Unfortunately, I was really disappointed by this book. While I’ve loved the author’s middle grade books, this was my first experience with her adult fiction, and it just didn’t work for me.

The writing itself was beautiful and immersive, and the depiction of war was dark, gritty, and vividly portrayed—I truly felt transported into the scenes alongside the characters. However, the story and characters failed to draw me in. I couldn’t connect with any of the characters, which made it hard to care about their journeys or outcomes. The plot lacked the intrigue and emotional pull I was hoping for, leaving me wanting so much more.

The fantasy element, which I had anticipated eagerly, was underwhelming and felt underdeveloped. There was so much potential for it to shine, but it didn’t deliver. As a result, the story lacked memorability—so much so that as I write this review, most of it has already faded from my mind.

I listened to this book on audiobook, and honestly, the excellent narration was the only reason I didn’t DNF it. The narrators did a fantastic job bringing life to the story, even if the content didn’t resonate with me.

Personally, I wouldn’t recommend this book. However, if you’re a fan of the author or find the premise intriguing, you might want to give it a try—especially in audiobook format, which I highly recommend.

Thank you to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this advanced copy in exchange for an honest review. These are my own thoughts and opinions.

I really wanted to enjoy this book but it felt too slow paced without a lot of suspense to keep the reader interested. Unfortunately it wasn’t for me.

This was such a huge surprise for me, was so pleasantly surprised in every way. When one picks up a fantasy book, we often feel that we have to choose between the fantasy genre and works that have literary merit, but it's with books like these that we get the best of both worlds; Arden manages to write something so stunningly beautiful in terms of technical writing, as well as the storytelling elements.

I was captivated by this from the very beginning to the end, the pacing was damn near perfect. The characterizations that took place here were absolutely beautiful to read about. There was so much more depth and meaningfulness that I wasn't expecting from this and was very happy to get. The character work is impeccable, I was so invested in these characters that my heart was left in a million trillion little pieces!

While being absolutely beautiful, this was still a very gritty tale that depicts the realities of war and doesn't pretty it up, we get very raw and unflinching POVs that really work to help the characters grow. The growth of our MC was my favorite part of the book.

I was a huge fan of "The Bear and the Nightingale" series, so I was really excited to be able to read Katherine Arden's latest book! Because she is so good at world building, I think I was expecting something that takes place in another realm. However, while this story has fantastic elements, it is rooted also in a very real battlefield. As a reader, I was completely immersed in the story. She is so good at making a reader feel what the characters are feeling at any given moment. There were several points when I felt a little claustrophobic as I read about soldiers trapped in tiny places.

When I finished the story, I couldn't quite move on to another book. It was a really powerful and poignant story. I'm excited to recommend it to customers.

I came back to this novel after “DNF’ing” it earlier this year when it was published (definitely and wholly a me problem when I “DNF’d” it), and coming back to The Warm Hands of Ghosts made me more appreciative for what Katherine Arden is doing with this novel. Where Arden’s prose in the Winternight trilogy evokes the folk tales and medieval Russia, her prose in this World War I set historical fantasy bares the horrors of war. The catalyst—and overarching plot—is Laura’s search for her missing brother, Wilfred, when she receives word that he is missing and presumed dead. There were a handful of times that I was taken out of the story—a few character motivations and relationship developments would have worked better for me if they were a bit more fleshed out—but the thematic explorations of trauma more than made up for it. Our sibling protagonists, Laura and Wilfred Iven, navigate war from the medical and front lines with their perspectives making for an almost detached reading experience, focusing on the internalized trauma of the Great War.

I fell in love with Katherine Arden's writing in the Winternight Trilogy, and this story did not disappoint. It also has a bit of the magical realism that propels the working class forward.

This is a beautiful story about those that go to war and those that are left behind, and the effects on their ability to form relationships. Laura is discharged as a field nurse due to an injury she sustained, when her brother goes missing in combat. Laura travels back to the war zone to find her brother. We see the relationships formed between the characters and those who they depend on out of necessity.

Arden is a master of description and creates complex characters and relationships.

Another beautiful book by Arden. The way she puts a fantastical spin into historical fiction is brilliant. I honestly haven’t read too many books set in WWI, so it led me to look things up and read up a little bit on the war. We follow a Canadian brother and sister, Freddie and Laura, in Belgium through a few months of WWI. It's horrible, but done so well. While not gory, there are parts that make your stomach turn. And even more so when you know those things really did happen. Arden is such a great writer. While this was a slightly slower story, it was still impactful and I did want to keep reading to know what would happen. It was all just done so well. I really enjoyed it and would definitely recommend this book to those who love historical fiction.

I loved this! A perfect blend of folk tale and gritty war. I haven't really read any WW1-based books and now I want to read more about it. Katherine painted a very vivid portrait of both the hospitals and experiences of the soldiers.

This was a heartbreaking story. I normally don’t read books that feel so close to reality specially based on the time period this story is set in, but the language and storytelling was so good that got sucked in without realizing it.
I cannot tell you how many times I had to stop and breathe to not cry because man, I felt so much for the characters.

The trapped scene will forever hunt me and I don’t think I’ll will ever be able to reread this one but hey only good storytellings are able to do what this one did to me

I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this book. A mostly historical fiction with a touch of magic thrown in, I was invested in the lives of these characters throughout the story. I recommend this book to anyone who likes a little of everything: magic, history, adventure and love.

A novel about WWI with some mystic parts thrown in. Ms. Arden does not shy away from the horrors of war and the madness that enveloped solidiers and nurses. How it changes the scope of the world.

A tender exploration of grief and loss that is refreshing alongside Arden's characters and the setting. She masterfully explores the effects of grief and war-time and how to find moments of hope and love in that grief.

Full review and links to social will be posted as soon as possible.

I'd like to thank the publisher and Netgalley for providing me with a copy in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you to Netgalley and Random House Publishing Group for an advanced ebook copy in exchange for an honest review.

Katherine Arden’s writing is lyrical, dark, and haunting in this fantastical speculative historical fiction. Having read her Winter Night Trilogy, I knew that she would not disappoint. She draws a dark, apocalyptic scene of World War I from the perspective of Laura, a war nurse having braved the front and her brother, Freddie a soldier experiencing the war front as the story opens. What is unclear from the beginning is what happened to Laura’s brother, Freddie.

Interspersed within the chapters comes a character by the name of Faland. He is mysterious, with motives of his own.

Overarching themes explored old world vs. new, the individual vs. systems, empathy and humanity. There are so many layers and a lot of depth to this story if you can be patient with the progression. It took awhile for me to get into the story, but after awhile, I did want to know what would happen in the end.

Thank you to Netgalley and the Publishing Company for providing me this Digital Advanced Readers Copy of the book!

As always, beautiful writing from Arden. Lyrical and atmospheric prose, although the read was somewhat slow-going.

Wow, this book has allusion after allusion packed into it!

On the surface, the plot is about a Canadian nurse, invalided out of the Great War, who returns to the front to find out what happened to her missing brother. Laura is no-nonsense, compassionate, pragmatic, clear-sighted.

The war was beyond human understanding and her brother Freddie has passed into a place that is not quite real, a place of surcease and damnation. He can't quite let go of everything because there is someone he doesn't want to forget.

The author's afterward states that the Great War split the world. Before the war there was still the paradigm of romance and pastoralism and afterwards the technology, inhuman systems and uncaring arbitrariness of destruction shattered the old world into bits.

Toward the beginning of the book a character reads "The Lady of Shalott". In this poem, the Lady cannot look directly at the real world. When she sees the world as it truly is, her magic mirror cracks and she knows that her doom is upon her. This character's mirror cracks as she travels into the hell of the front of the war. The author uses "cracks" several times throughout this part of the book to drive the point home.

There are more allusions to come! Probably a bunch passed over my head, but there's a figure in the book that might be a fairy king or Lucifer or a combination of both. Even his damnation cannot exceed the suffering in the world, because his damnation requires him to know the damned while the suffering in the world is random, arbitrary, impersonal. Even the devil can't do worse than the systemic destruction of the war.

Finally, the author begins to use the word "wasteland" as the poem by T.X. Eliot to describe the characters' surroundings. Eliot of course wrote the poem just after the war, and the rage and disillusionment that he expressed comes through in this book as well. In this book, forgetting and damnation are the same. Maybe we're all looking into our mirrors to avoid the real world right now, lest the curse come upon us with understanding exactly where we are and what we've done. This book has a lot to say and it says it well.

I received this book from NetGalley in exchange for a honest review.

I absolutely loved this book. I am a huge fan of Katherine Arden's Bear and the Nightingale trilogy and I was super excited when I saw this book was coming out. Her prose are so beautiful and she has a knack for describing beautiful yet harrowing things in the most visceral way. If you have any interest in WWI or cool takes on history and mythology then this is the book for you!

Loved this. I’ve really enjoyed everything by this author. She’s an autobuy author for me. I love how every one of her stories is completely different from the others but you can still feel she’s the author. A very strong voice - one I really enjoy.

It took me a long time to read this book. The story was compelling and complex, chillingly dark and unexpectedly warm. It is not the kind of book I could race through.

I have adored Katherine Arden’s characters and world building since reading the Winternight trilogy. She has a gift for seeing the archetypal conflicts of light and darkness taking place in the muddiest of human conflicts. The overarching struggle of Warm Hands is the death of the old world and the birth of the new, both occurring simultaneously in the blood and violence of WWI.

The characters typify aspects of this struggle, often playing off one another in pairs: old v new, inhumanity v empathy.

The pair at the center of the story are the Iven siblings: older sister Laura, a wounded combat nurse, and younger brother Freddie, a traumatized Canadian soldier. The central plot revolves around Laura’s search for Freddie after she receives news that he is missing, presumed dead. Laura, in this pairing, is very much of the new world— her sharp edges and fierce determination allowed her to operate effectively as a combat nurse, even winning a Croix de Guerre. She is nevertheless brutally scarred (internally and externally) by her experiences at the front. Freddie, by contrast, is an old world romantic— a poet and a painter with no pretensions to the suicidal heroism of the trenches. He is a gentle soul, and desperately naive. His confrontation with the horrors of war does more than destroy him— it makes him long for his own destruction. The fact that both Iven siblings are, at various times, called only by their last name only serves to highlight the contrast in their natures.

Each of the protagonists is then paired with a foil, a secondary character who operates as both a steadying hand and a reflection of Laura and Freddie’s true characters. For Freddie, it is Winter, a German soldier who embodies old world heroism and the kind of moral clarity that is desperately lacking on the front. For Laura, it is Jones, an American surgeon whose all consuming passion for his work never manages to overcome his humanity and empathy.

The antagonists of the novel are also paired. WWI serves as the impersonal, brutal, new world evil. Indiscriminate destruction is its calling card. By contrast, the mysterious Faland embodies the old world evil— his attachment to his victims is deeply intimate, almost a twisted romance, as he consumes them from the inside out.

In the end, this story offers no easy answers for its characters, though it does unfailingly offer them the support of their fellow humans.

Absolutely adored and highly recommended.