Thanks, your c&c about the ending is very valid. Lots of people have reacted on it, with mixed feelings. The current ending is the result of some compromising, so it might come across as a bit unconventional.
Initially, I wanted the ending to be even more abrupt, with Ord either dying, or simply going back to his previous life with nothing altered; no closure, no changes at all.
I wanted there to be a tangible difference between the dramatic showdown ending of the fairy-tale, and how the real world works - mundane and anti-climactic. My very first idea was that Ord should die, but live on in the book world, in the way literary characters become immortalized in the text (referencing Shakespeare and the sonnet Shall I compare thou[...]). But then the game became gradually more oriented toward guilt and sin, and less about mortality, so that ending wouldn't make sense.
However, testers didn't want a sad/non-climax ending, so I had to put something good there. At least now Ord gets to sacrifice himself, preventing Sara from learning the truth. And we get a glimpse of a better future - going away with Sara, the rain stopping...
A realistic ending is one where there isn't a perfect closure - you don't always get all questions answered. That's why I deliberately threw in plot elements that never get addressed properly, like Magnus and his dinner date, and what's in the cellar, and if Jonatan would have killed himself anyway, and is suppressing childhood memories really the way to deal with your past, will Sara even feel better for it?
At one point Ord says "I feel like I'm just being given more questions", when he's supposed to attain some sort of clarity.
I wanted to foreshadow the ending a bit by repeatedly have Sara ask if Ord found anything weird about the book, and she even said she was afraid of what it might contain. I know the revelation is still so abrupt it borders on the absurd (soap opera-ish, even), but hey, that's how well I managed to write it into the story

It turned out harder than I thought, handling such delicate and mature themes...