Note: I talk about Mockingjay below — general reactions not specifics, but just FYI if you are avoiding any discussion. I also talk about Stroud’s Ptolemy’s Gate and Clare’s City of Glass, though again trying to avoid specific details.
So, I finished the third book in a brilliant (imo) series on Tuesday night. I was expecting that. What I wasn’t expecting was that it wasn’t Mockingjay. It was Ptolemy’s Gate, the third of the Bartimaeus series by Jonathan Stroud.
I fully intended to start Mockingjay as soon as I got home with my copy after work that night, but I was also almost done with Ptolemy’s Gate. And I discovered I really really wanted to finish it. So I did. And the ending was so overwhelming emotionally, that when I did finally pick up Mockingjay, I only could read the first bit of it. Because what I really wanted to do was just sit there thinking about the end of Ptolemy’s Gate.
I did end up waking very early and reading most of Mockingjay, then finishing it at lunch Wednesday. And I was satisfied. It was a wild ride. I probably read it too fast. There were moments and characters I loved. But still, it was Ptolemy’s Gate that stayed in my heart.
Which, again, is a surprise to me because although I enjoyed The Amulet of Samarkand (the first of the Bartimaeus books), it didn’t blow me away like The Hunger Games did. But a series is more than a single book, and it’s been interesting to me to look at my own reactions to entire series I have read. And to those I have enjoyed early books in, but haven’t actually completed– which is where I thought the Bartimaeus books were going to end up.
But then I happened to pick up the audio book of The Golem’s Eye a few weeks ago because I had no other audio book and the reader is excellent, and I figured “Why not try it?”
I’m so glad I did. I had, to put it bluntly, simply not liked one of the two main characters in Amulet. Nathaniel, the orphan boy wizard, was just not someone I was particularly driven to read more about (although I did love Bartimaeus, the djinn who Nathanial enslaves to assist him). But in the second (and third) book, the real complexities of Nathaniel’s character emmerged, and I realized that in fact perhaps I wasn’t meant to like him. He wasn’t the Luke Skywalker of the story. He was the Anakin Skywalker. (Making Bartimaeus Han Solo, I suppose!). Plus, a third main character, Kitty, was introduced, and I was immediately invested in her story.
In the end, these three character arcs provide a fascinating web of inter-relations. I loved seeing the impact each had on the other two, and to begin to perceive how they might come together in the end. As in the Hunger Games series, I expected that there would be a bittersweetness to the ending. But the exact way that Bartimaeus, Nathaniel and Kitty’s stories ended (which I won’t go into here for fear of spoilers) blew me away. I know some readers probably don’t like it, but to me it was the perfect ending for the story. And I keep thinking about it, turning it over in my head, asking whether I would have liked it better if different things had happened. But the answer so far as always been no. It ended the way it had to end.
By contrast, my reading of the Hunger Games series was such a breathless race to the ending that I think I didn’t actually allow myself time to appreciate the interactions of the character arcs or the more subtle developments. Perhaps if I had, the ending might have struck me more deeply. Perhaps I should read the entire series again (or listen to the audio books, to force myself to slow down) and see if it changes my perceptions. There were things in Mockingjay that I felt should have affected me more deeply than they did, and I wonder if that was because the driving pulse of the plot superceded them.
So now that both are done, I have one trilogy that I love for how it ended, and one I love for how it started.
What about you? What are your favorite series endings and beginnings? Are there series that you loved more for how they start than how they end? Or vice versa?
Addendum: I was going to talk about Cassandra Clare’s Mortal Instruments series here too, since I found City of Glass to be one of the best conclusions to a three-book story arc (and at the time, what I thought was a trilogy) I’ve read. There are several scenes near the end that continue to stay in my mind (as with Bartimaeus) and to resonate emotionally with me. But since it turns out there are going to be three more books on the way, I’ll hold off on that. I am so pleased with the ending of CoG I admit I’m almost sad there will be more books, but then, I’m also very excited to see more of Simon, Clary, Jace, and (of course!) Magnus Bane.
And since I missed National Dog Day yesterday, here is a belated picture of my dog Charlie, demonstrating his good nature by letting me do silly things to him:
