So the other day I got a note from a reader titled “The Final Evolution”:“I love the ending. I don’t think it could have ended any other way and it was excellent. Not every story has a happy ending, and I am glad you didn’t shy away from that like many authors would.”
I actually got a bit of resistance to the ending of the Avery Cates series because it’s kind of dark and lonely and soul-crushing. Despite the fact that the main character is pretty much an evil bastard who kills folks for a living, for convenience, and for petty revenge — not to mention a guy who view violence as the only way to deal with even trivial annoyances like chatty people — a lot of readers wanted a happy ending for him. I even introduced a vague romantic possibility for him in the final book mainly to enjoy the sound of hearts breaking when he didn’t end up with her. Ah, I am cruel. Like Caligula, only sans the power to deify myself.
People want the happy ending. This is, I think, to justify a) your time investment in the story and b) (in this case as in others, but not always) your identifying with a sociopath and rooting for him. Avery is a terrible person. Wishing that he ends his days with a girlfriend and modicum of peace is so wrong, so unjust, I simply couldn’t do it. You’re lucky I didn’t end the book with him being torn apart by wolves while he quoted the Nic Cage Bees scene from The Wicker Man:
This restraint can be laid at the feet of my own affection for the character. I love Avery, despite his mass-murderin’ and being semi-responsible for the end of the world and all.
So, it was great to get this email. Someone gets it! Thank goodness, because I thought I was going insane. What’s that, voices? I am insane. Shut up.
ROFLMAO!!! I love that scene from Wicker Man (though my mother-in-law does not agree, especially when I quoted it in the middle of our viewing of a certain “serious” Nicholas Cage movie…).
And, incidentally, one of the things I *like* about Avery Cates is that he views violence as the way to deal with annoyance. It’s like that inner part of us all (well, maybe not of the annoying people). We all wish we could let a bit of our inner Avery loose sometimes.
I think the ending was the right one. My husband and I have discussed this thoroughly. If it ended any other way, it just wouldn’t have been real, if you know what I mean. It would have felt like a cheat. We the readers knew from the beginning of Electric Church that this could not end well ;).
Hi Melanie: Thanks for the reply, and I’m glad folks support Avery’s evilness as a positive character trait. I often think the worst thing about him is that he’s actually not that evil. He’s just brutally pragmatic and doesn’t see how that leads him to evil. Fun stuff to write, glad folks appreciate it!
I was actually hoping Avery was going to die in the end, because it felt kind of fitting. When I read the last words of the chapter (before the epilogue) I just dropped the book because I didn’t expect it to REALLY happen. But alas he went on living (in a very depressing way of course), but I’d like to think a large piece of his head has been largely disfigured from a bullet traveling through it. He was an evil bastard, and I really do think that he had a good heart, maybe I wanted to see him die because I felt so bad for him that he kept on living so long, only to see everyone die around him countless times. Regardless of him living or not, he did fuck the human race, which is the best kind of revenge, absolute.