Tag Archives: Military Violence & War Themes

This page lists books which contain trigger warnings under the umbrella of war & military themes, including themes of rebellion and revolution, political coups, military violence & battle scenes, regicide, conscription, military service, and other related topics.

A Kingdom of Fire and Fate by Holly Renee

Love and loyalty collide in the aftermath of war, where Sorin consumes my every thought. Haunted by nightmares, the intensity of our connection blazes brighter than ever. In the dead of night, he visits, whispering promises of a future that weakens my resolve. The fear of losing him becomes an inferno, overshadowing all else. But destiny takes a wicked twist. When news arrives that the human king, now allied with Evren’s father, has invited Starblessed contenders to compete for his hand in marriage, I embark on a perilous journey into enemy territory. My goal: to uncover the enigmatic ruler’s… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Parental abandonment recounted
  • Infidelity (on-page)
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Blood and injury depiction
  • Consensual blood-drinking (on-page) & nonconsensual blood-drinking recounted
  • Grief and loss depiction
  • Death of a friend in battle recounted
  • Death of a father from heart failure mentioned
  • Death of a mother mentioned
  • Torture recounted
  • Sword violence
  • Kidnapping and captivity (on-page & recounted)

A Kingdom of Venom and Vows by Holly Renee

I entered into a bargain—choosing my mate over my freedom. But I underestimated the crowned prince who took me. His touch like venom. His vengeance lethal. He craves a power I no longer hold, and he’ll sacrifice every part of me until he gets it. But I don’t belong to him. I belong to his brother. His brother who will come for me, consequences be damned. My fate is entangled between two princes—one who craves my power, the other who covets me—and I have more to lose than I ever imagined. War rages in a game between queens, and I have become their pawn. But I will… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Slut-shaming (on-page)
  • Graphic sexual assault and threats of rape including unwanted kisses and touching (on-page)
  • Blood and gore depiction including dead bodies and voluntary and involuntary blood-drinking (on-page)
  • Death of a friend in battle (off-page)
  • Murder of a mother (off-page)
  • Murder & regicide (on-page)
  • Torture (on-page)
  • Kidnapping and captivity (on-page)
  • Hostage situation recounted
  • War themes & battle scenes (on-page)

The Last Voyage of Poe Blythe by Ally Condie

Who do you become when you have nothing left to lose? There is something Poe Blythe, the seventeen-year-old captain of the Outpost’s last mining ship, wants far more than the gold they tear from the Serpentine River. Revenge. Poe has vowed to annihilate the river raiders who robbed her of everything two years ago. But as she navigates the treacherous waters of the Serpentine and realizes there might be a traitor among her crew, she must also reckon with who she has become, who she wants to be, and the ways love can change and shape you. Even – and especially – when you think all is lost.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Graphic physical injuries including burns & gunshot wounds
  • Battle scenes including violent takeovers by raiders and knife & gun violence
  • Fire

A War of Wyverns by S.F. Williamson

Who is Vivien Featherswallow? Is she The Swallow, the most wanted rebel in all of Britannia? Is she a Brasstongue on the cusp of translating a new language? Or is she just Viv, the girl who lost the love of her life after playing spy? Though this war might have begun with bombs and teeth, it will be fought with tongues. And Viv will soon learn that everything she thought she knew—even about herself—might be a lie.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Alcohol consumption mentioned & smoking (on-page)
  • Blood & injury depiction, including amputation
  • Imprisonment mentioned
  • War themes & battle scenes, including chemical gassing, knife & crossbow violence, and stabbing
  • Mythical animal attacks, injuries & cruelty, including torture and death of a dragon from a poisonous bullet

The Forest of Vanishing Stars by Kristin Harmel

After being stolen from her wealthy German parents and raised in the unforgiving wilderness of eastern Europe, a young woman finds herself alone in 1941 after her kidnapper dies. Her solitary existence is interrupted, however, when she happens upon a group of Jews fleeing the Nazi terror. Stunned to learn what’s happening in the outside world, she vows to teach the group all she can about surviving in the forest—and in turn, they teach her some surprising lessons about opening her heart after years of isolation. But when she is betrayed and escapes into a German… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Period-typical Nazism & antisemitism
  • Eugenics
  • Infidelity
  • Death of an infant
  • Murder mentioned
  • Gun violence
  • Kidnapping
  • World War II (theme)

When We Meet Again by Kristin Harmel

Emily Emerson is used to being alone; her dad walked out on the family when she was a just a kid, her mom died when she was eighteen, and her beloved grandmother has just passed away as well. But when she’s laid off from her reporting job, she finds herself completely adrift…until the day she receives a beautiful painting of a young woman standing at the edge of a sugarcane field under a violet sky. She recognizes the woman as her grandmother, but the painting arrived with no identification other than a handwritten note saying, “He never stopped loving her…” Curious, Emily begins to do some digging and uncovers… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism
  • Cancer
  • Death of a mother
  • Death of a grandmother & grandfather
  • Lynching
  • World War II & internment camps (theme)

The Book of Lost Names by Kristin Harmel

Eva Traube Abrams, a semi-retired librarian in Florida, is shelving books one morning when her eyes lock on a photograph in a magazine lying open nearby. She freezes; it’s an image of a book she hasn’t seen in sixty-five years—a book she recognizes as The Book of Lost Names. The accompanying article discusses the looting of libraries by the Nazis across Europe during World War II—an experience Eva remembers well—and the search to reunite people with the texts taken from them so long ago. The book in the photograph, an eighteenth-century religious text thought to have be… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Period-typical antisemitism
  • Suicide mentioned
  • World War II (theme)

The Stolen Life of Colette Marceau by Kristin Harmel

Colette Marceau has been stealing jewels for nearly as long as she can remember, following the centuries-old code of honor instilled in her by her mother, take only from the cruel and unkind, and give to those in need. Never was their family tradition more important than seven decades earlier, during the Second World War, when Annabel and Colette worked side by side in Paris to fund the French Resistance. But one night in 1942, it all went wrong. Annabel was arrested by the Germans, and Colette’s four-year-old sister, Liliane, disappeared in the chaos of the raid, along with an… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Period-typical racism & antisemitism
  • Hate crime
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a sister/child
  • Kidnapping
  • World War II (theme)

Strangers in Time by David Baldacci

Charlie Matters’ life has always been a fight for survival. Orphaned with no prospects, Charlie steals what he needs, living day-to-day until he can enlist in the battle against the Germans. He miraculously emerges unscathed from the Blitz, but there’s no telling when the next bomb will fall, and whether it will be the one to end his life. Molly Wakefield’s dreams of a joyful homecoming are all she’s had to hold on to after being evacuated to the countryside via ‘Operation Pied Piper’ five years before. But when she finally returns to the city, Molly faces a London changed… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Grief & loss depiction (secondary character)
  • Death of a wife (secondary character)
  • World War II (theme)

The Librarian Spy by Madeline Martin

Ava thought her job as a librarian at the Library of Congress would mean a quiet, routine existence. But an unexpected offer from the US military has brought her to Lisbon with a new mission: posing as a librarian while working undercover as a spy gathering intelligence. Meanwhile, in occupied France, Elaine has begun an apprenticeship at a printing press run by members of the Resistance. It’s a job usually reserved for men, but in the war, those rules have been forgotten. Yet she knows that the Nazis are searching for the press and its printer in order to silence them….. Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Period-typical Nazism & antisemitism mentioned
  • Military service (war-time spy)
  • World War II & the Holocaust (theme)
  • Torture