I opened this book knowing that it was about Martians with tripods attacking Earth at the turn of the 20th Century. It is broken into two books. In Book One we see the initial Martian invasion and the resulting refugee crisis. The atmosphere of this book is nightmarish. There are these towering machines that the Martians use to get around equipped with heat rays (NOT lasers) being used to kill humans as a boy would ants. There is no shortage of destruction and chaos as the victims scatter and flee to London where there is a severe refugee crisis. Book Two sees the narrator in a destoryed house for 2 weeks, observing and just trying to survive alongside an absolutely insufferable holy man known only as the Curate. Once the narrator gets out of the house he finds that the Martians have been killed from exposure to Earth's microbes. Humanity needed something cataclysmic to end this war, and they sure did unintentionally get it in the form of microspic helpers. Effectively, the Martian ravaging of Earth was put to an in an interesting reversal of the way invaders have historically brought civilization-ending diseases to their conquered lands. After a total of about 4 weeks from the opening events of the story, he reunites with his wife back home in a sweet happy ending.
Wells dared to say "Imagine if Mars wanted to attack and colonize US, the BRITS!" In our modern context, the notion of Martians coming down to Earth and absolutely stomping 19th century Brits is frankly hilarious. The moral can be summarized with this single quote from Book 2, Chapter 7: "Surely, if we have learned nothing else. this war has taught us pity - pity for those witless souls that suffer our dominion."
Between this story and Moreau, I have found that Wells can be surprisingly gruesome without being too over the top or graphic with it.
There are many film and television adaptations of this story. To quickly address the worst film/Amazon ad of 2025: That premise could have had the bones to be decent. Ice Cube watching it unfold behind a computer screen is comparable to the narrator in the debris of the house in Book Two. Obviously, the execution was awful and basically unwatchable.