Does anyone know any good fictional war books

mrmoe273

Paladin Knight
Level 1
54%
Joined
Jan 22, 2025
Messages
65
Level up in
34 posts
Reaction score
242
Points
377
Location
Canada
hey everyone, I wanna read some good fictional war books but all I find are either non-fiction or not exactly what I'm looking for (usually they steer to the sci-fi areas)

anything that similar to vietnam or ww2, even ww1 is appearcated, please avoid suggesting sci-fi if possible
 
'All Quiet on the Western Front' is a must-read. While entry-level for war novels, it's one of the most depressing, gut-wrenching books I've ever read but it's completely amazing.
 
'All Quiet on the Western Front' is a must-read. While entry-level for war novels, it's one of the most depressing, gut-wrenching books I've ever read but it's completely amazing.
i've personally watched the films, so giving those a read is definitely on my list, thanks!
 
Red Alert by Peter George (Bryant) which Dr. Strangelove is based on.

Two hours to doom is the UK Version called

1739832500973.png
 
Philip K. Dick (you know, that famous sci-fi author) wrote:
"The Man In The High Castle"
A story about what-if-the-allies-lost-WW2
really gripping story
The TV-series only kinda roughly covers it in the first season
 
Warhammer 40K books are good, also the classic Starship Troopers is a masterpiece, Ender's Game too, in comic books i recomend Rogue Trooper, is a British comic that is basically Vietnam in space.
 
Warhammer 40K books are good, also the classic Starship Troopers is a masterpiece, Ender's Game too, in comic books i recomend Rogue Trooper, is a British comic that is basically Vietnam in space.
ill give them a go, i have been avoiding the space stuff but if it's Vietnam in space how can I refuse!

thank you!
Post automatically merged:

Philip K. Dick (you know, that famous sci-fi author) wrote:
"The Man In The High Castle"
A story about what-if-the-allies-lost-WW2
really gripping story
The TV-series only kinda roughly covers it in the first season
i don't plan on watching the tv show, but thank you for the book suggestion, ill take a look at it!
Post automatically merged:

Red Alert by Peter George (Bryant) which Dr. Strangelove is based on.

Two hours to doom is the UK Version called

View attachment 27669
this looks like a really good read, thank you for suggesting, ill also look at Dr. Strangelove too when I have the chance!
 
Farewell to Arms is alright, i think its the only book by Hemingway that doesn't make me yawn.

The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane is also pretty good.

If you are ever willing to give some good Science Fantasy a chance, The Hammer's Slammers Series by David Drake is REALLY good, well if you can stomach very gritty details of warfare, Drake was in Vietnam, and a lot of the operations in the stories, use a lot of his knowledge and experience.
 
"Death Is My Trade" by Robert Merle is an awesome book, although it's biographical and I cant speak for the quality of the english translation.
DeathIsMyTrade.jpg
 
War & Peace, All Quiet On The Western Front, Doctor Zhivago, The Short-timers, The Bridge over the river kwai, The Sympathizer, and The Killer angels should be a good starting point.
 
Tom Clancy or W.E.B. Griffin if you like modern stories
Ernest Hemingway's "A Farewell to Arms" is set during World War I
 
For something out of left Field, The "Destroyermen" Series is effectively a WW2 Isekai story written in the west, about a 4 stoke destroyer getting sent to a different world and helping in a war between Leonid and Crocodile peoples.
 
Someone else mentioned 40k, and you mentioned that you might like Vietnam in space, so I'll give a few specific reccs:

Catachan Devil
13th Legion

If you're more into fantasy war, I would highly recommend the Powder Mage series by Brian McClellan, a world set in a time period roughly equal to Napoleonic Europe but where magic users snort gunpowder to become superhuman. The first one sets up the premise well, the second one is one of the best fantasy war books I have ever read, and the third one deals with the aftereffects of a revolution. Five star reads for me, all around.
 
In Storms of Steel by Ernst Jünger
this one isnt fiction tho.
still its a great book and one of my favorites.
"Well, why don’t you jump up and rush into the night till you collapse in safety behind a bush like an exhausted animal ? Why do you hang on there all the time, you and your braves ? There are no superior officers to see you. Yet some one watches you. Unknown perhaps toyourself, there is some one within you who keeps you to your post by the power of two mighty spells : Duty and Honour. You know that this is your place in the battle, and that a whole people relies on you to do your job. You feel, ‘ If I leave my post, I am a coward in my own eyes, a wretch who will ever after blush at every word of praise.’ You clench your teeth and stay."

he doesnt mention what happened to kius after the spring counterattack. but i hope they could meet in berlin when it all ended. he was my favorite recurrent figure in the book.
 
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
 
The Things They Carried by Tim O' Brien if you like Vietnam
You should check out the works of Alistair Maclean who wrote the Guns of Navarone, Where Eagles Dare, Ice Station Zebra, and other stories
You should also check out Tom Clancy's Red Storm Rising
 
I've only read a bit of this, but I've really enjoyed it. The Republic Commando books were pretty good. They got a good feeling of the clones on the battlefield. All the highs of camaraderie and the lows from losing their friends
 
Well, since Destroyermen and The Man In The High Castle were mentioned, how about John Birmingham's Axis of Time series?
1749206875124.jpeg

It's a pretty great Isekai kind of dealie similar to Destroyermen, but instead of an obsolete USN steamship (and others) from 1941 getting transported to a Lost World type universe where lizardmen and lemurians are fighting each other in a war of extermination, it has an entire modern (near-future at the time the book was written- it's vision of the future got some things right, like Prince Harry joining the military, while others were way off, like Hillary Clinton being elected President in 2016) naval battle group en route to do a police action in an Indonesia taken over by Islamic State-types gets transported back to WW2, literally right in the middle of the Battle of Midway in 1943, and after doing a number on both sides due to the confusion it joins the Allies and proceeds to help win WW2 as well as try and uplift the downtimers to their technological and social standards. Things do not go according to plan. There are five books; I've pictured the first.

Also, if your looking for some things far less SF but still fitting into "the fictional books about 20th century conflicts" criteria, how Harold Coyle's Team Yankee, Robert Conroy's 1945 and Jon Kacer's Festung Europa?
1749207149288.jpeg

Team Yankee is set during a mostly conventional WW3 and follows a group of US Army tankers fighting against a Warsaw Pact-USSR incursion into West Germany during the Eighties. It's really good, and about the only thing I find unrealistic about it is that both sides backed down after the nukes came out.
1749207913612.jpeg

1945 takes place in a world where the coup attempt launched against Hirohito after he announced his plan to surrender succeeds, and the Emperor is held hostage by IJA hardliners who refuse to surrender even after a third atomic bomb is dropped, necessitating the launching of Operation Downfall, the proposed invasion of the Home Islands that was projected to be so bloody they only recently ran out of the Purple Hearts that were minted for it.
1749207331878.jpeg

Festung Europa (Fortress Europe to those who don't know) is set in world where the Nazis don't commit forces to N. Africa to bail out Mussolini and end up winning the war against the Soviet Union and fighting the Western Allies to a standstill while Japan is simply starved out instead of nuked and eventually surrenders a year or so later. A "Warm War" between the Western Allies and the European Axis ensues which goes Hot eventually, and the Second World War ends in 1960 with Europe ravaged by WMDs and the final starving Nazi holdouts are crushed by Allied shock troopers after refusing to surrender. It is amazing.
 

Attachments

  • 1749206852966.jpeg
    1749206852966.jpeg
    92.1 KB · Views: 0

Users who are viewing this thread

Connect with us

Support this Site

RGT relies on you to stay afloat. Help covering the site costs and get some pretty Level 7 perks too.

Featured Video

Latest Threads

Memory Cards

Memory cards rocked!
I mean they didn’t, but they KINDA did! I always thought it was a cool...
Read more

What's the best pre installed Wii channel?

(some channels aren't included even if they have a channel on the menu because they require the...
Read more

TPS Camera Hack for Star Ocean: Till the End of Time

I always wished the game had a TPS camera, this wish grew stronger and stronger and after...
Read more

What is the most fun deck you can make on master duel right now?

Been thinking about getting back in that game, but I also want to try quirky decks that are more...
Read more

Prune Thread #1

Online statistics

Members online
174
Guests online
277
Total visitors
451

Forum statistics

Threads
10,272
Messages
254,805
Members
818,597
Latest member
Tokyomitsubishi

Advertisers

Back
Top