‘All’s well that ends well…’
12 November 2015
Filed under Book Reviews
Tags: Fantasy Review Barn, Peaceful endings, Tough Travelling
This week, over at the Fantasy Review Barn, Nathan is taking us travelling once again through the tropes of fantasy. This week the topic for discussion is:
PEACE AT LAST
Life in Fantasyland is often hard but even the hardest fought battles can come to an end. The good guys win, the quest is over, evil is gone. Yes, the land can finally know peace when the protagonist reach their goal.
Peace at last – okay, I think I’ve gone with a lot of fairly obvious choices here but.. Also, given that we’re talking of endings here there could be potential spoilers lurking below. Beware!
- Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings – I simply had to go there. The ring has been cast into Mount Doom and there is simply no way for Sauron to recover from this one. Peace at last has come to Middle Earth.
- JKRowling’s Harry Potter – he who shall not be named is finally gone. And didn’t they all just go on and live happily ever after!
- The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe by C S Lewis – the White Witch is dead, Narnia is no longer living in perpetual winter and all the little critters that were turned to statues, including his good self Mr Tumnus, have been restored to life. Good times.
- Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett – in which, thankfully a terrible apocalypse is prevented – at the very last minute!
- The Broken Empire by Mark Lawrence. Not to give too much away, maybe not an all singing and dancing, happy bunnies bounding through the fields type of ending – (SPOILER) not if your name is Jorg anyway, but, certainly a peaceful ending in terms of necromancers and armies of the dead being thwarted at the last minute!
- The Wizard of Oz by Frank Baum – okay, maybe the woman in the pointy hat with the green tinged skin wasn’t too happy at the conclusion of this story but the Munchkins were throwing a party!
- Bear with me with this one – I am Legend by Richard Matheson – okay, the protagonist is due to meet a sticky ending – but – SPOILER – in a land now overrun by vampire type creatures, where he is the only human, he has in fact become the bogeyman and by killing him the vampires can finally live in peace.
- Bram Stoker’s Dracula. No explanation needed.
That’s it for me this week.
Books and travelling with Lynn 
Great list! The ending of Lord of the Rings is incredibly satisfying because of how nicely it wraps up.
It is isn’t it!
Lynn 😀
Oh my goodness! I would never have thought of the Matheson novel, but your take on it makes perfect sense. Great list, but after all you started with *the* masterpiece…
😉
I started off Tough Travelling always trying to make an attempt to mention LotR but then I became a bit of a slacker recently – this topic was perfect.
Lynn 😀
Ha, I like what you did there with I am Legend 🙂 And awesome list of books. I’ve never read LOTR, but I’ve seen the movies (and love them) – reaching that peaceable ending was just so nice after everything….Same goes for the HP series! Also, I love how each ending is sort of bittersweet – there are consequences to reap even though the actual war is over.
I know – are you referencing the elves, Frodo and Gandalf in the final scene? I have a split mind about what I think was going on there!!
Lynn 😀
Yes, I am!! The part when Bilbo and Frodo and the Elves have to leave middle earth…it makes me a little sad, though I understand why it has to be done. I do like bittersweet endings slightly more than completely happy ones, so I’m totally fine with that ending. What about you?
I always try to pretend it’s not really a sad ending – but I know that it is! Definitely bittersweet and understandable. In fact for a good while I didn’t really understand the end at all – and then I had a bit of a light bulb moment! Doh
Lynn 😀
Great list, Lynn, and yes, some of them were obvious choices but also there were the most representative in fantasyland.
Funnily enough I started this post as a total blank – all I could think of was LotR and HP and then as I was adding them a few more popped into my brain – all obvious but nonetheless!
Lynn 😀
The ending of the LOTR was so great ^^ Maybe a little bit too long since, well, all the problems were solved at 75% of the book 😛
I know – I would have carried Frodo up Mount Doom myself if I could have got onto the pages!
Lynn ;D
Oh man, I didn’t even attempt this one because I could come up with so few books (LOTR and Harry Potter were of course on the list though). What does that say about my reading choices?! 🙂
I actually thought it was kind of tough – perhaps we don’t really want happy endings! All my choices were the old favourites as I couldn’t come up with anything original.
Lynn 😀
Some great, classic choices here 🙂
Thanks 😀