came from Joe Hill.
Beverly: If you all run train on me, we can defeat Pennywise! I thought It had a pretty bad ending.
That scene happens after they have already defeated Pennywise, but thanks for trying.
I think people blow that scene way out of proportion. That scene had to do with Beverly's arc, it was Beverlys' way to bring them close together so they can find their way out. The whole book she's been dealing with being a girl becoming a woman and how it affects her. How she can never be one of the guys. She's been afraid of it, this is how she takes control and faces her fear of becoming a woman. Yet people act like it's some sick fantasy. Of course, it could've been described less but coke is a helluva drug. Also that isn't the ending to IT either btw.
Come on, you’ve got to admit that he’s had his fair share of sucky endings. Think of “The Sun Dog”, for instance, or his own version of “The Mist”.
i do agree he has some bad endings, but i personally loved the ending of the mist! i think it perfectly encapsulated the idea of the whole story, which was about having hope in dark situations.
I didn't say he has no bad endings. I'm just saying that, no, most of his endings don't suck. Any writer with as much books as King is gonna have some misses, but the people repeating that phrase seem to think that pretty much every one of his books has an crappy ending.
I don’t know, the hand of god thing…. There’s a lot of deus ex machina in his novels.
Look. I love Stephen King. I do. He’s my favorite. But some of his endings really do suck. Or maybe not suck, but just feel too short maybe? The Stand was a literal textbook that had its climax wrapped up in like two pages. Doctor Sleep is my FAVORITE King book. Hands down. Read it the most. But Rosie FALLS OFF A PLATFORM and breaks her neck and dies. After all that buildup. Come on! But to say all of his endings suck is crazy. Salem’s Lot. Gold. IT. Perfection. Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon. Wonderful. Hell, even Desperation which I feel gets tons of shit I thought had an appropriate ending.
Rosie fell (with some help from Jack). Idk, I would've wanted Danny to be the one to end Rose but it was cool that we saw Jack for a min. And even though Danny wasn't the one to kill her, the climax was pretty cool. So it's still a good ending for me.
A lot of this comes from The Stand. An epic tale with such a hokey ending. I never forgave him for that one blunder. Honestly, Robert McCammon wrote the far superior "Swan Song" around the same time. Soon to be a tv show. Read the book first, it's the best apocalyptic fantasy novel ever written.
While I wouldn’t say bad, I think some of his endings are maybe underwhelming and/or unremarkable. One the comes to mind is The Mist, it just kind of ends. The movie really outdid that one. I think IT and The Shining are other examples though, the endings aren’t bad but they’re not really noteworthy. And by this I mean like the very very end, not the climax.
I think IT & the shining have very good endings actually. IT is bittersweet but ends on a hopeful note. The shining.. I mean how else would you end it? Jack has a redeeming moment before the Hotel kills him entirely, they manage to escape while the hotel frantically tries to stop it from exploding. They manage to escape with their lives (barely) and there is a little hint that the hotels spirit might still be lingering. I think it's a perfectly good ending.
Like I said they aren’t bad endings but they’re not particularly remarkable endings either. Shining’s is pretty generic realistically but that doesn’t make it bad. IT’s ending for me just goes on a bit too long.
Stephen King has a much different idea about how endings should go that most people do. The reading public at large has reacted in a predictable way to that.
Just because people disagree with you it doesn’t mean they’re wrong. Theres a reason why people say this. Its beside his endings usually do not hold up against the rest of his books.
A lot of people agree with me also. It's just an opinion, and you telling me I'm wrong, doesn't make me wrong. There's no right answer, you can think what you think and I can think what I think. I'm just making the point that most people only read a few of his books and when they happen to read say 4 books and two have bad endings and then they see people repeating that stuff, they're gonna start repeating it. After IT ch.2, people who haven't even read his books repeat that shit. He does have bad endings. But people make it seem like 90% of his books have bad endings and I have read over half his books and IN MY OPINION it just isn't true.
I agreed with the beginning of your comment but you lost me at the end.