Am I the only one so pleased with the ending?
 

Finished this book last night. I must say, I am impressed. But, am I the only person who feels that the book ended exactly as it should have? I probably would've been disappointed if it ended any other way. Going off into spoiler land now...

It was when Nihel killed the SUV driver in the parking lot--first death of the story. I don't know if words can describe how much that pleased me. The book was actually going to get serious, and something was actually going to happen. Then Nihel attacked Rachel, and I was unsure. In fact, Rachel's death worried me a bit--"it would've been much better had she survived," I said to myself, "because then Brian wouldn't need some deus ex machina to bring her back." In fact, I was starting to doubt the ending, until Angus attacked Nihel and got a Bertha to the gut. I had to put the book down for a minute. Not because I was upset. Not because I was sad. Well, I was sad. But, I was also happy--extraordinarily so. Rachel was really dead, and she was going to stay dead.

Don't get me wrong, I didn't dislike her. It's just that her death is ultimately the correct way for the book to end. Her death actually means something. With her death, I can actually feel sad about something. And feeling anything from writing is a major bonus. Everyone who died made the book more real. And Nihel didn't stop with that idle torture of Atomik Lad, slowly killing off the shoppers. He arbitrarily killed 50% of the globe's population, and Atomik didn't do a thing to stop him. No, he couldn't do a thing. No literary sacrifices to keep the heroes heroes.

Finally, there was the question of who would finally defeat Nihel. It seemed like the book was leaning towards Atomik Lad destroying him in rage after Nihel zappified Nuklear Man, but then the book took another turn--Atomik Lad sacrifices himself for Nuklear Man, not the other way around! I was awed by the sheer testicular fortitude of the author. Of course, when Ol' Sparky turned out to have survived that, I was almost disappointed. Then I remembered the whole point about his Field somehow being able to resist negaflux. In fact, it made sense. It didn't just work out that way so he could survive. Not only was there no plot hole, and no deus ex machina, but I was able to experience the death of Atomik Lad, and still see Nuklear Man hand the planet down to him.

In short, thank you, Brian, for ending the book as it should've ended. Something that so many authors cannot, or will not--do not--do.

Not-really-an-edit: And I didn't even know there was going to be a sequel. Eagerly awaiting, of course. Not to put any pressure on you, Brian...

I'll be honest - the ending made me cry. ;_; However, I did love it to death... er, pun unintended. :P It just worked, better than the ending I thought we were going to get. Yay, Brian!

Actually John's parent's died before then, and maybe that courier did too. I don't have my book on me.

The ending is one of the reasons traditional publishers won't touch my book. It challenges convention and "no one wants that" because it hasn't been done because no one wants that because it hasn't been done etc., etc.

I have basically been told that my book isn't banal enough to be successful in the mainstream. And while that frustrates me to nearly having a heart attack every day, I knew it'd be worth it to those few of you who do get to experience it.

Honestly--I think it's their loss.

I think the ending was fabulous. Totally unexpected and fantastic for the very reason that it dared challenge convention. Which, by the way, made it totally unpredictable. There is not one person here who can say they correctly predicted the ending.

In any case, bravo. It has been highly worthy of my time.

What courier? :confused:

And I don't think John's parents count...that's backstory. It's one thing to describe a past event where someone died, another to describe someone dying. It's the book equivalent of actually killing someone, compared to talking about having killed someone.

Yeah. Remember, the scene where we "see" John's parents die is more of a hallucination than anything else. It's showing that, even in a fantasy world dreamed up by his consciousness to avoid the reality of being "responsible" for the deaths of three billion people, he cannot escape the idea that he killed his parents and Rachel. This is also partly why his Field is so erratic. He's been afraid of it all his life so he's never tried to "own" it. In that sense, it has been controlling him all along. His personal relationships and whole life has all been defined by its existence and the fear he has that he might unintentionally hurt someone else.

In the years between the end of Nuklear Age and the beginning of Atomik Age, John has come to grips with the Field and we'll get to see how it works when he's in charge.

I know some people will be disappointed or feel that it's a cop out not to show how that change in attitude came about, but that wasn't the next big story for a Nuklearverse novel. I promise that we will get hints about that process in the book and that there will be full disclosure in a short story some time later.

I thought it was a great ending. To be honest I did hope Rachel would leave/kick the bucket.

However, I didn't like him much during the book until it was too late, but Why did you have to make Angus die?!

The ending was definitely the right thing to happen. Don't get me wrong, I like the book a lot. It's just that I think if the ending hadn't come to pass as it did, it wouldn't have been as great. If it had ended like the 3-400 pages before had been, the whole book would have had a certain kind of aura of "just going on" about it, if you know what I mean.

Come to think of it, it reminds me a bit of Trigun. The first big part of it is very good, funny, a bit goofy, and then out of the blue it goes and blows you away, and you realize that such an ending is even better than what you have seen the entire time. But without diminishing the experience of the parts before it, if that makes sense to you.

Man, now I want to watch Trigun again.

EDIT: And come to think of it, Rachel's Death is just as out of the blue as Black Belt's and has a very similar effect on the reader. Woo! Recurring theme!

I know we see short bursts of Atomik Lad controlling his field unconsciously, such as when he is flying and it streamlines itself to him, when he was fighting once and it contracted to be like a form-fitting film, and when he got really mad and manifested itself as a giant avatar of his body movements.