Why Does The Ending Of The First Legendary Beast Master Happen?

A lot of fans get the story through osmosis. They lurk on a novel’s Discord or TikTok, follow all the links to the fan made art of the cool beasts in the story, and join in the heated debates on power scaling. Sometimes you can even get a summary of the whole plot in a post summing up the current chapter. As for me, I’ve ‘read’ so many novels through fandoms. Right now I’m ‘reading’ ‘The First Legendary Beast Master’. Through the fandom I know that the main character in this novel obtains his first spirit fox early on, and that there is a huge betrayal later on in the story. It’s a very unusual way to consume media, but it’s social and it can be really good for people who are interested in a story but aren’t quite ready to commit to reading the whole thing. The really huge benefit to lurking is that you get to read the highlights without having to actually read everything in between.

This is all so ubiquitous now, but credit has to be given to books, I suppose. The column is set by Norton’s seminal work, of course, but there’s been loads of older material too, most notably perhaps Kipling’s ‘Jungle Book’, in which Mowgli and his wolf pack are incarnations of beast mastery. Recently, there have been lots of web novels that play with the same basic idea but add all sorts of other twists. They’re generally really fun reads (I recently read ‘Chrysalis’, which was by an ant, and was surprisingly good). On the whole, beast master remains a compelling and primative fantasy, expressing itself in books, in games, and in anime.

Viewed through a critical lens, the ending of our story fails its female protagonist. Despite the plethora of power she had accumulated over the course of the novel, in the end she is set up as the passive object around which the men in her life perform a ritual of great complexity. They are the ones who set up and defend her and negotiate the terms of her bond. The female Catalyst of story’s end is also its Reward; rather than being the architect of the solution to her personal dilemma, she demands of no one and chooses only to agree to the terms already laid out for her in the biggest choice she gets to make in the entire story. She is set up on a pedestal, revered, even worshipped, and in the end, made powerless by the devotion of the men around her. It’s all a symbol of empty empowerment.

The final fight was awesome, but after that, the scenes with the tamers from the academy were way more interesting. They used to act all superior when they saw me and my doggy because we were “just a runt” and now they have to admit that said runt is a legend. This is so amazing. I love this so much. It’s just so good. The author dedicates one chapter to their stunned faces and condescending words afterwards, which is so great for this kind of petty revenge.

I think people make this way too complicated. The good guy wins, the bad guys lose, the kingdom is saved, the good guy gets the girl (sort of), the good guy lives happily ever after. This is your classic fantasy ending. And it was so great just with a slightly different coat of paint because the good guy won by being smart and tired, not by leveling up and being louder than the bad guys. A good, warm, and satisfying happy ending that didn’t feel like it was going to fall apart any second, is really all I need.

The ending of 'Master of the Moor' really caught me off guard—it’s one of those twisty psychological thrillers that leaves you reeling. Stephen Whalley, the protagonist, starts off as this quiet, introverted guy who’s obsessed with the moor, but his obsession spirals into something much darker. By the finale, Whalley’s fragile grip on reality shatters completely. He’s revealed as the killer, but the way Ruth Rendell writes it is so subtle and unsettling. The moor itself almost feels like a character, this vast, indifferent witness to his unraveling. The last scenes are haunting, with Whalley wandering the moor, lost in his own delusions. It’s not a loud, dramatic climax but a creeping, inevitable collapse that sticks with you long after you close the book. What I love about Rendell’s writing here is how she plays with perception. You spend the whole book assuming Whalley is just an eccentric outsider, but the truth sneaks up on you. The moor’s eerie beauty contrasts so sharply with the horror of his actions. It’s a masterclass in unreliable narration—you’re left questioning everything you thought you knew. The ending doesn’t tie things up neatly, either. It’s messy and unresolved, which feels true to life. No dramatic showdowns, just a quiet, chilling descent into madness.

It’s a perfect balance of hope and realism. Yes, he does make it, but he is very battered and worn, and a bit of him will never be the same. The relief of victory is not set up to be one of those fairy-tale happy-ever-after moments that eradicate all the horrors of what happened to him before. No, he is battered and worn out, and the cold of Siberia will remain in his bones for the rest of his life – literally and metaphorically. And the recognition of the cost to him of this hard-won battle (and the continuing war against nature and against the state) is at once sublime and of a maturity and weight that is not typical of most adventure stories.

First of all, this is an ending about release. Elara lets go of her hatred for the beast, her need for revenge, her identity as a weapon, her home and her past. The city lets go of a tyrant and a very parasitic magical crutch. And the story itself lets go of the need for a traditional climax. All that release creates a feeling of quiet emptiness at the end of the book. Not necessarily a bad empty feeling, though. It’s more like a room that’s been thoroughly cleaned after someone’s moved out. It’s melancholic, but also light. There’s room for a lot of things to happen in that empty space, and it’s not up to the story to fill it all out for the reader. The reader, and also the characters in the story, are left to their own devices to imagine what might happen next. That’s very rare in fiction.

The ending of 'Fury Bound' lands with a shove rather than a soft landing, and what blows me away is how many dominoes the authors knock down in one sweep. Meryn ends up facing betrayals that were planned long before she knew their names. The big reveal is that Killian is far more than a scheming noble — he’s become a vessel for an older Siphon consciousness, and his blood magic has corrupted the very heart of the kingdom. That corruption shows up in brutal, tangible ways, like the Dire Blade shattering in the middle of a battle, which severs a vital link between people and their direwolves and leaves everyone reeling. Those moments are what make the finale feel like a reset rather than a neat conclusion. Beyond the battlefield theatrics, the finale pushes Meryn into dangerous growth. She’s forced to learn shadebending, a risky shadow magic that threatens to consume her, and to race toward collecting the legendary Goddess Tears because Killian wants to claim all seven to ascend into something like a living god. At the same time, the book pulls back the curtain on long-buried lies about the Siphons and shows that regions once painted as wastelands are complex and full of secrets. The ending drops a chilling dream sequence where a shadowy voice tells Meryn she’s opened a door she cannot close, which frames a new, darker axis for the trilogy and points toward consequences that will be personal and political. Honestly, I closed the book feeling both wrecked and excited. The authors set up a war on three levels — magic, blood, and narrative truth — and then made the cost unmistakable. It’s messy, haunting, and exactly the kind of cliff that pulls me straight into the next book, already braced for more heartbreak and clever reversals.

Ending a relationship often requires geographic distance from the environment in which the relationship’s dysfunction was established. The entire setting — the city, his apartment, that cafe where they always sat — functions as a host of triggers to immense pain. And so, in order to heal, she takes the train and travels the distance between them. Each mile puts her further and further from the past and when she arrives in the new city she has no choice but to start from scratch. She is no longer his ex nor “that girl.” She is simply another new face in the city. And that is liberating.