The Fault in Our Stars: AIA Books

[Cooper Boyce]

If you've read the Fault in Our Stars, you'll know what I'm talking about. Has a book ever ended like An  Imperial Affliction for you? If so, what book? How did it end? (Feel free to write the actual ending: everyone who's read your post will probably forget if they read that book. 

For me: Totally and fully Inheritance by Christopher Paolini. It ended with the main character going into foreign lands to start a new line of Dragon Riders (Don't ask) and I felt devastated and I felt like chucking the book at the wall and screaming "IT CAN'T BE OVER!!! YOU NEED TO TELL ME WHAT HAPPENS TO ERAGON AND THE RIDERS AND ALAGAËSIA AND WHAT HAPPENS BETWEEN ARYA AND ERAGON AND WHAT HAPPENS WITH FAERNIN AND ARYA AND RAAAAAAAAAWWWWWRRRRRRR!!!!!!!

I didn't do that because I was borrowing the book, but still. 

[Olivia Shenken]

Hmm, I don’t think I’ve ever read a book that ends on quite the cliffhanger that An Imperial Affliction does even if there are a ton of unanswered questions, simply because authors still tend to give you a bit of closure with some nice words or hope or something in the last few lines. 
I read Eragon, and I don’t really think it’s a cliffhanger. We pretty much know what’s going to be happening for a lot of the important things for a while, and there is going to be another book at some point, so that will take care of the rest. 
But for a book that ended on a bit of a cliffhanger . . . I’d probably say The Little Prince and Monsters of Men. Not to say that that made the books and endings worse, not at all since that is what seems to be implied - it’s more that both books got me really attached to the main characters, and they had such sad but hopeful endings. (*SPOILERS*) I mean, the Little Prince goes back up to his ‘star’ by getting his body killed by the snake because it was too heavy to leave the earth and the pilot talks about how if the reader ever sees him to let him know, and Todd Hewitt is stuck in a coma and the book ends with his thoughts that Viola should keep calling to him because he’s coming soon. It’s not exactly that I felt entitled to know if Todd ever really woke up and how he changed and what happened to the colony, and if the Pilot ever got word of the Little Prince again. I didn’t feel like their SHOULD be more either. The last words were beautiful for both books and I wouldn’t have anyone change them. It’s that I really did love the characters in those books, and the worlds and the voices and the books themselves, and when you have such a bond with a book like that you feel like you have to keep reading for the sake of the book and the characters. I think it’s the books with characters you really get attached to are the real cliffhangers. If AIA had ended differently, say Anna continued chronicling until she knew she would die soon, or one of her friends left an epilogue, Hazel Grace would still want to know what happened to the mother, and the Dutch Tulip Man, and Sisyphus the hamster, and Anna’s friends, because she was attached to them through a great piece of writing. 

[Cooper Boyce]

Yeah, you're probably right. But I still think Inheritance was a cliffhanger. You know what will happen, but you want to know more, and you still wonder (at least I do) about Angela's prediction of his romance because I thought it said he'd get married to royalty but he only loved Arya, not married her. I usually don't care about that kind of stuff, but those books are my favorite and I liked all parts of it.