2/13 HAPPY PUBLICATION DAY!!

"A hand brushed hers. Warm fingers, a little rough with glass. Ghosts have warm hands. She didn't open her eyes. She didn't dare. Looking would burst her fragile soap-bubble of belief. She didn't look even when that familiar hand wound its fingers with hers, and pulled her forward."

WHAT AN ETHEREAL APOCALYPTIC PIECE OF WWI HISTORICAL FANTASY!

Centering on the experiences of WWI, "The Warm Hands of Ghosts" focuses attention on the other-worldness of fighting in the Forbidden Zone, the trenches, the pillboxes, and hospitals. We meet an injured combat nurse named Laura Iven, in Halifax, who has been discharged but wants to return to Flanders, Belgium to find her missing brother, Freddie. Though she has received his war items in a box, Laura still believes he is alive. In addition, Laura has just lost her parents, along with her childhood home, to a mysterious explosion on the water. In the non-linear timeline, we also experience Freddie's POV and his experience of being trapped in a pillbox with a German soldier named Winter. Laura returns to Belgium, with friends Pim and Mary, to resume their nursing duties in Flanders, but on the way to the hospital, their car explodes and they end up walking to a mysterious hotel. A man named Faland runs the hotel in the middle of a wasteland, playing his ethereal violin every night for soldiers. Several characters throughout the story experience Faland's haunting music drawing them. Through pneumonia, gruesome injuries, hospital trauma, explosions, and battle stories, those serving in this war experience several mysterious encounters with helpful ghosts. The questions throughout the book haunt the reader. Who is Faland? Are the characters hallucinating? Are these ghosts angels?

WOW. This book has a beautiful and haunting originality. Not only did I enjoy learning more about WWI, I was enlightened in knowing that many fighting in this war actually experienced encounters with people that seemed to come from unexplained places to save or help in darkest times. The mystery in this writing captivated me completely. Katherine Arden did extensive research in preparation for this book, highlighting the apocalyptic landscapes and experiences that left soldiers in severe trauma. She states, "The Great War's cultural influence was filtered through fantasy." And because America entered this war so late, it does not get the attention it deserves. This book is one that appeals to me in every way, and it got better and better as I read.

Thank you Netgalley, Katherine Arden, and Random House - Ballantine for the privilege of reading this eARC in exchange for my honest, original review.

The review can be seen in full at. https://onereadingnurse.com/2024/02/13/the-warm-hands-of-ghosts-by-katherine-arden-arc-review/

And a blurb at https://www.instagram.com/p/C3S2wujOI6F/

The full text is:

I feel particularly blessed by Del Rey recently as this is the second major title they’ve let me review recently! The Winternight Trilogy is one of my favorite fantasy series, so when I learned Katherine Arden was coming out with a historical fiction with a speculative twist (but I call it Magical Realism), the book bounced to the top of my anticipated reads for the year.

Arden explores combat nursing and trauma in Flanders Fields as the characters learn the reality that one way or another they are going to lose their souls. *Shudders* Let’s look at the book facts and I’ll share my thoughts.

....break for book data...

WWI fiction is probably the farthest genre possible from my normal reading. I do love reading about nurses and speculative fiction/magical realism, but my real draw to The Warm Hands of Ghosts was the author. Can she go from writing an amazing fantasy trilogy to delivering a historical fiction of equal magnitude?

Oh, yes she can.

Arden has 100% solidified herself as an auto-buy author for me.

It takes a deft hand to capture the trauma and black humor of war, whether it’s soldiers or combat nurses or anyone else on the front lines. These characters are traumatized, shell shocked, injured, damaged in many ways, and still cling to whatever small kernel of heart is keeping them human.

I love Laura. She seems like the perfect combination of nursing practicality, older sister, wit, and survivalist. I’ve got no link to Freddie and the less you know the better but believe me that you’ll be emotionally bleeding for him.

I didn’t really know that much about Flanders Fields but reading about the mud and drowned pillboxes and utter devastation of it all was kind of terrible. It’s interesting to read about the time before America got involved and we are focusing on Canadian and German soldiers for the most part. We were about to start getting involved and some officers had come over but the troops weren’t on the ground yet as this book started. 

What I probably loved most though was the speculative element. The less you know the better but the central question revolves around the fact that the soldiers are selling their souls one way or another, and is one way better than another? Who or what is this folk story violinist that seems to appear peripherally to the battlefield, and why does he drive men crazy?

And of course, can Laura find Freddie before it’s too late?

There’s a lot going on in this book and I’ll definitely be purchasing a copy so that I can spend more time in the future with these pioneering women and haunting images!

Thanks for checking out my early book review of The Warm Hands of Ghosts by Katherine Arden. I received a free early digital copy via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review and as always, all options are my own ♥️

Here is my feedback for the warm hands of ghosts! Thank you so much for letting me read this story early! I am truly appreciative and grateful!

Katherine Arden is a master of historical fantasy, and weaves together the horrors of war with the fantastical elements of Faland and his hotel and the ghosts that follow the characters beautifully, making both characters and readers wonder what’s real, what’s imagined and what's madness. 

The story is heartbreaking and haunting, following a soldier trapped behind enemy lines and his sister, a battlefield nurse who has lost everything, and is desperate to understand the mystery of her brother's disappearance. It's a story about grief and loss and love and what, exactly, it means for the world to end. This is one of those books that I put down and sob when I finished. I'll be thinking about this book for a very long time. 

The Warm Hands of Ghosts is very different from her Winternight Trilogy, but I love it just as much. I think fans of The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue and people who liked Addie but wanted for more action will love this book.

Thank you to NetGalley & Random House Publishing for the e-arc.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for allowing me to preview The Warm Hands of Ghosts by Katherine Arden. Based on my love for Arden's Winternight trilogy, I requested this book as soon as I heard it was coming out soon.

Like that series, The Warm Hands of Ghosts is beautiful, brutal, so very human. I don't read many books that take place during World War I, and this book reminded me why. It's more terrifying and horrible than I want to imagine. Somehow Arden manages to weave hope and love into the inhumanity of war while also vividly depicting the horror. I'm not going to lie; this was hard to read at times. The trauma is palpable and inescapable. However, the beauty in the writing and in the characterizations made me love it.

4.45!

“We were born together, we died together. I cannot live without you.”

Happy release day to this gem of a book!!

I had so much fun with this book because honestly it had History, Magic, Realism and Resilience. It had me in awe because the way it just effortlessly intertwines historical events with elements of fantasy with a spellbinding and immersive narrative. Katherine Arden just blew me away with this one, I had already heard the best things about her Bear and the Nightingale trilogy so you can understand why I already had pretty high expectations, despite its different setting and its safe to say that I was satisfied with how it went because she so easily crafted a tale of the enduring bonds of family, love, friendship and loss + the way it took into account the power of love, courage, and hope in the face of adversity. This book also showed the range of Arden's writing style.

Katherine Arden enhanced the gritty realism of war and its consequences whilst also dusting this book with light magical elements to keep a balance and to keep us more intrigued. I would also say that her worldbuilding in this one was also top notch because there was this sense of mystery and wonder which complemented the historical setting so much and it was also another reason why I was so hooked with it.

The warm hands of ghost follow two point of views one of Laura Iven a combat nurse, who after news of her brothers disappearance from the front lines takes it upon herself to go back and find answers and the other of Freddie Iven who finds solace in the must unlikely place, a dark pillbox with no way out and trapped with his enemy, a German soldier Hans winter. Laura's POV was set in the year 1918 whereas Freddie's was in 1917-18. Now what I enjoyed the most about these character was the determination and the ambition that they had and on top of all that, the relationship between the two siblings and the complexities of their bond and how their lives are irrevocably altered by the events of a gruesome war.

I personally enjoyed Freddie's point of views more because they were just more engaging for me and had me hooked because of the setting and the sense of dread and mystery, with how its all going to go down. For his part, I loved how she turned the animosity between Freddie and Winter into a friendly bond which developed into something so deep, vast and strong that completely had me rooting for them. There was not much romance in this one besides the tension between Freddie and Winter + Laura and Jones, nothing happens until the very last chapters.

As for the plot, I can no say anything other than the things that i have mentioned above as they would be a spoiler and I would like you all to have the same experience that I had.

Also, keep in mind that it tackles dark themes in the book, from the suffocating dread of claustrophobia to the devastating impact of grief and PTSD, Through Laura and Freddie's journeys, this book shed's light on the psychological scars left by war, drawing a haunting portrait of the human cost of conflict.

Overall, I enjoyed it a lot and savored every minute of it and would most definitely recommend!

*Thank you for NetGalley and Random House Publishing- Ballantine for giving me an E-arc in exchange for an honest review*

Thanks to NetGalley for providing an eARC of this book.
4.75 out of 5 stars

Katherine Arden. I read The Bear and the Nightingale and absolutely adored it. I loved it so much I read the next two books in the series, and bought the first three installments of Small Spaces, although I have yet to read them.

I had forgotten how...smooth Arden's writing is. So smooth you don't feel yourself falling into the story and becoming oblivious to everything else. More than once I tried to get some reading in during my busy days, only to find that I had blown through homework time.

But while her previous books were misty tales on the fairy side, this story devastates your heart, bringing war bleeding through the words. It follows Laura, a nurse who has already seen enough of the war, and her brother, Freddie, on two separate timelines. She is searching for him, he is searching for a way out of being essentially buried alive with an enemy soldier.

The humanity written into Freddie and Hans' situation is fathomless, and shows a care and compassion that we are often too busy to notice or engage in on a regular basis, much less in the time of war.

And Laura's love for her brother and insistence on answers carries her through not only the present, but the past as well.

Oh so magical but oh so heartbreaking, this is a beautiful tale. You can tell that there was a lot of time and research put into this book. I believe this may be my favorite Arden book yet.

This historical novel, imbued with a speculative element, narrates the somber Gothic tale of a combat nurse who embarks on a quest to find her brother. His death in the trenches is shrouded in mystery and ominous indications, This is a exquisitely crafted and atmospheric work of fiction from one of my favorite authors.

A delicious historical fantasy with a fun speculative element. The book did remind me that I actually dont really enjoy historical novels, BUT it was a great story that kept my interest throughout.

In her newest novel, The Warm Hands of Ghost, Katherine Arden has crafted a brilliantly haunting work of WWI historical fiction and thrown in more than a dash of the supernatural. This is a story of siblings – Laura, an injured combat nurse returns to the battlefront in search of her missing brother, Freddie; Laura’s expedition will require her to wade through the senseless violence of war and grapple with ghosts (both literal and figurative).

The Warm Hands of Ghosts takes some time to really get moving in terms of plot, but it’s well worth the wait because Arden’s characters are ::chef’s kiss:: Laura Ivens is fiercely loyal, competent as hell, and hard as nails on the outside, but quietly kind and compassionate. Laura reminded me a lot of some of my favorite characters – Puck Connelly from Stiefvater’s Scorpio Races and Alex Stern from Bardugo’s Ninth House to name a few. I also appreciated that Laura is supported by two strong women - for all that wartime experience tend to feature men (and this book does include chapters from the POV of Freddie), Laura and her compatriot’s narrative really stole the show.

Arden also does a terrific job of giving the reader an unflinching look at the Great War. I was especially fascinated by Arden’s focus on the harsh juxtapositions presented by modern inventions and attitudes colliding with the old world. In Arden’s phenomenal author’s note, she describes this as ‘steampunk’ and writes, “The years of World War I were as close to a moment of historical science fiction as we will ever get: an indescribable mashup of changing mores and technologies. And its participants, like time travelers, were people of one era flung without warning into another.” (Quick tangent - It was through this author's note that I learned WWI was the catalyst for Tolkein's Lord of the Rings?!)

The Warm Hands of Ghost delivered an emotional gut punch and left me asking for more damage. It also convinced me to reevaluate the importance of WWI to western thought and art. I know so many of my friends are going to love this one as well. Highly recommend!

Thank you to Del Rey Books and NetGalley for the ARC! This book is out today.

Wonderfully heart wrenching, and magically romantic all at once, Arden's The Warm Hands of Ghosts is an inventive look at The Great War, World War I. I'm not usually one for historical fiction, but I'm a big fan of The Winternight Trilogy by Arden so I had to give this a try. Throw in a fae-like fiddler and some supernatural intervention and impossible wartime romance and I was hooked!

This book follows Laura, a Canadian combat nurse in WWI, and her brother Freddie, a soldier, in parallel points of view from the winter of 1917 to the spring of 1918. From the beginning, I was drawn to Laura's story and the way she approached her place in this war. She was injured and sent home, but returned when she received her brothers jacket and both dog tags from Flanders field. Something wasn't right and she needed to find the truth.

Freddie was trapped in an overturned pillbox with an enemy soldier, desperate to survive. They miraculously make it out and get on another to safety through secrecy and deciet. Their paths slowly begin to cross in real time, and their stories unfold as one in both tragedy and hope.

Through war, death, destruction, and hopelessness at returning to civilian life, the promise of a future holds strong. The hope for happiness in this war torn world is a powerful thing, and Freddie and Laura both seem to find it despite all of their trauma.

Thank you to @NetGalley for the advanced copy!

I really like Katherine Arden’s writing and I loved The Winternight Trilogy. This one is more historical fiction infused with fantastical horror stemming from the traumas of war. I don’t think most historical fiction makes me think as much as this one did and there is
a lot of symbolism that can be drawn from the story.

I often struggle with magical realism in stories because I find the explanation for the magic to be lacking but I think Arden was extremely smart to use the trauma of war with the sickness or medical injuries to weave the fantastical elements into this book as a way to explain the story.

I also think the WW1 setting worked great for the story and that the authors note really highlighted a lot of WW1 that tends to be glazed over today but I also wondered how/if this story would have fit within the Vietnam war because of US politics and the anti-war momentum of the time.

This book made me think a bit more about how the military responded to desertion and I learned that it is still law today that desertion during war can be punished by death.

Overall, I enjoyed this one! I don’t think this one is as amazing as The Winternight trilogy, but there was so much that I liked and I will continue to read anything Katherine Arden writes. This one releases tomorrow 2/13/2024!

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for providing this eARC.

The Warm Hands of Ghosts is a standalone historical fantasy set against the backdrop of World War 1, in which a former army nurse heads back to the front in search of answers about the death of her soldier brother.

This book was incredibly different in tone and voice from what I went in expecting of a Katherine Arden novel, and I loved every bit of it. Though different from my expectations, I felt like the writing really highlighted the odd, liminal feeling of so much of the novel's events. There was so much here that dealt with a dark and dissonant time to be a human, with the rapid development of technology in direct opposition with the brutal and widespread deaths that occurred on a daily basis.

I did feel like in some ways I was held at more of an arm's length from the characters than I typically would prefer, however in this case it didn't bother me as much as it normally would. I still felt like I learned just enough of the characters to be invested in their arcs, without the overall atmosphere of the story being bogged down by too much character development.

In all, though it was incredibly different than what I expected, I thoroughly enjoyed this read, and it really solidified for me how talented a writer Katherine Arden is. I absolutely look forward to whatever she does next.

The Warm Hands of Ghosts
x Katherine Arden
Pub Date: 2/13/24

This is my first Katherine Arden novel, and it's a mashup of historical war fiction with a supernatural flair.
You're taken through the dust filled warzone with our main characters, Laura, Freddie, and Hans, as they each are searching for something they've lost.
Along the way, trouble lurks and behind enemy lines takes on a whole new meaning. Lines become blurred between friend/foe and the most surprising of characters has a backbone of steel.
The sprinkle of romance was what I was hoping for, and the author didn't overwhelm us with it...staying true to the structure of the story.

Thank you, NetGalley and Katherine Arden, for this suprising arc!

I really wanted to love this book. I came back to it again and again hoping it would catch on, but it just wasn’t keeping my interest.
Laura is a hard character to like. I kept waiting and waiting for the paranormal aspect to show up and when it did it wasn’t at all what I was hoping for.
I would like to give this book another chance but at this point it’s a DNF at 44%
.
Thank you for the opportunity to read and review this book.

"This is a good place and a good year for monsters."

This is a story that takes the first world war and emphasizes everything about it - the wounds, the specific horrors of trench warfare, and the defiantly deep bonds that can grow between humans who meet on opposite sides of a battlefield.

As the quote above, delivered gravely by a Belgian brothel Madame to Laura, expresses, the concept of dark things beyond our comprehension taking advantage, influencing, or even causing terrible events in history is easy enough to believe. Tragic events in history were preceded by strange harbingers seen by many, astrology is full of patterns to unfortunate periods in human society, mediums' warnings go unheeded.

Katherine Arden's beautiful writing channels these nebulous concepts, adds a hint of trickster fairytale, and stirs in some analysis of human nature to create a unique piece of historical fiction with paranormal aspects examining the first World War. Even the beginning was singular, the story starting in the aftermath of the tragic Halifax explosion and on the opposite side of the Atlantic from most of the war.

I found this a real gem of a book, the setting well chosen, as the supernatural elements are plausible yet the story is firmly, descriptively grounded in the muddy horrors of trench warfare and profound loss. The ending is bittersweet, with both tender moments and sorrow, just as the end of wars are. And even side characters, like the brusque, pragmatic American Doctor Jones, were oddly charming and had me invested. The book is closer to three hundred pages than four, but feels like a full-blooded war story.

Finally, Arden's heartfelt, philosophical author note at the end almost had me more choked up than the story. She is such a great writer. This is my first favorite book of 2024; full five stars.

Rating: 2.5 stars. I like where this book went, the ending is satisfying, but I do feel the setup could've been executed better. Laura feels rather impersonal as a protagonist, key side characters are dumped on us without taking time to invest us in them, and the exposition was a bit clunky, hence a slow start. The visceral and emotional urgency is also missing from Laura's POV, which made reading her chapters tedious as if I was watching a distant war documentary.

Freddie should've been protagonist with Laura as a secondary protagonist, not vice versa.

Furthermore, the philosophizing could've been truly excellent, but even that landed shallow as I felt little connection to Laura. For how compelling her experiences were and are, Laura feels strangely stymied in her vulnerability since it feels like she's constantly brushing off human emotions in an unrealistic and unrelatable way as though she's operating on auto-pilot. She lacks in character aside from the author constantly reminding us just how accomplished and war-weary she is, hence resulting in Laura feeling like a standard paper cut-out of a war heroine.

I love subtly written reserved characters, but Laura was reserved to the point that she fell flat.

That said, I do like how the story ends. I've taken issue with Katherine Arden rushing her finales in the past, but here she takes time to neatly wrap up moral takeaways, re-establish bonds between characters, and overall conclude on a lovely, bittersweet note. There are some romances and plot twists that could've been fleshed out better, but the ending did move me in concept. I simply wish Laura's character arc hadn't been so stagnant because I found little investment in her and side characters related to her, which took away much of the impact at the end.

Would I recommend this book? Maybe. Even though the setup of our heroine failed to grip me, I found the secondary protagonist of Freddie to be emotionally compelling from the start (I immediately teared up in his introductory chapter), and the presence of the villain contributed to a mysterious undertone that was both intriguing and fable-like, which contributed to a haunting tone overall.

**Long story short**
- Laura is emotionally distant as a protagonist, but Freddie is compelling
- Intriguing mystery, tantalizing atmosphere
- Romances and plot twists escalated too fast
- But ending is relatively satisfying

This is definitely a different writing style than Arden’s other series, and when I first started reading it caught me off guard a bit. Once I got into the story, I got hooked.

After a slow start, I was invested in these characters, in the mythical club and man that ran it, and the war itself.

This book is SO interesting!

Fair warning, if you are expecting an escapist and etherial fantasy a la The Winternight Trilogy I suggest you let that go now! I love Ardens previous books and definitely felt compelled to pick up The Warm Hands of Ghosts because of that.. it was in the author letter I received with my ARC that I realized I needed to set aside my expectations for this book and allow this story to sweep me away to wherever it would take me. I'm glad I did because I found a very enjoyable and heart wrenching story written by an author with stunning story crafting and beautiful prose!

During the Great War, a combat nurse searches for her brother, believed dead in the trenches despite eerie signs that suggest otherwise!

Y'all know a good ghost story is one of my FAVORITE subgenera's and this book absolutely delivers when it comes to the eerie and often otherworldly feel.

Laura Iven, a revered field nurse during WWI, was wounded and discharged from the medical corps, leaving behind a brother still fighting in Flanders. Now home in Halifax, Canada, she receives word of Freddie’s death in combat, along with his personal effects—but something doesn’t make sense. Determined to uncover the truth, Laura returns to Belgium as a volunteer at a private hospital. Soon after arriving, she hears whispers about haunted trenches, and a strange hotelier whose wine gives soldiers the gift of oblivion. Could Freddie have escaped the battlefield, only to fall prey to something—or someone—else?

November 1917. Freddie Iven awakens after an explosion to find himself trapped in an overturned pillbox with a wounded enemy soldier, a German by the name of Hans Winter. Against all odds, the two men form an alliance and succeed in clawing their way out. Unable to bear the thought of returning to the killing fields, especially on opposite sides, they take refuge with a mysterious man who seems to have the power to make the hellscape of the trenches disappear.

As shells rain down on Flanders, and ghosts move among those yet living, Laura’s and Freddie’s deepest traumas are reawakened. Now they must decide whether their world is worth salvaging—or better left behind entirely.

I love books that teach me, push me, and force me to grow alongside these characters. I learned of Flanders Fields in Belgium, the site of major battles during the First World War where millions of soldiers from many countries were either wounded, killed, or missing in action. Setting the story against this backdrop lent deeply to the feelings of ghosts all around, wandering and mixing with the living. Ardens writing transports you, leaving you feeling the weight of war, the horrors and death all around you. This book left me pondering broken systems, healing, guidance (both seen and unseen), darkness in all its forms, and so much hope. Although written about WWI its startling to compare to 2024 and to still see similarities and hurts to this day.

all in all this story was moving, thought provoking, and one that I can see myself revisiting and gaining something different from it each time. This book won't be fore everyone, but I truly believe that it will find its audience! If you like historical fiction fantasy with a mix of new and old, this might be fore you!

as a note: I also had the chance to immersive read this book with the audio thanks to PRH audio and I must say, the performance of this story was fantastic! I was completely swept away by the dual narration and highly recommend listening to this if audiobooks are your jam! thank you PRH audio for the ALC!

major content warnings for this book. Arden did an amazing job researching and learning about the horrors of this time and it shows! in this you'll find: WWI, descriptive imagery of war, Halifax Harbor explosion, mentions of chemical gassing, death, murder, gun violence, talk of suicide and suicide ideation, nightmares, crowd crush scene, hospital settings during war time and all that implies, claustrophobia, captivity, gore, violence, blood, and more that i'm sure i'm missing!

Laura Iven, a field nurse during WWI, was wounded, discharged, and sent home to Halifax, Canada. She is stunned when news arrives that her brother Freddie, a soldier in the Canadian Army, is missing and presumed dead. As she touches his bloody jacket and ID tags, she can't believe what she sees and reads to be true.
Despite struggling with a painful leg injury, Laura decides to return to Flanders, Belgium as a volunteer at a private hospital. She's determined to discover the truth of what happened to Freddie, in the hopes that he's still alive.
Engaging and utterly captivating! Katherine Arden is truly a master of her craft.

*Special thanks to NetGalley and Random House for this e-arc.*