Thank you for the thoughtful review! I always enjoy the book more for the little set pieces than for the overall sweep--the Bearded Lake, Will and Bran in the eerie silent library, Simon jumping off the pier (Simon is low-key my favorite and he never gets any attention from readers) and so on.
I'm an oddball in that the ending has never bothered me, and I was surprised to discover from the Internet that it does bother a lot of people. If anything I always found Merriman's "Drake is no longer in his hammock, nor is Arthur somewhere sleeping..." speech kind of moving--I think the memory loss always struck me as a way to move into a new world full of equally meaningful things without constantly pining for something that's lost (like the end of Diana Wynne Jones' Witch Week?).