Thank you so much to Ballantine books and NetGalley for this ARC!

Wow, that was perfection. I finished this book two days ago and I’ve been putting off writing a review because I know I can’t do this book justice.

There are two things I think this novel does particularly well: the WWI setting and the characters. The descriptions of the war are harrowing and heartbreaking. The characters (especially Laura, Freddie, Pim and Jones) and their relationships will stay with me forever.

I have already recommended this beautiful book to several people and I will definitely be purchasing a physical copy for myself.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for allowing me to read an early copy! So grateful!

I will start off by saying that this started off slow, and didn’t really pick up for me much throughout the rest of the book. There were definitely parts that were suspenseful but for the most part, it was a slower read.

However, Arden’s writing is very beautiful and impactful. The depictions of World War I were powerful. I truly felt for all the characters and the horrors they were forced to face. The characters felt so relatable with so many of their thoughts and feeling about religion and humanity sadly still being so relevant today. All in all, I think Arden excels at writing historically accurate works and making them magical yet feel completely realistic!

If you enjoy historical fiction with hints of magic and the paranormal, highly recommend!

Important things you need to know about the book:

Pace: Slow to medium. Once the author explained the backstories, the pacing slowed way down, almost to a snail’s pace. That caused the storyline to drag in some spots. The pace did pick up to medium at the end of the book.

POV: 3rd person (told by Laura, Freddie, and occasionally Hans Winter).

Trigger Warnings: There are scenes involving war themes & military violence (on-page), death (on and off page), blood (on page), death of parents (off page but how Laura found her mother was on-page), violence (on page), medical content (on page), injury & injury detail (on and off page), gore (on page), grief (on page), medical trauma (on page), body horror (on page), panic attacks (on page), murder (on page), gaslighting (on page), gun violence (on page), confinement (on page), suicidal thoughts (on page), xenophobia (on and off page), fire and fire injury (on page), post traumatic stress disorder (on page), alcohol consumption (on page), dead bodies & body parts (on and off page), needles (on page), physical injuries (on and off page), scars (on page), disappearance of a loved one (on page), explosions (on page), knife violence (on page), chemical gassing & warfare (on and off page), and riot (on page). If any of these triggers you, I suggest not reading the book.

Language: There is little to no swearing used in The Warm Hands of Ghosts. There is language used that could be offensive to some people.

Setting: The Warm Hands of Ghosts is primarily set in WWI-era Belgium. There are several chapters set in Halifax, Nova Scotia. There are also stops in England and France.

Plot Synopsis (as spoiler-free as I can get):

Laura, a renowned WWI nurse, had been sent home when she sustained an injury to her leg. While she is recuperating, a horrific explosion of a ship kills and injures hundreds of people. Her mother was killed, and her father was presumed dead (he was at ground zero for the attack). Several days after the explosion, Laura receives a package containing her brother Wilfred’s (a.k .a. Freddie’s) personal effects. However, several things do not make sense or are missing. So Laura and her friend Pim travel to Belgium to help in a hospital in The Forbidden Zone. But Laura is also there to look into her brother’s death/disappearance. What she uncovers defies any sense of reason, and when she finds out that Freddie is caught up in that web, Laura will move heaven and earth to save him.

Characters:

The two main characters in The Warm Hands of Ghosts are the Iven siblings, Laura and Freddie. I liked that the author showcased their strong relationship on top of creating well-rounded, well-written characters. These characters were well fleshed out, and I was able to form a connection with both of them. I connected with Laura more than Freddie, but that was because she was in the book more.

Numerous other secondary characters added depth to the main storylines. But the ones that stood out the most to me were Pim, Winters, and Faland. Pim, because she was devastated and haunted by the death of her only son in this war. She was clinging to a fragile hope that he was still alive. Winters, because he was the strongest out of all the characters. His bond with Freddie transcended anything, and I liked that he saw Faland for who he was and was ready to move mountains to get Freddie back. And lastly, Faland. I will leave a minor spoiler here (because otherwise, my references wouldn’t make sense), but Faland was an aspect of the devil. He dealt with stealing souls and secrets. His entire character was contrasts.

My review:

I had eagerly waited for Katherine Arden to release her newest adult novel since The Winter of the Witch was published. I had read her middle-grade series, Small Spaces, and while it was good, it wasn’t what I wanted to read from her. So, when I saw that Random House Publishing Group – Ballantine/Del Rey had The Warm Hands of Ghosts as a wish on NetGalley, I immediately clicked that button. And I was thrilled when I saw that they had granted my wish. This book is one of my top choices for February.

The Warm Hands of Ghosts has dual storylines. Freddie’s storyline starts in November 1917 when he and Winters are trapped in a pillbox. Laura’s storyline begins in January 1918, right after the Halifax Explosion. Both storylines were well-written and well-fleshed out. The storyline did drag once Laura arrived in Belgium and went to The Forbidden Zone. But it picked back up when Winters connected with Laura. Once the storylines merged, the book flowed better but kept up that same medium-slow pace until the end.

I do have a trigger warning list above, but I want to reiterate that this book takes place on the battlefield. There are explosions, people dying, body parts, and people suffering from mental trauma portrayed in the book. This book also takes place during WWI, when chemical warfare was widely used and the effects from the chemicals were awful. It makes for a sad and often frightening background. I didn’t mind it and thought it only accentuated Freddie’s time with Faland and Laura’s quest to find him. But some people might be triggered. So, go into reading this book with care.

The fantasy angle of The Warm Hands of Ghosts was exciting and, at the same time, a little scary. Freddie got sucked into something that was beyond him, and when Winters left (unwillingly, might I add), his sense of time got hazy. I liked how the author connected music to the magic that Faland did and a mirror that showed your true heart’s desire. The haziness of Freddie’s recollections and the music make for an almost dreamlike state that Freddie lived in.

The end of The Warm Hands of Ghosts was bittersweet. I won’t get into it, but the damage that was done by the war was immense. That’s all I can say without giving away spoilers. I liked Laura’s spot of happiness on the last page.

Many thanks to Random House Publishing Group – Ballantine, Del Rey, NetGalley, and Katherine Arden for allowing me to read and review this ARC of The Warm Hands of Ghosts. All opinions stated in this review are mine.

The warm hands of ghosts
By Katherine Arden

A beloved author has come up with another remarkable tale. She has changed her focus from Russian folk lore to one of the most difficult times in our history. World War 1 had so many changes and affects to our history. The Zeitgeist of the times affected literature and warfare is unthinkable ways. This book shows the Celtic influence on the area in France where the darkest days of the war happened. Where no man's land was an insurmountable wasteland. Of boiling pits and craters of death shown in the land of Mordor, by J. R.R. Tolkien. The characters are faced with a supernatural being of unknown power, feeding on the memories and misery of the combatants. Their difficulty begins with the horrors of war, and ends with the lost tracks of the mind.

We're following two perspectives in World War II. First is Laura, a nurse from near the front lines of the war who has just received a box full of her brother's things, whose presumed dead. She is desperate to learn what happened to her brother, so she facing her nightmares and goes back to the war to nurse the wounded soldiers and try to find out what happened to her brother - but no one is giving her a direct answer. Then there's Freddie, Laura's brother. We're following him 3 months before, leading to his disappearance. His perspective is harsh, he's in No Man's Land with an incredibly unlikely companion in the form of a German solider. His story is a fight for survival and then a desperate need to escape the horrors of the war surrounding him. Though the Fiddler doesn't have POV chapters, he is a prominent character. He's viewed nearly as the devil himself, allowing people to forget the horrors they've seen, but always for a price. He's a mystery. He's salvation to some, but damnation to most. This is a story of survival, PTSD, Faith, love between siblings, love between two unlikely people, and a fight for life - not just surviving but actual life. This explores the war in more apocalyptic terms and what place the Devil would've played in this new earth and hell. Also, I'm just a sucker for a story about siblings moving heaven and earth for one another.

<i>First, a thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for allowing me to read an eARC of this book.</i>

This book has similar vibes to [book:Deathless|8694389] and [book:Divine Rivals|60784546]/[book:Ruthless Vows|127280062]. Set in a similar time period, this book also has elements of the encanny/magical with a malignant force at play.

Leaning more toward the <i>Letters of Enchantment</i> duology, this book is really more about the people and their relationships than it is about the setting, so I wouldn’t necessarily suggest this book to like a WWI buff or something.

Although I did appreciate this setting, as frankly… I don’t know much about WWI (did anyone else’s history lessons in primary school just sort of gloss over it?), and I understand Arden’s selection of this time period, as our world was one on the cusp of changing entirely when WWI happened.


I get the criticisms that say nothing really happened or the pacing was a bit slow - yes, I can’t really deny that.

But I loved Arden’s way of showing us a character’s whole heart, their entire self, and how that impacted their choices and their relationships.

I also thought the question of “what do you become and who can you be in the face of tragedy” to be very interesting, as well as the idea of the stripping of the self.

What I mean by that, is that as soldiers, thrown against insurmountable odds, who you are as a person fades away. For Freddie, he lost so much of himself as a pawn in a war where his individual life, his history, his story, didn’t matter. He was nothing more than a tool, whose only focus could be his survival.

To continue this line of thinking there is what some might consider a spoiler, so… see you after the cut or in the deep of it:

<spoiler>so when Freddie and Winter were in complete darkness in the pillbox together, all they had was themselves. Everything else was stripped away, even in some sense their physical forms as they could not see each other. In that moment, their humanity was given back to them - and I thought it was very poignant that once stripped down, they could no longer consider each other as enemies. They were just two lost souls, wounded in more ways than just one, who found that they would rather cling to each other, to that human connection, than kill in the name of a war that on a very minute scale, didn’t really have much to do with either of them, their personal choices, or beliefs. </spoiler>

I was a little disappointed with the like “oh all of a sudden it’s all working out!” nature of the end of the book, but… listen these characters had been through literal hell, I guess, grudgingly, I will allow it.

Overall, I really enjoyed the prose of this book and for me, I don’t mind a slower pace if the prose/character development is enough to keep me going, and in this case, it was enough for me.

My expectations for this book were so high, and Katherine Arden astronomically exceeded them. This book is going to be so hard to review because I don't want to spoil anything.

We have two main protagonists in The Warm Hands of Ghosts: Laura and her brother Freddie. Both are telling their stories in different timelines as well. This is not a book you can just read at a surface level. It goes so much deeper.

Laura is a combat nurse during WWI in 1918 who is searching for her brother who supposedly disappeared/died in the front lines. Determined to find out the truth, she heads back into the fray to search for answers about Freddie.

Back in 1917, we find out Freddie is trapped in a pill box with an enemy German soldier named Hans Winter, and oh my gosh, reading about these two and the bond that develops was **chef's kiss**. I have no other way to describe it. Freddie's POV was definitely my favorite.

There is also a mysterious magical element to the story. Once again, I don't want to spoil or give anything away, but it takes quite an interesting and sinister turn.

Keep in mind, this book can feel quite dark. Arden does well showing grief, PTSD, and trauma from war.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine for an e-ARC of this book. It was fantastic.

Actual rating: 3,5 stars

Set in Belgium during World War I, The Warm Hands of Ghosts blend the horrors of war with a paranormal twist that will leave no one indifferent. I had already been blown away by Arden’s writing in The Winternight Trilogy, and it was a pleasure to dive back into her magical ability to tell a story. Her storytelling transported me to this dreadful war with its realism and depth.

This book is very character driven, unfortunately, I had a hard time rooting for any of the characters. The romances also felt very surface level, and I wish we had more depth to one in particular that seemed to come out of nowhere. I was also expecting and hoping for more information about Faland and his hotel.

The story takes its time to really pick up. Some might be bothered by the slow pace, I personally appreciated the care and attention that Katherine Arden put into creating this dreadful war atmosphere with realistic and real events. I had the opportunity to buddy read this book with an amazing group of people and Katherine Arden herself, and I can only highlight the incredible amount of research and heart she put into this story.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review!

This was AMAZING! It's strange because I just read bear and the nightingale and wasn't totally into it but this was a whole other experience. I'm also not usually one for historical fiction with war settings but the way Arden wrote this was completely enrapturing. I was surprised by so many of the elements in this and it had my heart in its clutches at every page. Just a fantastic book and I would like to read all about what comes after for these characters because they deserve peace and happiness after everything.

Without a doubt Katherine Arden’s writing is hauntingly beautiful. She has a way with words that are captivating and poetic. The Warm Hands of Ghosts is extremely different from her previous work but also beautifully executed. I loved the WW1 aspect of the story but especially the bond between brother and sister. This is a book that will forever have a special place in my heart. Thank you so much NetGalley for giving me this amazing opportunity. I am forever grateful and I can’t wait to purchase this amazing book.

The Warm Hands of Ghosts takes the tragic essence of the Great War....the devastation and endless hopelessness...and smashes into one impactful story.

Right off I was getting 1917 vibes. The atmosphere was planted deep in trench warfare...the the urgency for survival and to find answers for loved ones lost. Laura and Freddy are both interesting and compelling main characters who are both fighting different kinds of demons. I love how this book examined trauma, loss and how some scars never truly fade. I also loved the small grasps for hope and humanity amongst the wreckage.

This is a dark and strange book full of abstract symbolism in character and place. It's one that will haunt you days afterward because of how beautiful and thoughtful the writing is. The plot isn't linear but I think its done in a very clever way that will keep you interested. The research that went into this had to have been immense and I was very impressed. The absolute despair and devastation was so expertly portrayed and its one of the best parts about the book.

There were a few things that I wanted more of and would have been a happy camper if this had been a duology, BUT ultimately it was a solid standalone and for the RIGHT audience this is going to be a fantastic read.

Arden's talent is immense and I continue to be a fan of her stories.

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐖𝐚𝐫𝐦 𝐇𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐆𝐡𝐨𝐬𝐭𝐬 𝐛𝐲 𝐊𝐚𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐀𝐫𝐝𝐞𝐧

The Winternight Trilogy is one of my favorite series, so I knew that this was a must read for me, and I was not disappointed. The story reads much like a historical novel with a setting placed during WWI, but Arden has cleverly woven a few supernatural elements that makes for a hauntingly beautiful read.

There are two timelines with alternating POV’s from Lauren Iven who is a field nurse and her soldier brother Freddie, who is missing in action and presumed dead. The story takes awhile to build as these two circle one another in time trying to find each other but I was spellbound.

The frontlines, trench warfare, along with the never ending casualties are brought to vivid and heart-rending life. The way Arden writes of the horror and utter devastation war brings physically and psychologically will break your heart.

But, through it all are the powerful themes of hope and love, of pushing through the darkness, of the bonds of family and strength of friendship.

The characterization of Lauren and Freddie are outstanding and unforgettable. One character in particular, Faland, is indelibly marked upon my memory.

A beautifully crafted and poignant story only Katherine Arden could write.

This makes me so sad to say, but I did not like this AT ALL. I was not a fan of the writing AT ALL & it made it so hard for me to get into the story. It felt clunky and so sporadic, I felt like there were words and sentences missing. I'm not sure if the grammar was looked during it's last round of edits, but I really hope it did 😭

Because I was not a fan of the writing, the pacing also felt off and I could not care less for the plot, the characters and the little romances that were happening.

I will have to come back to this one in the future with the finished copies and see if I like it better.

I received an ARC of this book from Del Rey through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you! In no way does this affect my rating or review.

"How do you go on from the end of everything?"

Ypres-Passchendaele, and Halifax, Nova Scotia in 1917 witnessed the bowels of hell. These locations became like hell for many that fought in the Great War, and witnessed the explosion of the French cargo ship, the SS Mont-Blanc that decimated the Richmond district in Halifax. Laura Iven, a combat nurse in the Canadian medical corps, endured them both. She lost her entire family to the devouring mouth of war, or so she thought, until a cryptic message from her employers informed her that her brother Freddie was still alive.

Laura goes on to write contacts still fighting overseas to investigate her brother's reported passing. The responses she receives are less-than satisfactory. An opportunity soon arises to return to the Forbidden Zone to aid a comrade with her hospital and investigate her brother's fate, she and her newly acquired friend, Penelope Shaw, embark on a journey back into the abyss to learn the truth of what happened to Freddie and Mrs. Shaw's son Jimmy.

Once the three land, Laura is thrust immediately into her role as combat nurse, despite being honorably discharged due to an injury in service just a few months prior. It isn't long before the peculiarities begin.

"What would a devil of the old world do if he found himself in the hell of the new one?"

The Warm Hands of Ghosts is written in a dual timeline, following first, Laura, then her brother, Freddie. Laura is an admirable woman. Intelligent, intuitive, compassionate, reserved, yet tarnished in ways, she exudes stability despite everything that crashes down around her. Facing tragedy is no new feat, but one she must continually endure in order to locate her brother.

Freddie's story begins akin to that of a birth, and a harrowing one at that. (I must pause and note that the amount of research and effort Ms. Arden went through to piece this story together must have been extensive on multiple fronts. Despite there not being at times much detail of the surroundings, it was so easy to slip into the treacherous landscape Freddie and Winter, a befriended German soldier, beheld. A step further down was a glimpse into the duplicitous terrain of the soldiers' minds, and what a fine line each walked between sanity and insanity. Navigating these quarters are what made this story so powerful. Walk a mile in a soldier's shoes, and you've walked a lifetime.) Freddie and Winter naturally become paired together, as their story is told synonymously. They oppose one another in countenance, age, and are even on opposing sides of the war, and balance each other because of it. The culmination of their duality was disappointing, in my opinion, for reasons I’ll leave alone to maintain a spoil-free review. I am glad to note that this novel remained almost entirely romance-free, and am grateful for that, as I believe it would have retracted from the gravity of these characters' experiences.

"He's a charlatan," said one.
"A madman."
"A Frenchman."
"No," said a new voice. An old, authoritative voice. "He's the devil himself, and right at home."

Faland, a mysterious fiddler who knew too much, reared his face when the sense of disaster and unease was afoot. Aside:I'm not entirely certain if Faland is supposed to represent Fiddler's Green, a longtime legend that exists within the divisions of the military. Fiddler's Green is considered to be a halfway mark between heaven or hell, where a fiddler plays music, gives the men drinks, and dancers dance without fail. These renditions change per division, so it's unclear to me exactly his representation, or if he is his own creation, entirely. Even so, Faland serves as the obvious protagonist, besides the war itself.

Faland is very morally gray, a juxtaposition to brave Laura, eager Penelope, uncertain Freddie, and enduring Winter,. He serves himself, but offers "bliss" in return to those that will seek him out in their despair. War does strange things to people. It is unnatural in its nature. It is in the weakness of man that Faland preys upon, and is what makes him so very sinister. What is worse, is when the defining lines of certain characters fade into the gray with him.

There really is so much that could be said about this book. There are numerous facets at play, and are intermingled brilliantly, that it'd be difficult to discuss majority of them in a book review without spoiling everything. So, I shall leave it at that. The Warm Hands of Ghosts is a thoughtful expression of the effects that war and turmoil have on mankind and the human psyche. In more ways than one, Arden creates a story that challenges all and asks: how would you act in the face of such adversity?

My Rating: ★★★★

Happy Publication Day 2/13/2024!

I'm a huge fan of The Bear and the Nightingale Trilogy by Arden, so I was thrilled to get a last-minute DRC to read. Thank you to Netgalley, the publisher, and Katherine Arden for the opportunity to read and review this!

Laura Iven was a Canadian combat nurse who was injured and then released from duty towards the end of WWI. Back at home, she receives word of her brother Freddie's death. The military presumed him dead but did not retrieve his body, even though they had his uniform and dog tags. She writes many letters to her contacts at her previous hospital and members of Freddie's unit, but she feels like she's not quite getting the whole story. Laura happens to meet Penelope, or Pim as her friends call her, through her new employer. Pim lost her family to the war and happens to know another woman who turns out to be running a private hospital for soldiers in Belgium. Laura can't pass up the opportunity to get back to see what she can find out about her brother, so despite her leg injury, she and Pim volunteer to work at the hospital, and the quest begins.

Meanwhile, we are slowly learning Freddie's story with a dual timeline. Freddie and an enemy German soldier, Winter, end up buried together under an overturned pillbox during an explosion in an exceptionally brutal battle. Winter is wounded worse than Freddie, but he speaks English, and they help keep each other sane enough to escape from what would otherwise be their graves. Bonded by that, neither wants to turn the other over as a war prisoner. They meet a mysterious hotelier who makes the violin sing and serves wine that helps the soldiers who find him to forget. There's always a price, though.

I've struggled all day to organize my thoughts, but there is a lot to unpack with this book! It's a really interesting mix of historical fiction and fantasy with paranormal elements. Arden writes about how she had to find room for the myth in history, and it was surely an ambitious task with such a well documented war. This book is really a slow burn in that it took about half of the book to set up the story and really draw me in. Arden's hauntingly beautiful writing didn't make it feel long, though. There is no doubt that she is an extremely talented writer. She really drew out all of the emotions of war in a way that I could feel down to my core. I finished the book last night, but I still need a hug!

My slight criticism is that the female characters felt a bit flat and less personal to me. Freddie and Winter's story was much more compelling. This may not be for all fans of The Bear and Nightingale books, but I will read anything Arden wants to write!

Laura and her brother Freddie are the main characters followed in The Warm Hands of Ghosts. After suffering injuries during the war, Laura, a nurse, goes back to Halifax. She receives cryptic messages there suggesting that Freddie might still be alive. Laura travels back to Europe to learn more about her brother's whereabouts after making the acquaintance of Penelope, a mother dealing with her son's passing. I enjoyed the two perspectives in The Warm Hands of Ghost. The first is about combat nurse Laura Iven, who decides to return to the front lines after learning of her brother's disappearance, and the other is about Freddie Iven, who finds comfort in an unlikely place—a dark pillbox where he is trapped with his enemy, German soldier Hans Winter. While Freddie's point of view was focused on 1917–18, Laura's was set in 1918. The thing that I found most endearing about these characters was their drive and tenacity. I found it fascinating how the two siblings' relationship developed, how complicated their link was, and how their lives were changed forever. I give this five of five strong stars and am so excited to start talking about this book at my library.

It’s difficult to find the words to describe this quiet masterpiece of a book. Hauntingly beautiful feels a bit cliche, but it’s apt, to say the least.

Katherine Arden has been one of my favorite authors since The Bear and the Nightingale made its way into my hands back in 2017. Her way with language and history in that trilogy had my anticipation high going into this novel. And while what I found was quite different than The Winternight series, it was no less remarkable.

The story follows siblings Freddie and Laura as they experience the horrors of wartime. From opposite sides of the world—Laura, a nurse injured and sent home, and Freddie, a soldier presumed missing and dead—their stories come together in the shadow of stories about a man offering the temptation of oblivion.

The research and dedication to her craft is on clear display. The history, the truths of the time we know only in retrospect, the stories. All are masterfully handled and woven together.

The characters, too, transform before our eyes. Humanity at war readily apparent. Shocking, comforting, and a full range between.

I wanted to savor every moment.

The title, ominous as it may sound at first, lingers by the end, comforts. I cannot doubt that I’ll journey with these ghosts again.

I received an arc of this book from Del Rey via NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are my own.

Katherine Ardens' Winternight Trilogy is one of my favorite fantasy series, so I was thrilled to see that she had finally written a new adult novel.

I am not one of those readers who automatically expects an author's works to mimic their previous novels, so the fact that this one was set during World War I and had gothic overtones did not surprise me, although fans of her folkloric retellings should be aware that this particular book deviates quite a bit from that genre, although magical realism is a main feature. Arden's writing is exquisite as always and transports the reader into whatever setting she can imagine. So much is written about WWII that I feel that WWI often gets overlooked for the brutality that the soldiers endured and the emotional trauma that they had to live with during a time when mental health was a taboo subject.

The storyline of a sister, Laura, who was a field nurse returning to the Front to find out the mystery behind her brother's supposed death held a promising start and was nicely juxtaposed with the story of her brother Freddie, his escape from an upturned pill box and his journey thereafter. For me however, the plot moved rather slowly and I had a difficult time keeping my attention. Full disclosure, I am a mood reader and the heavy themes that permeated this novel may have influenced by ability to stay focused as the world seems a bit dreary at the moment.

Overall, I liked but did not love this one. It absolutely does not mean that I would not hesitate to read another of Katherine Arden's novels if given the chance, it's just that this one did not resonate with me. I am sure however, that others who love a mix of war stories and magical realism will absolutely devour it.

Thank you to NetGalley, Del Rey, and Katherine Arden for an advanced reader's copy in exchange for an honest review.

I enjoyed many aspects of this book. The imagery is gorgeously rendered, bringing war torn Europe vividly to life. I also loved the themes, of the end of an era and its correlation to the end of everything, of war itself and the toll it takes on its mostly unwitting participants. The contrast between the men in the trenches and those giving orders from a chateaux, the meaninglessness of sides when death comes to call, the price of memory. My favorite storyline was that of Wilfred “Freddie” Iven and Hans Winter, a Canadian soldier and a German one who find themselves the only living beings trapped in a pillbox after a disastrous battle.

As the men escape the pillbox and traverse the desolated countryside, their bond intensifies, until eventually they mean everything to one another. They meet a man, Faland, and Freddie follows him to his mysterious hotel. There, Freddie learns and weighs the cost of his own humanity.

Less interesting to me was the storyline of Freddie’s sister, Laura. She is a decorated nurse who was sent home from the front after being wounded, only to have the war’s devastating effects follow her home to Canada. After she receives a box containing Freddie’s belongings and a cryptic note, she teams up with two other women and returns to the front. Her companions are Mary Borden, a woman taking advantage of the wartime freedom for women to run a hospital in Belgium, and Pim, a Victorian beauty of a widow whose son was recently killed there.

Laura’s determination to find out what happened to Freddie was admirable, and Pim’s character arc was intriguing. Had the two stories been woven together more quickly, I might not have felt such a preference for one over the other. As it was, I wanted to hurry through Laura’s chapters to see more of Freddie. Once the arcs converged, I was fully invested and flew through the remainder. This is a very different book than Arden’s previous work. It was well written and impactful, though, and though the fantasy element was subtle, it lended well to the material. I recommend this for readers of historical fiction, magical realism, and war stories.

*I received an advanced reader copy from NetGalley and I am voluntarily leaving my review*

I’m not a big fan of WWII fiction, but I’m inexplicably drawn to WWI fiction. From 2022’s lit fic novel Two Storm Wood (which this novel reminds me of in some ways) to Rebecca Ross’s Divine Rivals (which takes place in an alternative-Earth’s version of WWI), novels that capture the ghosts and horrors of those monstrous trenches and stories of those who love them are of interest to me. Add my interest to my curiosity in author Katherine Arden (I’d not read one of her novels before this even if they are on my wishlist) and I was so happy to get a chance to read The Warm Hands of Ghosts.

Arden’s writing is impeccable, from the words chosen to the sentence structure. The prose flows smooth as silk, the dialogue is perfectly suited to the characters and the time period, and the pacing is perfect. The story arc is sublime, with the alternating character-POV chapters lasting just long enough and hitting just when they need to in order to keep the suspense and emotion going. The world building is without fault, as its clear Arden didn’t skimp on the research one bit and put that knowledge to good use in conjunction with her ample writing talents. It’s an absolute masterpiece of a novel.

The themes of trauma, grief, love, fidelity, memory, “madness”, and darkness are all implemented so well here, woven with one another like a complex braid until it becomes one messy unit of no ends or beginnings. Such is the life of a common soldier or a nurse who comes to war. They don’t come to the battlefield until the people in charge have already decided it’s time to fight. The war started before they got there.

It’s a beautiful novel, even if it’s sad and brutal. I cried, but not as much as I thought I would. It was a fantastic read and I’d read it again.

I was provided a copy of this title by NetGalley and the author. All thoughts, opinions, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. Thank you.

File Under: 5 Star Review/Historical Fantasy/Historical Fiction/LGBTQ Romance/Military Fiction/Supernatural Fantasy