I have always been someone that can have his emotions easily manipulated thanks to various works of fiction. I usually cry at TV or Film, with some examples being when, in Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, when Aragorn says to the Hobbits “My friends, you bow to no one,” or in Lord of the Rings: Return of the King when Aragorn turns to the men of the west (looking straight down the camera) and whispers “For Frodo” before turning and charging the Mordor horde. Or in Lord of the Rings: Return of the King when Pippin sings Edge of Night. Or in the Lord of the Rings, when Concerning Hobbits plays at any point.
I CRY A LOT AT LOTR OKAY?!
When it comes to books, however, this is a rarer occurrence, but whenever it happens, man do those emotions and experiences stay with me for a long time! Well, I thought I’d make a list of books that have made me cry. I consider all of these books to be incredible works, as they have been good enough to get my eyes to leak sweet salty tears. There are no spoilers for the below of course, but I will talk briefly about my *feelings*, and I will also give each book a little “cry score” too!
Get your tissues ready (and for you lizard folk out there, prime your tongues) as you’re going to be dabbing at your seeing-balls after reading these books!
The Bone Ships by RJ Barker – Welled Up & Hyped Up
One of the scenes from LOTR that I didn’t mention but also makes me cry is Aragorn’s rousing speech outside of the Black Gates (quick edit: HOW DID I FORGET THEODENS HYPE MAN SPEECH AT THE BATTLE OF PELENNOR FIELDS!). It’s a speech that gets me because it’s so full of strength and hope against innumerable odds; it feels me with energy and gets me excited for what is about to happen! The Bone Ships manages to replicate these feelings through Lucky Meas, an incredibly strong leader of her group of damned sailors. There are many battles in this sea-faring epic, and prior to them all, Lucky Meas can be seen and heard giving these brilliant morale-boosting pep talks with the whole crew. And as the crew’s admiration for her grows so does the readers. However, with each battle, the stakes grow too. Luckily, each speech is better than the last!
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Farseer trilogy by Robin Hobb – Sad, Rolling Down The Cheek Tears
Robin Hobb just loves to make Fitz suffer doesn’t she?! This poor boy goes through so much, he’s hated for just existing; he experiences death, betrayal, physical hurts and heart break, and this is just in the first book! He even has a shit time of it before Assassin’s Apprentice even begins! As each tragic event mounts up, Fitz always picks himself back up and carries on, but because Fitz is so real (almost hyper-real as we are planted firmly in his head, with all thoughts, emotions and reactions), there are times when he is down for longer. He just doesn’t deserve any of the bad stuff that happens to him, and every reader can agree with me on that!
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Red Rising trilogy by Pierce Brown – Tears Of Shock
Similar to Robin Hobb, Pierce Brown also finds joy in putting his main character, Darrow, through multiple wringers. By the end of the 50th page of Red Rising, I had teared up. It’s safe to say that the whole Red Rising trilogy is just twist after twist, surprises over surprises, and being in a near constant state of shock is the norm. Well, whenever one of these shocking moments happened, it was almost guaranteed that I would have damp eyeballs, simply because of how it was pulled off and the violent beauty of most of these moments. It’s a bloodydamn brilliant series, a true rollercoaster!
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IT by Stephen King – Unknowable Mixture Of Emotions Waterworks
IT is one of my favourite books of all time, let alone my favourite King book, and at over 1300 pages long, it has plenty of time to build its characters, good and evil, and also its epic, decade spanning story. So, when I finally got to the end, and after following The Losers Club for 30 years of their lives, it was like parting with old friends. It was bittersweet, happy, sad, the feeling you get when you come to the end of an era, a turning point. The emotional pot was so full of different ingredients, that I couldn’t help shed a few tears over it all.
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The Dark Tower saga by Stephen King – Multiple Leakages
Over the course of 8 books, like any big series that you have become so deeply invested in, there is bound to be a few emotional moments. For me, there was the mind-blowing ending to the first book, an important character building scene in the 4th book, or a tragic moment during the final entry. All of these moments and more made me tear up for the emotions were strong. I followed the path of the beam with this Ka-Tet, and of course when something big happened to them, when everything equalled 19, by proxy, it happened to me. Man, I need to reread this series now!
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Words of Radiance by Brandon Sanderson – Epic Wells Of Tears
Simply put, the final quarter of this book (or in other words, the last 1 million pages) were so unfathomably epic, the stakes so incredibly high, that it just melted me and totally blew my mind! So many parts of this final act to the best Stormlight Archive book (don’t @ me, you know it’s true) were so important to the overall story, the world, the characters and everything changed for this series from this point onwards. And it was a masterpiece to experience.
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11.22.63 by Stephen King (again) – Tears For The Ending
11.22.63 is a thriller novel through and through, but it also takes its time in the first half to make you understand its core cast and grow to care for them. And being as vague as possible, the final few pages reduced me to a blubbering mess. To say more would give things away, and this book works best the less you know about it.
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Bloody Rose by Nicholas Eames – Weeping Floods Like A Child
There is a moment, about two thirds of the way through Bloody Rose, when THAT happens. The actual moment itself is relatively quick. Quick enough that makes you go “did THAT just happen?” It wasn’t THAT bit that made me cry. No, it was the scene afterwards. For those of you who have read Bloody Rose, you know what scene I mean. I will never be able to get those images out of my head, and even now, just the thought of it gets me emotional. I am not exaggerating when I say I closed the book at the end of the chapter and had a good ugly cry. It is the only book to make me cry that hard.
So, I have only one thing to add: Fuck you Nicholas Eames, you beautiful bastard!
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I love everything about this