I think the word length requirement is what makes this ask difficult. Most "good" stories don't require 500k to finish. You get mostly bloated books and kids series that never wrap up in this word count category.

I'm sure some people would mention Worm, but I didn't particularly think the ending was good, let alone satisfying.

My inner weeb would mention the Monogatari Series, but that's incomplete and also probably not what you're looking for.

I remember Brandon Mull's (Fablehaven, Beyonders) stuff to be enjoyable as a kid, but I haven't read those in a while and I'm sure my opinion would have changed.

Honestly, the fact that nothing comes to mind after about ten minutes of considering the question is probably telling in itself.

 

The Legend of Drizzt series that ended with Relentless did a good job wrapping up the character I felt. And overall it was a fun ride.

 

This is the only work by King that I have read and I feel like the story peaked with Drawing of the Three and gradually slid downhill from there, though Wizard and Glass was the last good entry and once we entered Wolves of the Calla the descent gained momentum faster than Blaine the Mono. I absolutely hated the true ending. It felt like such a slap in the face. Maybe if I ever read the series over properly instead of just indulging in Drawing, I might be able to reassess the ending, but I don't have the time to sink into a series that I disliked the first time through.

I have read them all. Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow and phenomenal. Speaker for the Dead never felt like a proper continuation of Ender's story, but I eventually came around to enjoying it. I believe the other titles were Xenocide and Children of the Mind, and while I applaud Card's depth, I did not find the conclusion to be a particularly good read(once such reason being way Jane was handled earlier on to shift over her loyalties, and much later on that Ender's entire net worth is only barely able to afford a starship. Like goddamn how expensive are these things??)

Shadow of the Hegemon by comparison stands strong as a followup to Ender's Shadow. But once we enter Shadow Puppets, the characterization began to dip hard. I still find the ending to that novel as good as it could have been given the circumstances leading up to it, but I have never liked how Shadow of the Giant followed from there and put a nice little bow on the different character arcs. Some are believable, others bland, Randi can die in a fire.

Then we come to Shadows in Flight. Yuck. Just... yuck.

Ender in Exile is weird in its own ways.

Given the final book supposed to reunite the two series has not come out(so far as I am aware) I'd say you don't lose anything by skipping the above 2 novels for now.

I've been happier with the novels focusing on the first invasion and leading up to the second, though I haven't caught up on that in a few years so maybe it is out by now. tl;dr Neither Ender series has had satisfying conclusions for me. Quite the opposite tbh.

 

I liked Wheel of Time and recc that. Also, that Deverry series I shilled for a lot on here I quite liked and the ending for it was unexpected but satisfying.

I absolutely adored the Memory, Thorn and Sorrows. It's a trilogy(technically its four books since the last was so long it had to be split into Part 1 and Part 2 books) that wraps up great and it has a sequel trilogy with the last book and a prequel book coming out in just a few months, I've been holding off on reading it until then but I trust the author has written it brilliantly as well.

Riftwar cycle series is also on my list, I've only read one trilogy of the many books and I liked it and have been meaning to finish the rest.

Most are 80s/90s fantasy reccs (not the latest deverry book and Tad Williams series) so keep that in mind, might not be what you like. They all fit the 500k+ req though.

 

I'd avoid the first trilogy (published between 82-86). It's not terrible per se, but I read them after I read The Conclave of Shadows (02-04), and there's a sharp contrast in quality. The first novel in the next trilogy, Flight of the Nighthawks, was pretty good, but the other two were pretty forgettable, and I believe that's when I stopped with the series.

My favourites were King of Foxes and Exile's Return. It was relatively straightforward to get into the series with Conclave. The first three books were OK at best, and I dropped the other books I tried, which were Krondor's Sons and Legends of the Riftwar.

I've heard it said, and many times at that, that The Serpent War saga is Feist at his peak.

With all that said, it's been over ten years since I read those books, so take that with a pinch of salt.

 

Magicians Trilogy by Trudi Canavan - ties off quite neatly, but the world is pretty shallow compared to most.

Age of the Five by Trudi Canavan - extremely predictable, but competently done and again, the ending is satisfying.

Tales of the Otori - alas, literally "rocks fall everyone dies".

 

More young adult, but I remember TA Barron's Merlin series being really good.

The Prydain Chronicles by Lloyd Alexander were long and ended well.

 

Narnia. The last Kingdom is an excellent swan song for a series overshadowed by the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe. It pairs well with the opening of The Magician’s Nephew, and continues the weird and uncomfortable darkening that the Silver Chair started.

His Dark Materials. The ending and culmination of that is excellent. It’s a reall comprehensive ending to a sprawling, multiversal stories. In the context of my not having read any of this more recent Book of Dust stuff.

 

I remember being pretty satisfied with the conclusion to Malazan, although it's maybe worth mentioning that there's a kinda-sorta spin-off series that takes it further which I've not read it. Seconded on Mistborn, which I thought tied things up very nicely (there's a novella which expands on some behind the scenes stuff, so to speak, if you've not read it - The Secret History, I think it's called).

You could maybe make an argument for some of the Discworld mini-series, although most of them don't have conclusions as such.

Depending on how you count it, Neil Gaiman's The Sandman is worth a mention here; traditionally broken into 10 volumes, but no idea about the word count, and obviously a comic book/graphic novel rather than a 'normal' book, for want of a better term.

 

I'll take your word for it. I've only read the Empire series/trilogy which was co-authored, I know its pretty different from the rest. I'd recc the long series the co-author has The Wars of Light and Shadow btw Ched. Haven't read it but I've read a few of their other stand alone books.

 

It'd either become overly bloated and be disappointing, or the world would ensnare me utterly, and thus my vehicle for experiencing it would end and thus... be disappointing.

 

Ah, I didn't get that. I'd say all of my recc's from my original post stand except for WoT and Riftwar.

 

I really liked Conclave at the time, and if you add the first book of the next trilogy, you could call it a four book series.

Each arc had a satisfying conclusion, but it's almost always 'The End ... but!' which is a cheap device to set up the next series. The world is quite big, and by the time you reach Book Four (Flight), you're following the narrative with a new set of protagonists.

Books One and Two follow the same protagonist, and Book Three's main POV is that of the primary antagonist of the first two books.

At any rate, the character arcs generally have a satisfying conclusion, and by that metric, we do have satisfying endings here. But they're also not long! The story that begins with Conclave effectively ends at Book Two, and you could stop there and be happy. Book Three is almost self-contained, and Book Four is just a bonus if you want to see what happens next with the Big Bad.

I stopped at that point, and was relatively content. I didn't feel the need to return to the series, but that's also because I can accept that the books are serial, cyclical even. Something bad happens, our heroes go to extreme lengths to stop it, they succeed, but then another bigger bad happens, and the stakes are even higher, and then our heroes do even more shit to put an end to it, and they succeed, but then ... well, whatever.

In some sense, the author is writing the same story over and over, and you can decide which iteration is more to your tastes. I suspect that he found a good thing, and milked it for as long as he could.

So, you could argue that there are satisfying endings, but it's on the reader to find and take them. The series in themselves, however, spanned thirty odd years and novels, and god knows how much in-story-time which occurred across multiple dimensions.

I looked at the synopsis for Magician's End, and couldn't care for it at all; it sounds like an amalgam of different aspects of the series. With that said, it's the sort of story that doesn't need fanfiction, because the author rewrote it a dozen times. Some people would find that satisfying.

Does the story itself come with a satisfying end, after thirty novels? I'd bet on No, because it's the same ending rewritten for the nth time, and so the story was already over (and reset) a bunch of times before the last trilogy began. But my friend loved it, and I think he read all the solo Feist books.

I prefer shorter stories. I imagine people lose steam or get too caught up with perfectionism (*cough* Rothfuss *cough*) as the word count increases.

From Talon of the Silver Hawk to the end of Flight of the Nighthawks, we have 420k words or so. Rothfuss' Name of the Wind is 250k words, and Wise Man's Fear is 400k. No end in sight for that one.

The entirety of the Riftwar Cycle is over 4.7 million words, and Pratchett's Discworld encompasses over 5.6 million words. The difference is Discworld isn't one ongoing narrative, but multiple narratives within a larger universe. I've only read The Colour of Magic, so I don't really have a clue, but fans of the series really love it, from what I can tell.

Is 500k not enough to tell a very long story? That's seven 250-300 (?) page novels, at around 70k words per novel; or three chunky books.

Past that point, I think we're talking stories within stories, more than a straight-up single story.

 

If you want a satisfying series, I'd recommend anything by Tamora Pierce. Her series tend to be in the 4 book range, and while they don't break the 500k mark on their own, they tend to be set in one of two universes, so even though the main character changes, you're still following the same timelines. She writes some of the best female protagonists I've ever read, too.

 

It's a bit different genre wise from the other series mentioned here, but Lindsey Davis' Falco books - about an informer (private detective) in Rome during the reign of Emperor Vespasian - had a satisfying conclusion after about 20 books. Shame about the sequel series, but you can't have everything...