Tag Archives: War Themes & Military Violence

This page lists books that contain trigger warnings for the depiction of war themes & military violence, including political coups, battle scenes, and other related topics.

See also Genocide, Rebellion, revolution & mutiny, Military service & deployment, Conscription, Chemical gassing & warfare, and Police brutality & violence.

An Unwanted Guest by Shari Lapena

It’s winter in the Catskills and Mitchell’s Inn, nestled deep in the woods, is the perfect setting for a relaxing–maybe even romantic–weekend away. It boasts spacious old rooms with huge wood-burning fireplaces, a well-stocked wine cellar, and opportunities for cross-country skiing, snowshoeing, or just curling up with a good murder mystery. So when the weather takes a turn for the worse, and a blizzard cuts off the electricity–and all contact with the outside world–the guests settle in and try to make the best of it… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Bury Your Gays trope
  • Gang rape recounted
  • Infidelity
  • Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
  • Anxiety & panic attacks
  • Attempted suicide
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Blood & gore depiction including dead bodies
  • Death of a wife, fiancée & husband
  • Death of a brother
  • Death of a son
  • Murder & attempted murder by strangulation and poisoning
  • Physical assault
  • Death from a fall
  • Death from exposure to the cold
  • Drowning
  • Military service recounted

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Bury Your Gays trope
  • Gang rape recounted
  • Cheating
  • Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
  • Anxiety & panic attacks
  • Attempted suicide
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Blood depiction
  • Dead bodies
  • Death of a wife & husband
  • Death of a fiance
  • Death of a brother
  • Death of a son
  • Murder & attempted murder
  • Strangulation
  • Poisoning
  • Physical assault
  • Death from a fall
  • Death from exposure to the cold
  • Drowning
  • Military service recounted

Deadhouse Gates by Steven Erikson

Deadhouse Gates by Steven Erikson

In the vast dominion of Seven Cities, in the Holy Desert Raraku, the seer Sha’ik and her followers prepare for the long-prophesied uprising known as the Whirlwind. Unprecedented in size and savagery, this maelstrom of fanaticism and bloodlust will embroil the Malazan Empire in one of the bloodiest conflicts it has ever known, shaping destinies and giving birth to legends.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Graphic rape
  • Drug use
  • Graphic body horror
  • Torture
  • War theme
  • Animal death
  • Animal abuse

Gardens of the Moon by Steven Erikson

Gardens of the Moon by Steven Erikson

The Malazan Empire simmers with discontent, bled dry by interminable warfare, bitter infighting and bloody confrontations with the formidable Anomander Rake and his Tiste Andii, ancient and implacable sorcerers. Even the imperial legions, long inured to the bloodshed, yearn for some respite. Yet Empress Laseen’s rule remains absolute, enforced by her dread Claw assassins.

For Sergeant Whiskeyjack and his squad of Bridgeburners, and for Tattersail, surviving cadre mage of the Second Legion, the aftermath of the siege of Pale should have been a time to mourn the many dead. But Darujhistan… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Emesis
  • Loss of autonomy
  • War themes

Rocannon’s World by Ursula Le Guin

Rocannon’s World by Ursula K. Le Guin

Earth-scientist Rocannon has been leading an ethnological survey on a remote world populated by three native races: the cavern-dwelling Gdemiar, the elvish Fiia, and the warrior clan, Liuar. But when the technologically primitive planet is suddenly invaded by a fleet of ships from the stars, rebels against the League of All Worlds, Rocannon is the only survey member left alive. Marooned among alien peoples, he leads the battle to free this newly discovered world – and finds that legends grow around him as he fights. 

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Death of a child
  • War themes

Holy Sister by Mark Lawrence

Holy Sister by Mark Lawrence

In Mystic Class Nona Grey begins to learn the secrets of the universe. But so often even the deepest truths just make our choices harder. Before she leaves the Convent of Sweet Mercy Nona must choose her path and take the red of a Martial Sister, the grey of a Sister of Discretion, the blue of a Mystic Sister or the simple black of a Bride of the Ancestor and a life of prayer and service.

All that stands between her and these choices are the pride of a thwarted assassin, the ambition of a would-be empress wielding the Inquisition like a blade, and the vengeance of the empire’s richest lord…. Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Human trafficking
  • Suicide
  • Blood & gore depiction
  • Torture
  • Kidnapping
  • War themes

Grey Sister by Mark Lawrence

Grey Sister by Mark Lawrence

In Mystic Class Nona Grey begins to learn the secrets of the universe. But so often even the deepest truths just make our choices harder. Before she leaves the Convent of Sweet Mercy Nona must choose her path and take the red of a Martial Sister, the grey of a Sister of Discretion, the blue of a Mystic Sister or the simple black of a Bride of the Ancestor and a life of prayer and service.

All that stands between her and these choices are the pride of a thwarted assassin, the ambition of a would-be empress wielding the Inquisition like a blade, and the vengeance of the empire’s richest lord…. Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Blood & gore depiction
  • Death of a child
  • Murder
  • Torture
  • War themes
  • Bullying

Honey Girl by Morgan Rogers

Honey Girl by Morgan Rogers

Honey Girl by Morgan Rogers

With her newly completed PhD in astronomy in hand, twenty-eight-year-old Grace Porter goes on a girls’ trip to Vegas to celebrate. She is not the kind of person who goes to Vegas and gets drunkenly married to a woman whose name she doesn’t know…until she does exactly that.

This one moment of departure from her stern ex-military father’s plans for her life has Grace wondering why she doesn’t feel more fulfilled from completing her degree. Staggering under the weight of her father’s expectations, a struggling job market and feelings of burnout, Grace flees her home in Portland for a summer in New York with the wife she barely knows.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Anxiety
  • Depression
  • Borderline personality disorder (BPD)
  • Self-harm
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Physical injury
  • Loss of memory
  • Military themes

Prince of Thorns by Mark Lawrence

Prince of Thorns by Mark Lawrence

Before the thorns taught me their sharp lessons and bled weakness from me I had but one brother, and I loved him well. But those days are gone and what is left of them lies in my mother’s tomb. Now I have many brothers, quick with knife and sword, and as evil as you please. We ride this broken empire and loot its corpse. They say these are violent times, the end of days when the dead roam and monsters haunt the night. All that’s true enough, but there’s something worse out there, in the dark. Much worse.

From being a privileged royal child, raised by a loving mother, Jorg Ancrath has become the Prince of Thorns, a charming, immoral boy leading a grim band of outlaws in a series of raids and atrocities. The world is in chaos: violence is rife, nightmares everywhere… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Rape
  • War themes

Stay Where You Are and Then Leave by John Boyne

Stay Where You Are and Then Leave by John Boyne

The day the First World War broke out, Alfie Summerfield’s father promised he wouldn’t go away to fight – but he broke that promise the following day. Four years later, Alfie doesn’t know where his father might be, other than that he’s away on a special, secret mission.

Then, while shining shoes at King’s Cross Station, Alfie unexpectedly sees his father’s name – on a sheaf of papers belonging to a military doctor. Bewildered and confused, Alfie realises his father is in a hospital close by – a hospital treating soldiers with an unusual condition. Alfie is determined to rescue his father from this strange, unnerving place . . .

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Smoking
  • Psychiatric hospitalisation of a parent for PTSD
  • World War One
  • Refugee camps mentioned

The Boy at the Top of the Mountain by John Boyne

The Boy at the Top of the Mountain by John Boyne

When Pierrot becomes an orphan, he must leave his home in Paris for a new life with his Aunt Beatrix, a servant in a wealthy household at the top of the German mountains. But this is no ordinary time, for it is 1935 and the Second World War is fast approaching; and this is no ordinary house, for this is the Berghof, the home of Adolf Hitler.

Quickly, Pierrot is taken under Hitler’s wing, and is thrown into an increasingly dangerous new world: a world of terror, secrets and betrayal, from which he may never be able to escape.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Antisemitism
  • Attempted rape
  • Domestic violence
  • Parent with alcoholism & military-related PTSD
  • Death by train
  • World War One & Two
  • The Holocaust
  • Bullying