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windemereI always hate finishing a book. Returning to the real worl always sucks, and leaving the characters behind hurts sometimes even more. And it's never the same, going back to it a second or third time. The experience is never quite as deep; quite as emotional.
I'm discounting LOTR from that, of course.
But finishing a series is just down right painful. I read the last page, of the last book this morning. And I cried. Partly because the ending was just plain heartbreaking, and partly because it was, forever, The End.
Anyone read Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series? It may just be the best series of books I've ever read (again discounting LOTR). I starting it nearly seven years ago, and after 6 books, and the waiting for the last one (which nearly killed me and reminds me how painful the push to the last HP book is going to become soon), you become rather attached. The characters become real, and as dear to you as real people. And it's nearly impossible to let a loved one go.
I fell in love with Jamie Fraser when I was 15. It's never really gone away. How could I not love a tall, red-haired Scot with a streak of honour a mile wide and a stubborness bordering on obstinant? Yeah, that was rhetorical.
And it's painful, to let these characters go at last. To read the last adventure, and discover the last secret. And to know that everything is answered now; there are no more questions and no more answers, and no more adventures.
I tried to start reading a new series this afternoon, to try to console myself with the grief. It's failing miserably. Because I don't want new characters, and new adventures. I want Jamie Fraser, and Scotland, and time-travel, and a whole family of characters that I know better than I know many of my friends.
I'll read the series again, of course, but it won't be soon. Better to wait, and then to come back to them in a few years, when memory starts to blur, and discover them all over again, and know, from the beginning, that you are safe, that everything will be alright....like returning to an old friend.
Still, it's hard.
I'm discounting LOTR from that, of course.
But finishing a series is just down right painful. I read the last page, of the last book this morning. And I cried. Partly because the ending was just plain heartbreaking, and partly because it was, forever, The End.
Anyone read Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series? It may just be the best series of books I've ever read (again discounting LOTR). I starting it nearly seven years ago, and after 6 books, and the waiting for the last one (which nearly killed me and reminds me how painful the push to the last HP book is going to become soon), you become rather attached. The characters become real, and as dear to you as real people. And it's nearly impossible to let a loved one go.
I fell in love with Jamie Fraser when I was 15. It's never really gone away. How could I not love a tall, red-haired Scot with a streak of honour a mile wide and a stubborness bordering on obstinant? Yeah, that was rhetorical.
And it's painful, to let these characters go at last. To read the last adventure, and discover the last secret. And to know that everything is answered now; there are no more questions and no more answers, and no more adventures.
I tried to start reading a new series this afternoon, to try to console myself with the grief. It's failing miserably. Because I don't want new characters, and new adventures. I want Jamie Fraser, and Scotland, and time-travel, and a whole family of characters that I know better than I know many of my friends.
I'll read the series again, of course, but it won't be soon. Better to wait, and then to come back to them in a few years, when memory starts to blur, and discover them all over again, and know, from the beginning, that you are safe, that everything will be alright....like returning to an old friend.
Still, it's hard.
