5 books like War with No Name

Though there is a supernatural element to this story, it features a dog named Tomorrow who learns about the real world in the most mundane way possible: by hanging around too long, and experiencing the inevitable loss that we all face. After his master injects Tomorrow with an immortality elixir, the two are separated, and the dog waits over a century for his companion to return. Along the way, he witnesses historical events, while meeting animals who live the innocent life he once enjoyed. By the time Tomorrow resumes his search, he is a changed dog, a person in every sense of the word, though his identity remains rooted in loyalty and love. This book makes you wonder: can you hold onto those good things after life has chipped away at you for so long?

Technically, Brooke Bolander's The Only Harmless Great Thing is a novella and not a novel.

But this story, set in an alternate universe in which hyperintelligent elephants are forced into toxic factory work, packs so much pathos, vivid description, and (especially!) the world-building around elephant culture—I swoon over the voice in which the elephants tell their stories and myths to the reader—it may as well be three times as long.

This is the most modern book on my list, and it did get some excellent critical attention, including the 2018 Nebula Award for Best Novelette. But Bolander's voice of the elephants alone (to say nothing of the other voices, each masterfully different) is so danged magnificent, the more people know of this work, the better.

A childless couple adopts a chimpanzee named Looee, and you already know from reading that sentence that it will lead to trouble and heartbreak. After a few pages, I didn’t care. In McAdam’s skilled hands, the inevitable sadness doesn’t matter, because the delicately handled point of view perfectly captures a doomed creature trapped between two opposing identities. In contrast, we also meet Podo, an alpha chimp at a research facility seeking to test the intelligence of primates. Podo is fully ape, but he is turning into something more. Their paths soon join, taking them deeper into a gray area between human and animal that I had never seen rendered on the page so vividly before. 

The animals in Bennett’s graphic novel do not gain sentience gradually, nor is their experience hidden from the rest of the world. Instead, animals all over the globe one day “wake up” and begin to wage war on humanity, and each other, creating a state of upheaval that few can comprehend. It’s that boldness and sheer shock value that I found most appealing. Like all good stories about animals gaining sentience, this one toys with the idea that non-human intelligence is some sort of affront to the natural order. At the same time, the story is grounded in the love between 11-year-old Jesse and her dog Sandor, who has sworn to protect her on a perilous journey. I enjoyed bouncing back and forth between affection and horror. Maintaining that balance is no easy feat!

Another Newberry Medal winner, this book is unlike the rest because the terror doesn’t come from the supernatural. It’s from the cruelty of mankind and scientific testing on animals.

What I love about this book, and the movie made in the “nineteen hundreds”, is it respected the readers. It told us a frightening story and trusted us to be able to process it. Like all the books on this list, the authors didn’t treat us like kids. They treated us like readers, and that’s the best thing a writer can do for their fans.