History Awesome / Literature

* Darren Shan's [[Literature/The Thin Executioner]] is one moment after the other for Jebel, especially as the story progresses. One of the earliest ones is his very decision to make the quest in the first place. This is a quest which many of his people's strongest men have failed for over four centuries, with the last known successful quester having been a full century ago. Say what you will about his personality, there is no denying that this little boy, the runt of his litter, has balls.

* Darren Shan's [[Literature/The Thin Executioner]] is one moment after the other for Jebel, especially as the story progresses. One of the earliest ones is his very decision to make the quest in the first place. This is a quest which many of his people's strongest men have failed for over four centuries, with the last known successful quester having been a full century ago. Say what you will about his personality, there is no denying that this little boy, the runt of his litter, has balls.----

* Awesome/TheLaundrySeries

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* Literature/SeptimusHeap gets at least one per book. In ''Magyk'' he finds the long-lost Dragon Ring of Hotep-Ra (albiet by accident). In ''Flyte'' he Imprints a dragon and soon after steals the Flyte charm from his Necromancer-in-training older brother Simon. In ''Physik'' he goes [[TimeTravel back in Time]], cures the Sicknesse and perfects the Potion of Eternal Youth. In ''Queste'' he reaches the House Foryx (Where All Times Do Meet) and then rounds off his evening chatting with Hotep-Ra. Of course, he is the [[LuckySeven seventh son of a seventh son]].

* Diomedes gets the greatest Crowning Moment of ''Literature/TheIliad'' when he goes on a [[DidYouJustPunchOutCthulhu god-stabbing rampage]] through books five and six. Athena gives him the ability to discern god from mortal, telling him to wound Aphrodite if she takes the field. After Diomedes crushes Aeneas (future star of ''Literature/TheAeneid'') with a ''boulder'', Aphrodite swoops in to rescue her son. Diomedes chases after her and slashes her arm, causing her to drop Aenes and flee. Feeling his oats, Diomedes attacks Apollo twice without any success before Apollo tells him to cut it out. Apollo and Aphrodite return to Olympus complaining about Diomedes's attitude, prompting Ares to march out to stop this nonsense once and for all. With Athena as his charioteer, Diomedes charges right at the god of war and casts his spear right into Ares's gut. Ares screams and runs away, leaving Diomedes the only mortal to wound two gods in one day. Some scholars believe that this episode was a stand-alone story that Homer co-opted into his own epic.
** What makes this even better is that in the myths about Diomedes outside ''Literature/TheIliad'', he never faces any retribution for this, beyond perhaps being scolded. That's right, he wounds TWO gods and never really has anything terrible happen to him, he leaves a pretty good life after the war is over.

* E.E. "Doc" Smith's ''Literature/{{Lensman}}'' series has a bunch, but one in particular simply defines ''Moment of Awesome''. In "Second Stage Lensmen", the bad guys are invading Tellus (aka, Earth) via the "interspatial tube", a means of traveling from one galaxy to another without the inconvenience of traversing the intervening distance. After the shock globe of bad guy capital ships has been disposed of by sending in wave after wave of powerful mines, after the bad guy's main battle fleet has been disposed of by the superior coordination and efficiency of our main battle fleet, the bad guys up the ante, by showing their [[LensmanArmsRace true strike force]]:
--> Planets. Seven of them. Armed and powered as only a planet can be armed and powered, with fixed-mount weapons impossible of mounting upon a lesser mobile base.
** The good guys dispose of the planets by turning the entire solar system into a vacuum tube and concentrating 100% of the Sun's output into a tight beam upon those planets, such that their ice caps boiled, seas exploded into steam, and mountain ranges melted in and around the afore-mentioned weapons. Smith also gets it right when he describes how the planets cooled off quickly after the good guys turned off the sun-beam, recognizing that "[[SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale even the Titanic forces at work had heated those planetary masses only superficially]]".
** I recognized this as a ''Moment of Awesome'' decades before TVTropes existed, and I quoted the above from memory, having these 27 words burned into my brain permanently the first time I read them.

* Wicked Lovely: [[Literature/WickedLovely "There won't be another girl."]] Awesome because [[spoiler:after spending the majority of the book running away from being the Summer Queen, knowing that if she takes up the staff and isn't TheChosenOne she's doomed to be AnIcePerson possibly for eternity, she takes her rightful place on the throne on her own terms. Also doubles as an AwesomeMomentOfCrowning.]]

* Creator/JohnRingo's "Legacy of the Aldenata" aka "Posleen War" series has many many of them, but my personal favorites occur in "Gust Front":
** At one point the human survivors of the retreat up the East Coast have stopped retreating in Washington DC. In Chapter 64, as they are preparing to fight back at various points, an officer directs his men to dig trenches and fox-holes in Arlington Cemetery, commenting "The soldiers, sailors and Marines buried on this hill would have no argument with a little jostling. They understood". I cannot read this scene without crying, because if anyone would understand why their graves needed to be disturbed, those in military cemeteries like Arlington would in fact, understand.
** All throughout the series, the Posleen encounter massive explosions and traps, marked by the Army Engineers (Sappers). In Chapter 65, the Posleen encounter the same symbol in Washington DC. When they recognize it as the headquarters of the Engineers, they literally turn around and run (which Posleen never do). The reaction of the Engineers who had in fact trapped their headquarters to take out the entire Posleen force was hysterical laughter.
** The entire first eight paragraphs of Chapter 71. It details a series of vignettes as to how and why the humans would stop running and make their stand, and ends with "Sure, most [humans] had run. But more had stayed. And the [Posleen] would have the [Washington] Monument over their dead bodies". The very definition of a Moment of Awesome.

* How is it that there are no ''Literature/TheNameOfTheWind'' examples yet? Just two to start with: Kvothe playing the Lay of Sir Savien in the tavern and not stopping ''even when a lute string breaks'', and Kvothe [[spoiler:saving Trebon by improvising a heatsink, then slaying the draccus by binding a huge wheel to a bit of iron, the draccus to its scale and the fire as energy simultaneously, essentially moving a ton of iron ''with his mind''.]]
** And one for Bast, near the end of the book: [[spoiler:grabbing the iron talisman off Chronicler and really [[BadassBoast laying]] [[DeterMinator into him]], and following it with]] "No reason we can't be friends."

* In Guy Kay's ''Literature/{{The Lions of Al-Rassan}}'' the fanatical expy-Muslim Muwardi desert warriors have attacked an expy-Christian encampment. Their leader's first move is to bash in the skull of a thirteen year old boy. Then, for the next handful of pages, you think this is going to be a Crowning Moment of Heartbreak where we see the boy die because no-one has the skills to save him. Then - the expy-Jewish refugee doctor steps up to the plate and performs their world's first trepannation to relieve the pressure on the boy's brain. It's an operation no-one had believed possible, or dared to perform before this but this man ''knows'' he has the skills to pull it off. And he does and the boy lives. What makes this even more awesome is that he blind and dumb and performs the operation by momory, instinct and feel with his wife translating his instructions since she is the only one who can understand him. It is a scene to make you cry with joy and exultation.

* ''Literature/MemorySorrowandThorn'' has one, and only needs that one. "I'm sorry... you should not have suffered so." Leading in short order to the Storm King [[spoiler:getting his undead ass handed to him]]. However, for sheer crowd-pleasers, it doesn't get much better than the [[CrouchingMoronHiddenBadass still-brainsick]] Camaris kicking the ever-loving crap out of SmugSnake Aspitis, ending his ambition to "own" Miriamele for good.

* Sophos finally gets his moment in the action climax of Megan Whalen Turner's fourth historical fantasy ''A Conspiracy of Kings'' wherein he [[spoiler: chooses to be like Attolia and seizes control of his government]] after having been perceived as an incompetent weakling for three books (which he kind of was.) This awesome [[spoiler: gunslinger bad-ass]] moment is followed soon after by a crowning moment of hissy-fit that is equally justified.
** Gen has several crowning moments of awesome himself, and his best was simultaneously a military victory and a love confession.

* Creator/TadWilliams's ''Literature/{{Otherland}}'' has a bunch of these.
** "The Other has played its knight." Followed shortly by a CrowningMomentOfHeartwarming in Orlando and Sam's reunion.
** The entirety of the "Star over Louisiana" chapter, when the Other finally shows Felix Jongleur just exactly what it thinks of him and his schemes by executing one of the greatest [[spoiler:DeathFromAbove]] moments in literary history.

* If you're familiar with the Young Adult novel ''Literature/{{Speak}}'', then you are lying if you did not cheer when you read three little words:
--->[[spoiler: "I said ''no''."]]