The last three books I’ve read all had bad endings. Bad endings leave a bad taste in your mouth (or at least mine!) and ruin the rest of the book. But as I was thinking about bad endings I realized that most of the reason why they are bad is because my expectations are different then the outcome.

If I had realized that Normandy took over and slaughtered the Anglo-Saxons at the Battle of Hastings before I started the book The King’s Shadow, it wouldn’t have been quite so depressing. Although I think it would have helped if the author, Alder, had made Evyn write a personal memoir of Harold. Instead he is saved from death just to write twenty blurbs about Harold’s life (like where he went and who he fought) that any monk from the time could have written, it just seemed pointless.

O Pioneers I expected to be a story of hardship and toil, long suffering and companionship. If I had known it was about a late 1800′s love affair gone bad, I wouldn’t have been so frustrated with the ending. Because of course I wouldn’t have read it in the first place.

So I guess I shouldn’t blame bad endings on the authors, I should blame it all on me. After all it’s my own expectations that ruin it, right?