3.25 stars... I liked it... not my usual read, but I thought the premise was good. It read a little slow for me, but I enjoyed the story enough. I was intrigued by the fact that Freddie was there but also not there. I liked this historical fiction with a hint of paranormal. It kept me engaged but it was something I had to read in chunks. If you're a fan of historical fiction (or the war of 1918) this book might just be for you.

What a stunning book. And I mean that literally, as I feel a little whacked in the head by the whole thing.

This is the story for you if you love Hadestown, Labyrinth, The Magicians series, and (even the slightly-less-good-than-those) Divine Rivals. It’s dark, full of folk magic and creeping ghosts.

The author has clearly done her research, and the result is rich and layered and easy to binge.

Thank you NetGalley for the ARC! Free stuff doesn’t color my opinion, honest.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️+

I am in awe of this book, and will be thinking about it for a VERY long time. This is the first time I’ve ever had a historical fiction in my top 5 books of the year. This is also the first time I’ve ever finished a historical fiction book in less than 24 hours. It’s THAT good.

Katherine Arden’s ability to completely submerge the reader in a time period is astounding. I felt physically present; smells, sounds, feelings. She wrote such rich, in-depth, quite distinguishable characters, that with each change of point of view I felt excited to read more. The women in this book were exactly what I wanted to read; strong, intelligent, not leaning on anyone but themselves and their own drive for a conclusion. The romance was delicately peppered in, and did not at all overwhelm the story or undermine the women’s personal stories.

Thank you NetGalley and Penguin Random House for this experience in exchange for an honest review!!! 📚

I want to be able to tell you how this book made me feel. It’s my favorite type of book, my favorite type of feeling — it is so intimate. Every word and sentence like an almost kiss. This book lives in that tender space between two people sitting close together, whispering in the quiet of a night, their lips almost brushing. This book is full of hope, determination, grit, and the way love not only survives but gives us something to fight for.

It is a book I didn’t know I needed until I read it.

I cannot speak to the historical aspects of this novel but I can speak to it as a story. And to me, it is a damned good one. I would follow these characters to the ends of the earth. I cannot wait to have a copy in my hands to love deeply.

Full review closer to pub date.

I really enjoyed Katherine Arden’s “Winternight” trilogy with its unique blend of history, fantasy, and religion, so I was very delighted to receive an ARC of her newest novel, “The Warm Hands of Ghosts.” A World War I story with a man playing music in the night to seduce soldiers away from the blood and screams of battle, and a sister who won’t stop looking for her brother? Sign me up! Unfortunately, as evidenced by the 10 days it took me to finish this book, the story played out unevenly and I had a hard time making myself persist. The descriptions of war and the anguish of war were poetically desperate and dark, and honestly were my favorite parts of the book. I cared about Freddie and Winter, the two soldiers– they were the most well-developed characters; but for God’s sake, I am tired of relationship pivots less than 10 minutes from the end of stories and authors need to stop doing that (I dropped my rating one star for that because it was unnecessary and added nothing to the plot). Laura, Freddie’s sister, was all right but a bit one dimensional until she started interacting with the American Dr. Jones– I would have loved more of their story. The cover, title, and description sold me, and some parts were all right but overall this new Arden novel wasn’t my favorite.

📣 WWI historical with fantasy elements featuring two siblings who have been separated by the horrors of war

Thanks to the publisher & Netgalley for the complimentary ARC and the publisher for the complimentary hardcopy. All opinions provided are my own.

📖 what are you currently reading? I’m reading a really great fantasy called The City of Stardust by Georgia Summers.

The Warm Hands of Ghosts by Katherine Arden is one of those engrossing—& not in a polite way—books that grabs you & doesn’t let go.

Set during World War I & featuring two siblings—a woman & a man—who have been separated by war, this book is largely concerned with the front, the combat hospitals & ruined villages & military fortifications where protagonist Laura & her brother Freddie find themselves.

This is a world that’s been in flux for a long time. Their parents worried & warned about the end of days in the 1910s & their once outlandish, paranoid predictions feel all too real in World War I.

Former combat nurse Laura is retired but—upon receiving mysterious items that belonged to her brother & potentially contradictory news about what happened to him—she resolves to return to Europe, serve as a nurse again, & use her downtime to investigate what actually happened.

Laura’s perspective is fascinating, as is her brother’s, who we shortly learn was imprisoned in a collapsed fortification with an enemy German soldier. Left to die, the lines between sides blur, & their journey together further complicates it as their relationship is tested by violence & death, potential & actual.

The war horrors in this book are real & imagined, & there’s a visceral violence to what happens to people ravaged by war & who are ravaging others. It’s often sad & disconcerting but there is hope too, in the relationship between Laura & Freddie & their burgeoning loves.

This is a fantasy that will hold your attention, entice you & leave you feeling both hopeful & unsettled.

4.5 ⭐️. Out 02/13.

[ID: Jess’s hand, partially covered in a tan sweatshirt, holds the book in front of a red, orange, & green set of trees.]

I am an unabashed lover of Arden's Winternight Trilogy and was curious to see if I'd like her writing under entirely different circumstances. Spoiler alert - I do. This is one of the best books, if not THE best, that I've read all year. Set amidst WWI, Laura, a discharged Canadian nurse, is perplexed when she receives her enlisted brother's things, but no death notice, just a "presumed missing." She goes BACK out into the forbidden zone to work again in a hospital setting while also looking for her brother.

Meanwhile, her brother has undergone an absolutely horrific experience with a German soldier, and is looking for escape, mainly a mental escape. He becomes entwined with The Fiddler, who haunts the haunted, shell shocked men of the Great War and slowly loses pieces of himself. Laura finds herself joining forces with the German, Winter, in order to try and save her brother.

This book was beautifully written, with elements of psychological horror I've never seen before in lit fiction. I will be recommending this to EVERYONE when it's published.

Katherine Arden’s Winternight Trilogy is one of my favorite series, so when I saw she had written a new book, I knew I had to read it. I was not disappointed. This book is haunting, magical, and moving.
This book is set in WWI with our main character, Laura, recently discharged from being a nurse on the warfront due to an injury. She’s forced to go home and leave her brother Freddie, a soldier, behind. Soon after returning home, Laura is sent Freddie’s personal effects. She sets out to investigate what happened to him. Back on the war front, Freddie finds himself unexpectedly allied with an enemy soldier. They come across a mysterious man who may be more than he seems.
The war scenes in this book were haunting and moving. I definitely found this book hard to read at times due to that. But that just goes to show Arden’s mastery of writing. The scenes also serve a purpose so that the audience knows what the characters have gone through and to better understand why they made the decisions they did.
I feel like the book focused more on Laura and her working through her trauma and her quest to find out what happened to Freddie than it focused on Freddie’s POV. For that reason and due to how the characters were written, I found myself more connected to Laura and wanting to read her chapters more than his. I also found the fiddler to be a very intriguing character who reminded me of Morozko from the Winternight trilogy at times.
My only big complaint is that I felt like the ending of the book was too rushed. Things seemed to wrap up too neatly with a bow after everything that happened in the book and all the things the characters went through. However, overall this was a very interesting read and I highly recommend it to those that are a fan of historical fiction with some fantasy thrown in.

NetGalley gave me an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review. While I am a fan of Katherine Arden's previous works, I can't say that I loved this one, and, honestly, I didn't even really like it all that much. The characters fell flat for me and the story itself was just okay.

I went into this book completely blind. I had not read the synopsis or heard anything about the storyline. I enjoyed the Winternight Triology and knew that I’d read whatever Arden wrote in the future. This book was spectacular. I have been trying to come up with a good review for The Warm Hands of Ghosts for a couple of days now, and I still am struggling to find the words to convey how much I enjoyed this story. I felt like I was in the warzone. I felt the pain and terror of the pillbox. Arden paints a very real picture of WWI, drawing on the experiences of real soldiers and historical accounts. I enjoyed the dual POVs. Both characters have witnessed unspeakable horrors yet each find hope in their own ways. I will be posting my review to Instagram in the next week.

Warm Hands of Ghosts is another brilliant story from the master storyteller, Katherine Arden. Going in, I already loved her books from the Winternight Trilogy, so I was expecting to like this book, despite it being a total different genre (war novel) than her previous books. What I didn’t expect was just how much I would love it.

Beautiful and heartbreaking, this haunting book about war, love and loss is so vividly told, it gets under your skin and stays there. The supernatural element adds an extra layer of richness to the story that I was not expecting. It is obvious that Arden did her research as she was able to so powerfully capture the atmosphere of war.

As with any of Katherine Arden’s books, I totally recommend reading. 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for sending me a copy in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you to NetGalley for sending me an e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

The Warm Hands of Ghosts by Katherine Arden was a haunting depiction of family devotion, grief, and the courage to survive and live again. It was an evocative and beautiful read.

With hints of magical realism, the author introduces characters that suffer from their experiences with the war yet are still determined to find the light at the end of the tunnel. While at times heart wrenching, the overall tone of the book was hopeful and inspiring.

For obvious reasons, this was a five-star read. The writing was impeccable, the characters were idiosyncratic, and the plot was perfectly paced and a standout from other similar books. This atmospheric tale is perfect for those chilly nights when you just want to cozy up with a good book. Highly recommend.

I rate this book 4 out of 5 stars. I really loved this book! The story line was so captivating, it drew me in, and I thought it was very interesting to have the main character’s point of view be a year apart from the secondary character’s point of view. The way that both point of views wove into each other was very well done. I think it was a great book and recommend it. I love that the author included a mysterious character that acts as an urban legend among the soldiers and that really added a fantastical touch to a WW1 era novel. The fact that this book takes place during WW1 was something that I really gravitated towards because I’m a huge fan of books that take place during the different eras of wartime and any other historical fiction book. This is definitely a good book to read if you’re a fan of historical fiction books! This book was very good at making you feel all of the emotions that were running high during the war, as well as making you emotionally invested in each of the character’s lives and journeys. The only thing I will say is that you really have to pay attention to the labeled dates at the top of each chapter because if you don’t pay attention to them between the 2 main character’s chapters it can kind of get a little bit confusing to remember when certain things are happening. That might’ve just been a personal struggle since I have a hard time remembering all the little bits and pieces, but I figured it was worth mentioning. This might also have been intentional to make you feel unoriented and lost like the characters were, so I don’t subtract too many points for that. Other than that, I really love this and I will be buying a copy once it’s released to the public. Thank you to NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this wonderful book.

The Warm Hands of Ghosts is a beautifully written and haunting story. A human tale about the horrors of war and bonds that keep us going, I appreciated the storytelling and loved Freddie's chapters. The dual POV just didn't quite work for me. Bouncing between Laura and Freddie took me out of some of the more poignant or tense scenes, and I wonder if this would be a higher rated book for me if it was just from Freddie's POV. I also found him to be the more compelling sibling. I understand Laura's motivation, but never felt truly connected to her character as I did Freddie. He had much more interesting and emotional journey.

Overall a beautiful story, but left me wanting more

Wow… The metaphor this book gives in the effects of war of those on the frontlines as well as their families moved me to my core. From the description, I imagined this was a horror story with literal ghosts and superficial just scares in the heart of the Great War, but I was so wrong. The story was heartbreaking in its premise of siblings separated by war and familial loss try to find each other across hundreds of miles. The fact that the séance culture was strong during this time adds another layer to the story when you’ve experienced the trauma of war and the loss of a parent while not knowing if the last of your family was still alive or not. The beautiful writing style gave way to emotional connections between characters. I’m not much of a crier, but I cried throughout this novel. I love the metaphor of what some characters stood for and how they overcame their battles in the end. Even if you don’t like paranormal stories or historical fiction, this is a must read for all. Thank you Netgalley for my ARC!

Oh, wow! What a wonderful book! This is a great story that kept me reading. Telling the story during WWI made it even more intriguing. This story is well written and should not be missed.

Ever since reading the Winternight Trilogy by Katherine Arden, I have been anxiously awaiting her next work, and I went into this book with high expectations because of how much I loved the trilogy. Unfortunately, this didn't live up to my expectations for a couple of reasons.

In this novel, we follow Laura Iven and her brother Freddie. Laura is a celebrated WWI nurse who has been injured and discharged from duty only to return to home to Halifax and experience another traumatic event resulting in the loss of her parents. Laura then receives a box with her brother's effects and a note saying that he was lost in combat. Something isn't quite adding up. With nothing left to lose, Laura volunteers at a private hospital back in Belgium so that she might have the chance to search for her brother. Meanwhile, Laura's brother Freddie has woken up trapped in a pillbox with an enemy soldier. As they fight to survive, their reliance on each other becomes paramount. As they find their way back to a city, the one person willing to help them is a violinist, Faland, who seems to have endless connections and solutions to their most immediate problems. In return, all Faland asks is to tell him stories.

I loved the characters in this book. Laura and Freddie and Faland all have such distinct personalities and outlooks on the world, and I loved the way that each fought through the mess of a war. The horrors of war and the ways that it affected soldiers mentally I think were also well-explored without being too graphic. Additionally, I loved the way Arden weaves a bit of the fantastic into this story. What really missed the mark for me in this book was the way that Arden begins to weave in aspects of the apocalyptic into the story, and never fully delivers on it. A large part of Laura and Freddie's childhood centers around preparing for the apocalypse, and when they experience what many real soldiers and nurses viewed as the apocalypse, there isn't any tie-in to their childhood at all. Arden's previous work deeply explored the intersection between faith, religion, and folk or popular belief, and I expected the same depth in this book. On that count, I was quite disappointed.

Amid the horrendous tragedies and turmoil of World War I, nurse Laura will stop at nothing to discover the fate of her brother Freddie who is fighting in Belgium and goes missing. This book is full of intrigue, mystery, and the unexplained. Death and ghosts follow at every corner. I absolutely loved this book. It is very different as it portrays the war in a very ragged honest way and constantly has you turning the page to find out what happens next. The storyline is 10/10. Definitely one of my tops reads of 2023.

Katherine Arden is an absolute master of writing and this book only continues to prove that. During "the Great War," Laura finds out that her brother has gone missing, but something feels off. Laura decides that she is going to figure out what happened.

This novel was so unexpected in all of the right ways. It's very different from her other novels, but brings the same level of atmosphere and care for her characters that we've all come to love. It is lush and beautifully written, but does not pull its punches on some of the harder topics. I highly recommend this book, even if historical fiction/fantasy is not your thing.

Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Nowhere seems more appropriate for a story about the lost and forsaken than a story set in one of the World Wars, whether it’s a fantasy or straight historical fiction. And the search for one of those lost, forsaken souls sparks off the events of “The Warm Hands Of Ghosts,” Katherine Arden’s historical fantasy about a woman’s search for her brother, and that brother’s fall from grace. It’s not a comfortable or complicated book, but it does have a certain dark, dismal charm.

It’s 1918, World War I is raging, and nurse Laura Iven has little other than her work to occupy her – her parents died in freak accidents, she suffered some nasty injuries in her field work at the front, and her brother Freddy has just been declared missing, presumed dead. Then a seance tells her that Freddie is still alive – and though she doesn’t entirely believe it, she decides to go back to the front with her new friends Pim Shaw and Mary Burton to find out what happened to him.

Soon after arriving, the women take shelter in a strange, dreamlike hotel, where a man named Faland plays the fiddle and tantalizes people with a magic mirror. While Laura searches for some sign of her brother, she is told stories about the Fiddler and the sinister spell he weaves over the people who find him – and she begins to wonder if Freddie’s fate might somehow be connected to this man.

Alternating chapters also show what happened to Freddie the year before – how he was left for dead in an overturned pillbox, with a German soldier named Hans Winter. The two men bond as they try to find a way back to one of their armies, and Freddie goes to extreme lengths to make sure his new friend will survive. But these lengths also put him in the hands of Faland, and a Faustian pact that will steal away what is most precious to him.

“The Warm Hands of Ghosts” is a book that is easier to appreciate than to actually enjoy – it’s a beautifully-written, beautifully-sculpted tale about the horrors of war, the price people will pay to escape them, and the bonds between people facing those horrors. But at the same time, Katherine Arden’s tale has stretches that aren’t exactly gripping, especially in Laura’s part of the story, and while the grey bleakness of the war is well-explored, she doesn’t really fully address the implications or theological aspects of the story that she brings up.

Furthermore, the alternating chapters from Laura and Freddie’s perspectives do start to sap some of the tension, especially when Faland’s true nature reveals itself – you kind of want the story to just stick to Freddie and explore the horror of his situation. Instead, every time something important happens in one of the parallel narratives, it’s cut off and we switch to the other one.

The characters also are a mixed bag – Laura is a character that it’s easier to admire than to like, being a rather cold and prickly woman. It’s entirely understandable, and well-displayed, how she became that way, but it’s hard to warm up to her. Supporting characters like the enchantingly feminine Pim or the bluntly practical American doctor Jones end up feeling more like characters you want to follow. And Freddie is a more raw and dynamic character, since his journey is more horrifying and gripping, as is his relationship with enemy soldier Winter.

“The Warm Hands of Ghosts” is a striking, well-written and well-researched tale of war, loss and the sinister forces that underlie human horrors. However, it needed more fleshing-out of some aspects of the plot, and a heroine who feels less cold and armored.