History CruelAndUnusualDeath / Literature

** Out of all the deaths during the Dance of the Dragons, the children of Aegon II and Helaena Targaryen suffered the most horrific ones. While Jaehaerys was simply beheaded, Maelor had a mob, all wanting "a piece of the prince", tearing him apart. Jaehaerys' twin, Jaehaera, fell from a tower and was impaled on spikes. She took half an hour to die. These children were all less than 10-years-old.

* ''Literature/TwentySixSixtySix'': Applied to all of the women and girls that was brutally murdered throughout the fourth section.

** More to the point, in his other novel series, the Takeshi Kovacs novel ''Broken Angels'' has a description of a torture device used on soldiers deemed fit for the brutal punishment. Essentially a modified autopsy machine, the device in question flays the skin, flenses bone, breaks teeth and probes the exposed nerves, boils the eyes, disects and removes organs, and finally decapitates the body. Whilst the criminal is alive. Suffice to say, when Kovacs blows up the teammate subjected to the toture, it is nothing less than a {{mercy kill}}.

* In ''Literature/{{Unwind}}'', we have Roland. Oh my God, Roland. He was being unwound (systematically taken apart, organ by organ) while conscious... The few details aren't very gory, but that leaves what exactly they're doing to him to your imagination.

* Gruesome deaths are par for the course in''Literature/TheDresdenFiles,''

** Many of the deaths in the arena are especially cruel. There's Cato, who gets ripped apart by muttations for ''hours'' before Katniss [[MercyKill ends up shooting him out of pity]]. There's also Glimmer, who gets stung repeatedly by the tracker jackers until her face melts beyond recognition. Notably, Glimmer receives sponsorship mostly because of her good looks, so it can qualify as a DeathByIrony.

* ''CruelAndUnusualDeath/AlexRider''

* In ''Literature/TheVorGame'', Miles is investigating the mysterious death of a soldier found stuffed in a drainage pipe. Turns out the soldier had been hiding contraband (homemade cupcakes) and went to save them when the rain started, got lost in the dark, panicked, and managed to wedge himself in the drain pipe so that he suffocated.
* In the Creator/LarryNiven short story "Literature/WaitItOut", the first manned spacecraft to land on Pluto malfunctions and strands Jerome Glass and the unnamed narrator there. Glass commits suicide by leaving his spacecraft and removing his helmet. The narrator, inspired by the cryopreservation of humans back on Earth, leaves the ship and completely removes his spacesuit. Freezing to death is a horrific way to go, but this qualifies for the trope because he froze in such a way that his brain "turns back on" when he's out of direct sunlight, making him conscious of the fact that a) he's a HumanPopsicle and b) he's likely to stay that way until the sun explodes or until help arrives. Even while his mind is switched on, his time perception is altered, and he has blissful oblivion after sundown -- so he hopes he can "Wait It Out." Someone's sure to come back to Pluto someday, and who knows what Earth science may be able to accomplish by then?

* In the TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}} SpaceMarine Battles novel ''The Siege of Castellax'' , several of the [[TheStoic Iron]] [[{{Jerkass}} Warriors]] who rule the titular slave-planet suffer some very interesting and undignified deaths at the hands of the [[BloodKnight Ork Waaagh!]] invading the planet:

** Madeline Raith's death at the hands of her cousin, Lara Raith in ''Turn Coat'' qualifies. Lara fed on her cousin in White Court vampire style (this implies incest, [[ParentalIncest though it wouldn't be the first time Lara's done such a thing]]) while simultaneously tearing her intestines and innards out and lovingly telling Madeline how she'd always wanted to do this. Made worse by the fact that she forces the dying Madeline to enjoy every moment of it.

** In ''Literature/DeathMasks'', a novel in ''Literature/TheDresdenFiles'' series, [[CoolOldGuy Shiro]] is brutalized and tortured to the point that Harry Dresden scarcely recognize him anymore.

* ''Literature/ChroniclesofAnotherWorld'': A sorceress convinces her assistant to allow her to experiment on her. The spell meant to shrink a person, instead turns the assistant into a rodent. Disappointed in the results, the sorceress rather casually steps on and crushes the rat beneath her boot heel.

* ''Literature/ErHaHeTaDeBaiMaoShiZun'':
** Song Qiutong is ordered to be boiled alive in a vat of oil after accidentally angering her tyrannical emperor husband, the increasingly unhinged Taxian-jun.
** Chu Lan, only three or four at the time, is killed by the ghost of his own mother who pierces his throat with her claws and devours his heart and entrails. His father, unable to do anything without taking down his barrier that's protecting everyone in the city, is forced to watch it happen.

* CruelAndUnusualDeath/AlexRider

* *''Literature/CobaltBlue'':: Aside from the Fury favoring manual decapitation, [[spoiler:his own death is extremely unpleasant: He is basically tricked into vomiting up his internal organs]].

[[CruelAndUnusualDeath/AlexRider]]

* *''Literature/CobaltBlue'':: Aside from the Fury favoring manual decapitation, [[his own death is extremely unpleasant: He is basically tricked into vomiting up his internal organs]].

* The titular tiger in "Literature/TheLadyOrTheTiger" will tear apart and devour any criminal unlucky enough to fail the DoorRoulette. Depending on how you read the ending, a woman deliberately sends her lover into its jaws because she can't bear to see him open the other door (to the lady) and marry her hated rival.

* In ''[[Literature/{{Kane}} Darkness Weaves]]'' BackStory king Netisten Maril finds out that his wife Efrel has been cheating on him and plotting to kill him. He sentences her to be dragged by an enraged bull through the streets of his capital. [[spoiler: Being an EldritchAbomination, she survives, but only as a ruined wreck.]]

** Taken UpToEleven in the fourth book, where the two main problems in the FAYZ are a hacking cough that causes kids to choke up pieces of lung, and a cockroach-esque parasite that eats you alive before hatching from your body. NauseaFuel indeed.

** The first High Septon (the obese one) was dragged from his litter and torn apart by an angry mob. Tyrion Lannister thinks that they resented the septon for being too fat to walk while they went hungry.

* In ''Literature/HarryPotter'', Gryffindor's house ghost, the Nearly Headless Nick, was executed with ''forty-five'' blows to his neck with a dull axe.
** Barty Crouch Jr. suffers [[FateWorseThanDeath the Dementor's Kiss]].

** In the original ''Proud Immortal Demon Way'', all during [[VillainProtagonist Luo Binghe]]'s RoaringRampageOfRevenge:
*** Shen Qingqiu, [[SadistTeacher who abused Luo Binghe as a child]], gets all four of his limbs cut off and his tongue torn out, eventually dying of his injuries.