Jesus Christ, Pratchett
 

I've been reading Terry Pratchett lately and I don't know how it is that I didn't notice much sooner that the man cannot write a consistent ending to save his life. He writes perfectly good books, but it's like every time when he gets within 50 pages of the ending an alarm goes off in his head, and he goes "holy crap I'm writing fantasy, quickly get something supernatural in here!" Sometimes this fits the book, but especially lately in the books with close relations to the real world (Monstrous Regiment comes to mind) it feels like an afterthought.

I mean, Terry. Mate. What's wrong with ending the story like you started it and having your characters solve their own problems for a change? It's gotten to the point where the sentence "Vimes is just a pawn in Vetinari's game, the patrician had it all planned or at least under control all along" has to be put in permanent spoiler tags because it's the ending of every Watch novel under the sun. With minor variations it applies to the rest of them as well.

Tiffany Aching seems pretty capable of handling herself, but I'm a bit afraid to read more than Wintersmith because I was waiting for the other shoe to drop all the way through that already.

Since I was talking about Monstrous Regiment, that's actually what brought up this line of thinking with me. I read it, and believe me I thoroughly enjoyed it, and then I got to the court martial scene. You know what I mean. The one 50 pages from the end, and sure enough Pratchett breaks out the deus ex machina right on cue. That's when I said, okay, look, I'm done with this book. I'm not going to finish it. I'll make up my own ending instead, it'll probably suck but I'll damn sure like it better than watching Pratchett's Protagonist Chess for the thirtieth time.

Maybe it's a case of him getting used to doing this? I remember thinking the exact same thing with Carpe Jugulum. I think the very worst case was in Lords and Ladies, that seemed to end along the lines of the children's copout "and it was all a dream".
Monstrous Regiment though...the ending's not -that- bad, I do recommend going back to that one.

*sigh* I've just started Lords and Ladies. Well, beats the time one of my friends told me a Redwall character died right before I started the book where it happened.

I dunno, I tend to not think about what I am reading too much. I thought Reaper Man had a pretty decent ending.

But...but...Night Watch! C'mon, Night Watch! Vetinari couldn't have planned it or had it under control (on account of it all happened a couple of decades in the past). The best he could do, surely, was guess, admittedly correctly, at the mystery of Keel looking like Vimes, or the other way around, altho' I'm not sure how many of the pieces fell into place for the Patrician until the scene with him, Vimes, and the incapacitated Carcer in the graveyard, and trust that Vimes would succeed at doing what he always did--apprehending criminals and turning them over to the law.

Yeah, that's why Night Watch is my favorite book of his out of them all. The Deus Ex Machina thing happens altogether too often though.

Least he's not dumb like Clive Cussler (Dirk Pitt author) with the whole "literary device" of sticking his goddamn self in the books to save the protagonist from being marooned or killed or otherwise.

True. Night Watch does not have the Vetinari cop out. But we do get the time monks cop out instead. Still one of the better novels, mind.

Stephen King and Neil Gaiman also could not end a book to save their lives.

I must say that I disagree strongly with the subject of this thread on a number of points.

I don't know how you can be upset at a deus ex machina at the end of a book whose entire plot is motivated by a literal deus ex liber libri. I mean I really cannot stress this enough, we are talking about a book whose plot is "God speaks to the people of this country via a collection of magical three-ring binders in which he issues commandments about the evils of modern technology, relaxed gender roles and root vegetables." I'm just saying, in comparison to that any ghost of a dutchess appearing in front of some generals seems like pretty thin beer. And that's never even minding that the deus-ex medium outright tells the story's protagonist "Just FYI, but we are being guided by the spirit of a deceased dutchess so that she can arrive at the castle and perform a flashy deus ex machina." I'm not saying that sort of thing is for everybody, just if it bothers you that much I don't know how you got past like page three of that book.

Also I've always considered it more or less the entire point of Vetinari that he's not actually in control of anything, and relies on Vimes much, much more than he would ever let on to the latter.

Also also I've always found Pratchett's heroes requiring some level of background assistance and string-pulling to be a refreshing change from the usual fantasy trope of "lone hero (alt: tiny band of heroes) confronts massive all-powerful empire, topples singlehandedly." Especially as his books tilt more towards realism than fantasy, some sort of intercessionary agent becomes necessary because in the real world plucky acts of individual heroism never actually work, and individuals are fallible beings who require outside assistance in order to succeed. I think there's actually a line in one of his books somewhere to the effect of "The world's a big place, and it's used to people trying to change it," (I might have got that from somewhere else though) which underscores that for the books to work as stories of any kind of actual consequence it's necessary that the main protagonists' actions fit into a larger web of agendas and motivations.

King, yes. Gaiman did American Gods well, however!

I don't think you can really call them deus ex machinas, because there's pretty much always prior evidence that they're going to happen.

Monstrous Regiment, that's been covered. And by the look of things, they would have gotten out of the court martial without divine intervention. Admittedly, that was due to sergeant intervention.

I really don't think Vetinari is as in control as he looks. It's all just mind games - people don't mess with him because they think he's in control. Really, he mainly just lies low and lets the situation sort itself out, maybe giving it a nudge along the way. It's failed him before - Sourcery for example.

He really is a bastard sometimes though. I think the biggest example has to be the start of Going Postal. That was just cruel.

In Thud, Vimes knows he's being manipulated by everyone, including Mr Shine, Vetinari, and the Summoning Dark. In the end, the deus ex machina is just Vimes going totally spare.