Apparently I never finished the series...

[aapn77]

I read the series back in middle school as they came out, fast forward nearly twenty years and I decide to do so again and download the generated audiobooks to listen to while I work / commute.

I get to the late 40’s and start to realize I am not actively remembering most of what is happening anymore. Apparently somewhere along the way I never actually finished the series.

Jesus man... it always dealt with serious topics, dark subject matter, and situations that you don’t associate with a children’s book series, but that ending hurts.

I am a 32 year old man and I am / was as emotionally invested in those characters as I was when I was 12 /13. I wanted them to be happy, to make it through to the other side, but I think even back then I knew that could never happen.

Their world though a work of fiction felt all too real in many ways and as much as part of me wishes they had all gotten their happy endings, I don’t see how else it could have ended.

But damn that doesn’t make it hurt any less.

[Phoenix004]

Yeah I know the feeling. I remember being so mad at the ending back when I first read it, think I was 13. Hell I even worked on a fanfic on and off for years because I wanted the series to have a better ending. Nowadays, I'm honestly not sure how else the series could have ended. As much as we wanted a happy ending for the characters we all loved, a happy ending would not be true to the series and would have felt cheap. It still hurts though. And yes there were some seriously dark themes along the way, some of which I narely realised when I first read them.

Welcome to RAF by the way

[yrkd88]

I did the same with the series. Read them avidly in elementary school, then sorta stopped around book #33 or so. I didn't officially finish the series until I got back into the books sometime again in high school. And by that time it was kind of hard to do that, since most if not all of the books were out of circulation (and my grandfather had long donated the books I did have originally to charity).

[JavierMac]

I've had a pretty similar experience back in the day. I guess kids or young adults have a much harder time wrapping their heads around endings like that.