[Astra]

The Count of Monte Cristo
The Stand
Wizard and Glass (Dark Tower 4)
Tigana
The Last Light of the Sun

[EDIT 08. May.2007]
Damn, how could I forget about The Lord of the Rings!

[Matrim]

All Quiet on the Western Front

Deadhouse Gates

The Lions of al-Rassan and Kay's books in general

Royal Assassin by Ronin Hobb. Also most of her other books, now that's writer who seems to love putting her characters in terrible situation after a terrible situation.

[Kazz D'Avore]

Deadhouse gates and Memories of Ice, as well as Game of Thrones and Storm of Swords.
Oh yeah, and Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay was a proper gut-puncher as well.

[Illuyankas]

You'll hate me for it, but Reaper's Gale got me.

[Dolorous Menhir]

I hate you.

(ps - might want ease up on the spoilers there, K'azz)

[Kazz D'Avore]

ooops, mind numbed by essays:o - promptly edited

[Illuyankas]

I'm crushed.

[Werthead]

Peter F. Hamilton's The Naked God (1,150 pages in hardback) was a real gut-punch. No, literally. I was holding it in a slightly awkward manner and a door got opened into me. I was lying on the floor gasping for breath. That book could kill a rhino in the wrong hands.

But yeah, GRRM does it every time, as does SE and Bakker. Niall's death in Jordan's A Crown of Swords was painful as it was the death of pretty much the last remaining really interesting, three-dimensional character in the series.

Kay for sure, particularly Lions of Al-Rassan. And Morgan in Black Man, just the whole book and what it shows the USA transforms into in the future.

Oddly enough, Feist (never the most emotionally powerful author) actually delivered this as well in Rage of a Demon King when he blew up Krondor and killed off about a dozen recurring characters of note.

[McLovin]

Foucault's Pendulum was kind of a gut-punch book for me. Not that there was any one scene that punched me in the gut, but at the end there was this accumulated paranoia that made me want to barricade myself in my room. House of Leaves was kinda like that too.

The Red Wedding in A Storm of Swords was so powerful, I stayed up the rest of the night and next day to finish the book. I paused only long enough to call in sick at work

[Abyss]

Agree with most of the above ref'd.

Would add:

Jim Butcher's DEAD BEAT - because that finale was so mind-blowingly awesome i read it again immediately, just to be sure it was really as awesome as i had just thought it was. And it was even better.

PRIDE OF BAGHDAD - it's an illustrated graphic novel (ie: a big comic book) and it is absolutely beautiful to look at and the story utterly rips the reader emotionally. In a good way, but severely.

- Abyss, notes SE gets me an average of twice per book.

[Omras Ghum]

Quite some books did that for me:

Deadhouse Gates - Coltaines Ending

Memories of ice- Itkovian...

Lord of the Rings - oddly in the appendix when it says "and end had come in Middle-Earth of the fellowship of the ring"

and, when i was about 12 years old: Dragonlance - the deaths of both Sturm und Flint

[stone monkey]

Thanks Longhorn - I'd forgotten about House of Leaves - which probably means it's about time to dig it out again for a re-read.

[Yellow]

Morgoth;179766 said:

Use of weapons by Iain Banks

You know, I've never understood why people liked Use of Weapons so much. So many people claim it's the best in the series, but I reckon if you took away the ending (the very end), then really it would just be a cleverly structured jaunt into the background of the Culture universe. Nothing more. It certainly lacks the scope of Excession or Consider Phlebas, is simply not as fun as Player of Games, and isn't even as clever as Inversions.

I mean, if you took away the last 2 minutes of The Usual Suspects, it would still be a bloody great film. It didn't live or die on the ending, though that ending propelled it well into the stratosphere of almost-perfection.

I just don't get it. But each to their own.

[Wiggles]

stone monkey;186573 said:

Thanks Longhorn - I'd forgotten about House of Leaves - which probably means it's about time to dig it out again for a re-read.

oh for fuck's sake... Why?

[Rob B]

A Game of Thrones on my second reading of the book. I read the first book when it first hit mass market paperback in the late 90s. Then I read the succession of the the 2nd and 3rd books when published. However, when Feast published I figured I'd re-read them all since gosh it was five years between the publication of books 3 and 4. A Game of Thrones was such a gut punch because in the intervening years I'd forgotton how great it was in asmuch as the book exceeded the memories I'd built up about enjoying it, the ending got me again and I forgot how much happened in the first book.

Blade of Tyshalle by Matthew Woodring Stover - The down in the pits and return to glory journey Stover took protagonist Hari Michaelson/Caine through in the book was incredible. As were the journeys he took all the characters, but few books left me with such a huge Kool-Aid smile at the end as did this book. It was an emotional roller-coaster for me.

I might get slagged, but The Dark Tower book 7 by King was a big gut punch for me. I've been following Roland's quest for most of my adult reading life, having read the first book not too long after my old man bought the Grant 1st edition a couple of years after it published. I liked the way King ended the story, but the gut punch was more from having followed this journey for so long and finally coming to the end. It was almost like saying good bye to a dear friend.

[iscariot]

Several of Steven King's Bachman Books, especially The Long Walk , Rageand Thinner are particularly wrenching...

Walter M. Miller's, A Canticle For Leibowitz, is probably one of the best apocalyptic style books I've read, especially dealing with, as it does, the concept pf how man fails tolearn from history [sorta]

[Morgoth]

Yellow;186667 said:

You know, I've never understood why people liked Use of Weapons so much. So many people claim it's the best in the series, but I reckon if you took away the ending (the very end), then really it would just be a cleverly structured jaunt into the background of the Culture universe. Nothing more. It certainly lacks the scope of Excession or Consider Phlebas, is simply not as fun as Player of Games, and isn't even as clever as Inversions.

I mean, if you took away the last 2 minutes of The Usual Suspects, it would still be a bloody great film. It didn't live or die on the ending, though that ending propelled it well into the stratosphere of almost-perfection.

I just don't get it. But each to their own.

Hm.. The way I see it, Use of Weapons is a truly excellent book because of the ending, though it is very good without the ending too. Now, the thing with the ending in UoW is that it is not just an ending, by its very existence it changes the character of the whole book. Now every choice the main character makes trough out the book has another basis than what you thought. His motives change, what he hopes to acomplish change and so on. I don't think you can split it up as you do

[Abyss]

Went back in my brainz for a few less recent...

Joel Rosenberg's Guardians of the flame series - look, this series dates back to the early 80s, so if you haven't read it by now, you're probably not going to, but that said

SPOILERS SPOILER ANTIQUE
RUSTY ANCIENT SPOILERS
GUARDIANS OF THE FLAME
HISTORY SPOILERS SUCK THE
MARROW FROM YOUR SPOILERS
BONES SPOILERS ROT YOUR
GENITALS SPOILERS TZAZIKI SPOILERS

...It's not like the series is that brilliant, or that Rosenberg is that great writer. He did have a relatively cinematic/visual approach that let the reader get involved, and a good hand with characters. So while it's a 'college students dumped into a fantasy world and become their characters' story (tho in the early 80s advent of DnD this was more original than it would become), Rosenberg did a good enough job of portaying the characters as real people that when shit starts to happen to them, an engaged reader would feel it...

...hence, Book 1, two female characters are being gang raped, male characters have to sit in chains and listen to it... JR does a good job of describing the scene from the perspective of the males who are picturing what must be happening even tho they can't see it, and the sick anger and pain they are going through, and when they eventually get free (in a great sequence where the former parapalegic-become-dwarf-beserker drives himself into a rage) and start taking it out on the bad guys, you all but cheer, only to go back to the feeling sick part later. And in Book 4, after four books of building up Karl, the lead character as a hero and a dude and everyone's leader and saviour... BOOM. Serious BOOM. Out he goes in flashy violent fashion. Roughly a decade before GRRM's SONG series, this was UNTHINKABLE. And then, for good measure, he spends Book 5 keeping the reader guessing about whether Karl really is dead.

The series kind of goes downhill after this, into pretty much a satire of itself in the later books, but if you happen to find the first 5-6 second hand somewhere, worth the read.

- Abyss, readin' it ole skool.

[Dolorous Menhir]

Morgoth;190211 said:

Hm.. The way I see it, Use of Weapons is a truly excellent book because of the ending, though it is very good without the ending too. Now, the thing with the ending in UoW is that it is not just an ending, by its very existence it changes the character of the whole book. Now every choice the main character makes trough out the book has another basis than what you thought. His motives change, what he hopes to acomplish change and so on. I don't think you can split it up as you do

Got to agree. The Usual Suspects is actually pretty dull, it's only well regarded because the twist makes the previous long stretch of not-very-interesting stuff seem important. It doesn't stand up to repeated viewing.

Use of Weapons is the same, but without the problem of it being mediocre without the twist. It's an excellent story with great characters, original ideas and pitch-black humour Banks always delivers. But the twist is what truly makes it great, and not in some tacky "wow I had no idea" sense, but because it really does transform everything that came before into something else. Banks has toyed with language almost invisibly throughout, and it all comes together for the reader at the end.