Most of mine’ve been mentioned, too, but (I know, I know) the two most recent Discworld books with Vimes – Night Watch and Thud!
Night Watch:
[spoiler]Not just the entire book – considering the graves at the start, you know this isn’t going to go well. It’s not just walking with Vimes as he tries to make a difference and at the same time knows in the back of his mind that little he does here matters in the great scheme. Not just that he’s preserving his own innocence 30 years ago, knowing how hard he’s going to lose it in the next 30 years.
But in the alley behind the sewing supply shop with the lilacs blooming… all of a sudden, when I first read that passage, it was the same feeling of being in a car going too fast and seeing the brick wall in front of you, knowing no matter how you turn the wheel or how hard you slam on the brakes, that brick wall is all your future holds. Just realizing he’d been going through the whole thing KNOWING what was going to happen, struggling as much as he could against it, even changing the past, only to have the thing he dreaded slide into view like an iceberg…[/spoiler]
Thud!:
[spoiler]First: The attack on the manor when that little shadow goes into Young Sam’s bedroom.
Second: Sybil waiting for Vimes at six, with rock-hard certainty he’ll be there. “He will walk through walls!”
Third, and possibly most: The words from the cube. This really shook me, especially with the thread running through it starting back in Reaper Man and through Feet of Clay and Hogfather and, oh, a lot. The “All Things Strive” started the floodgates. They got forced further open with:
‘And yet we say this. Here in this cave at the end of the world peace is made between dwarf and troll and we will march beyond the hand of Death together. For the enemy is not Troll, nor is it Dwarf, but it is the baleful, the malign, the cowardly, the vessels of hatred, those who do a bad thing and call it good. Those we fought today, but the wilful fool is eternal and will say-’
‘This is just a trick!’ Ardent shouted.
‘-say this is a trick,’ Bashfullsson continued, ‘and so we implore: come to the caves under this valley, where you will find us sharing the peace that cannot be braken.’[/spoiler]