History YMMV / SecondApocalypse

* UncannyValley: Cleric. Like all Nonmen, he is tall and superhumanly beautiful, with marble-white skin. But there's something very "off" about him, which all characters note. His teeth are fused, his face has the same features as a Sranc, and his voice has the "tones of a deformed child woven into it."

* HoYay: Moënghus and Cnaiür, which resulted in Cnaiür killing his father. This is the reason why there is latent HoYay between the adult Cnaiür and Kellhus, even though it's more like FoeYay.

* FoeYay: Between Cnaiür and Kellhus and as well Cnaiür and Moënghus.

* DarknessInducedAudienceApathy: This series is unrelentingly dark and negative. Every character hates everybody else, they all live in a CrapsackWorld and there's no humor at all, not even of the gallows variety. After a while you wonder why you should care if any of these characters live or die. This is, appropriately enough, supported InUniverse, as almost every single named character (and most people, really) are damned to Hell upon their death. The only reason that RootingForTheEmpire is avoided is because the Consult wants to end Damnation precisely because they're just that horrifyingly monstrous, and thus more than truly deserve it.

* NightmareFuel:
** Seswatha's memories of the Apocalypse are ''literally'' NightmareFuel. The Mandate sorcerers dream it every night so they can never forget what it is they fight against. [[spoiler:For example, Achamian once dreams of the fall of the city Sauglish. Grown men are ''dashing their babies' skulls against the street'' so the Sranc can't rape them to death and then rape the corpses.]] The Apocalypse is thirty-two years of TearJerker: Achamian virtually never refers to it without calling it "heartbreaking." Oh, and the No-God? His very existence is such that babies can't be born alive if he is. The eleven years of the No-God's existence were called "the Years of the Crib" because all babies were stillborn.
** The epilogue of the second book, where the Inchoroi appear onstage, is the single most horrendous scene in this whole series, and that says a lot.
** The experiments of the Dûnyain upon human captives. To learn how to manipulate people by reading their facial expressions, their young are taught "neuropuncture". In this process, living captives are strapped down and their faces dissected, so teenagers can experiment with their facial muscles. While they're still conscious.
** The black halls of Cil-Aujas.
** The view of damnation in the afterlife that we get from Mimara's Judging Eye in ''The White Luck Warrior''.
** Shaeönanra's backstory. Also, his present physical form.
** The brief interlude of [[spoiler:Kellhus travelling to the Outside is one of the most horrifying parts of the novels]].
** On a similar note, [[spoiler:Saubon's death and damnation]].
** Most of the journey down to the Holy Deep of Ishterebinth is equal parts this and NothingIsScarier.

* TearJerker: Many examples. This is probably the most depressing well-known fantasy series.
** Achamian [[spoiler: is tortured by the Scarlet Spires. His best friend Xinemus, a religious man who is conflicted about his friendship with a "blasphemer", comes to the rescue. But the Scarlet Spires subdue him and torture him as well along with Achamian, gouging out his eyes. When Achamian escapes and finally returns to the war camp, Esmenet (the woman he loves) has left him for Kellhus.]] The saddest part was that [[spoiler: she had sold herself into sexual slavery to return to Achamian in the first place.]]
** The scene where the little orphan boys watch Maithanet's procession through the streets. It's depressing because one of them prostitutes himself because he's too scared to steal, and because orphans are not considered "real children". The scene ends with that boy being taken away by a slave trader.
** Cleric and his fate. [[spoiler: Achamian was forced to kill him, because Cleric (who was insane from amnesia) loved him and Mimara to the point where he tried to kill them, in order to remember them.]]
** Kellhus' Great Ordeal starts running into this. [[spoiler:The Ketyai of the South, seventy thousand strong and led by King Umrapathur II of Nilnamesh, are totally annihilated by the Sranc Horde and by attacking Bashrag, while the Grandmaster of the Vokalati goes insane and starts killing both soldiers and Sranc with his sorcery. The Grandmaster of the Mandate then has to kill him, causing a battle between the Mandati and the Vokalati even while tens of thousands of soldiers are being ''raped to death'' by the Sranc below. Umrapathur dies praying that the Great Ordeal will survive him, even as the Sranc begin violating him. When Kellhus finally arrives to rescue them, the sorcerers have survived but only "scant hundreds" of the soldiers on the ground still live. Holy shit.]]
** The suicide of [[spoiler:Koringhus. This is following his revelations of just how deeply the Dûnyain had strayed from the path of truth]].

* {{Narm}}: While many of the characters' names can be somewhat hard to take seriously due to the excessive amount of [[PunctuationShaker apostrophes, accents]] and [[HeavyMetalUmlaut tremata]], the most unfortunate of them is the comparatively easy-to-pronounce "Coithus Saubon", which sounds uncomfortably close to "coitus."

* {{Woobie}}: Too many to count - almost everyone in the books has a Woobie moment at some point or another. Even Kellhus in the first book, when Cnaiür tortures him until he pisses himself from the pain.

* DarknessInducedAudienceApathy: This series is unrelentingly dark and negative. Every character hates everybody else, they all live in a CrapsackWorld and there's no humor at all, not even of the gallows variety. After a while you wonder why you should care if any of these characters live or die.

* MartyStu: Kellhus can come across this way because he's TheAce to a superhuman degree, but he's also an AntiHero with in-story justification for his abilities, which come at the price of his humanity.

* MagnificentBastard: Anasurimbur Kellhus is a powerful Dunyain monk who implants himself in the holy War in opposition to the monstrous Consult. Scheming and manipulating all in his path, Kellhus engineers his own death and supposed rebirth to be seen as a great savior, eventually rising to utterly dominate the Three Seas as the powerful Aspect Emperor and prepare the world to fight the Consult. Manipulating almost everyone he meets, Kellhus heads the Great Ordeal, a grand crusade to completely break the Consult and even allies with a deadly God to destroy their conspiracy for good, vowing to conquer even damnation itself.

* MagnificentBastard: Kellhus. He is biologically human, but mentally and ethically an alien without emotion. To assume control of the Holy War and make entire nations follow him, he decides to do it through religion. Kellhus slowly transforms their entire religion ''with himself as the Jesus Christ figure''.

* CompleteMonster: Iskiak, better known by the name of "Aurang", prince of the Inchoroi and bad even by [[DepravedBisexual their standards]], was one of the final Inchoroi after their wars with the inhuman Cûnoroi, or "Nonmen". Desiring to escape his own damnation, Aurang participated in the annihilation of entire worlds before the Inchoroi arrived on Earwa. At the end of the war with the Nonmen, Aurang assisted in giving them immortality, but also introduced a plague to kill every female of their species, leaving the Nonmen to look forward to nothing but eventual madness and extinction. Later forming the Consult, Aurang initiates the Apocalypse by unleashing the No-God. As the Horde-General of the Consult, Aurang takes the field, committing countless atrocities and massacring entire cities with his and his people's own creations the Sranc, beings so filled with lust and rage they can only interact with other species by killing and raping them to death. Aurang is also a SerialRapist, boasting of this to Kellhus, and manipulates the Holy War to help bring about the deaths of all but a fraction of beings on Earwa to not only keep himself from hellfire, but to continue the monstrosity that damned him to begin with.

* CompleteMonster: Aurang and Aurax are the [[CreepyTwins twin princes]] of the alien race, the Inchoroi. After crash-landing during the height of the mystical Cunuroi civilization, a war broke out between the species. Aurang and Aurax were the only survivors of the Inchoroi and engineered a plague that killed every female member of the Cunuroi and made the males immortal so they'd suffer forever. They also helped create the Sranc, hideous creatures whose existence is simply pain and lust so that the only way they interact with other beings are killing and raping them. To prevent their own damnation for their sins, the two plan to fill Hell with so many souls, the door will be shut permanently. For this end, Aurang and Aurax mastermind hundreds of horrible murders, engineer genocidal wars for their own ends, and created a being called the No-God that killed every baby to be born for a decade. Aurang and Aurax are also [[DepravedBisexual sexual sadists]] who are fond of rape as an interrogation method. Aurax in particular enjoys raping a victim's wife in front of him before giving her and said victim's family to the Sranc long after it is clear none of them have the answers Aurax wants.

** The expression "death came swirling down" is used too often in almost every battle sequence that it reaches memetic levels.

** Cleric [[spoiler:who used to be the last Nonman king, Nil'giccas]] also qualifies as the most tragic character of them all.

** Cleric [[spoiler:who used to be the last Nonman king, Nil'Giccas]] also qualifies as the most tragic character of them all.

* {{Woobie}}: Too many to count - almost everyone in the books has a Woobie moment at some point or another. Even Kellhus in the first book, when Cnaiur tortures him until he pisses himself from the pain.

*** Cleric [[spoiler:who used to be the last Nonman king, Nil'Giccas]] also qualifies as the most tragic character of them all.