Many thanks to NetGalley, Katherine Arden and Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine for the ARC. ♡

KATHERINE ARDEN THE WRITER THAT YOU AREEEEEE! 10/10 read. I have tears in my eyes.

The Warm Hands of Ghosts is about a sister, Laura Iven, who is willing to do whatever it takes to find her brother, Freddie Iven. The plot was phenomenal and absolutely haunting in its description of war. I was already a big fan of Arden's writing from her previous works and this was only served to solidify my love for her storytelling. Fair warning this book goes into depth about the horrors of WW1, there is loneliness and grief as well as depictions or real events that took place during this time. Along with the horror you get the paranormal in the forms of ghosts that surprisingly fit the story so well!

You HAVE to read this book as soon as it comes out on February 13, 2024.

The Warm Hands of Ghosts, by Katherine Arden, is not just a ghost story. True, it is replete with evil, unearthly (and earthly) malice, blood, creepy old buildings, darkness and death wrapped in mystery. Ghosts are a recurring motif, as are deadly flowers, noxious gas, nasty weather and explosions. Symbols of the soul and death abound. All of the requisites for a good old-fashioned ghost story are there, but Arden uses them primarily for their background spookiness while setting her main focus on a malevolent, unrestrained evil that feeds off of human desires.

The plot, set in a most cataclysmic period in human history, the First World War, braids together the narratives of two main characters - Laura Ivens, a Croix de Guerre awardee for her extreme bravery while in service as a nurse in the war, now home in Halifax after being wounded, and her brother Freddie, an artist, now soldiering on the front lines in Belgium. As happened during the American Civil War, there is a surge of interest in the supernatural; soldiers openly discuss their encounters with ghosts of their fallen comrades; in North America and Europe séances and psychic mediums are highly sought after. Whether these experiences are PTSD hallucinations, are actually real, are merely entertainments, or are the chicanery of swindlers is unclear, but in actual fact, in 1897 there were over 8 million spiritualism followers in the U. S. and Europe.

Arden uses this ambiguous reality of ghosts to build mystery throughout the story, both in the readers' minds and in pragmatic, non-believer Laura's. Another, more organic mystery develops when Freddie stops responding to Laura's letters and a box of his belongings is delivered to Laura, but with no accompanying telegram about his demise. When an accidentally overheard séance involves a spirit who avers that Freddie is alive, Laura decides that she must return to the war and find him.

Thus begins a well-researched and carefully plotted tale of the supernatural. Arden very deftly juggles two different timelines, one for Laura and one for Freddie, building suspense as to when or if they will ever meet, while also painting layer after layer of the horrors of war and its effects on humans, to the point where sanity and madness are indistinguishable and evil is so omnipresent that it may come to be perceived as pleasant and desirable.

Unfortunately, the story doesn't emerge unscathed from the enormous undertaking Arden set for herself. When the plot gets moving and the confrontation with evil begins, the reader does experience pity for the very real plight of the characters, but because the over-long story lines are split between two different characters and their experiences at two different times, identification with either one, necessary to develop the fear essential to a ghost story, is limited. The reader's focus becomes the plot and the mystery between reality and hallucination, not the development and change within the character. This, in turn, diminishes the catharsis the dramatic tension of a ghost story demands from the reader. The Warm Hands of Ghosts is a story well worth reading, but with some grit on the part of the reader to persevere. The importance of the themes makes it worthwhile.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

The Warm Hands of Ghosts is an early contender for my favorite book of the year. It’s a tour de force. There’s a lot of plates spinning in this historical-gothic-ghost-horror-fantasy, and Arden manages them with the grace of a seasoned professional. The book has two parallel but offset timelines: the first beginning in January 1918, covers Laura, a heroic combat nurse who has come home from the front after suffering an injury. She receives her brother Freddie’s things, a typical indication that he is dead, but the letters from her nurse colleagues indicate that something else may be going on. Meanwhile, in November of 1917, Freddie wakes up alone in a dark pillbox with a German soldier. They band together to get out, and they form a bond. As they desperately try to get out of no man's land they meet a mysterious violinist who may be more than he seems. As Laura fights to find the truth about her brother, and Freddie fights to stay alive, the book charts their course across Belgium.
This is not the kind of book I usually like. It moves at the slow pace of history. It’s mostly about people’s feelings, and their relationship. It (and this is historically accurate, so it’s not a complaint) is far, far, bleaker than I usually like my fiction. And this book is unflinching. It is not for the faint of heart. It is full of mud and guts and body parts and death. So when I say that I loved this book, that means something. It is clear that Arden spent a long time thinking about this book and it shows. It is very finely crafted. The two timelines interleave in a way that does not feel jarring or irritating. There are some very, very, fine sentences. And the book is thinking deep thoughts about big themes, like “is the appropriate reaction to the end of the world despair or courage?” But it never becomes moralistic or overwrought. It’s going to keep me thinking about those big themes for a while now too.
I recommend this book to people who like gothic tragedies, have strong stomachs, and are ready to sit with some philosophical questions for a while.
I received an advance copy of this book in exchange for this honest review.

The Warm Hands of Ghosts

The writing is absolutely incredible and I still can’t get over just how good it is. I was easily transported into this world and it took no time at all to be swept away in it each time I picked the book back up.

This is a dark, hard read with plenty of descriptions of the horror of war. The fantasy element was interesting and kept we flipping pages.

The brother/sister relationship was beautiful and I love how strongly that bond shined through. There was a large cast of side characters and each was as intriguing as the last.

LGBTQ Rep
Content- fword, gory, death, darkness, horrors of war

A very powerful and moving story. I was fascinated by the prose and unable to tear myself away.
Many thanks to Random House and to Netgalley for providing me with a galley in exchange for my honest opinion.

As an avid Winternight fan (and I really do mean avid), you will not find that in The Warm Hands of Ghosts. But if you give this a chance, you will find a beautiful story that’s haunting and lovely in all the right ways. I think Arden is incredibly talented and I really enjoyed this chance to see her try her hand at a very different kind of historical fantasy.

The Warm Hands of Ghosts follows siblings Laura and Freddie Iven during WWI. Laura was a nurse at the front before she was sent home to Canada with an injury, where her parents subsequently die in the Halifax Explosion. Left with little else to cling to than news of her brother, Laura then hears of Freddie’s death in combat. However, the communications surrounding his death don’t quite make sense. Desperate for answers, Laura returns to Europe to search for news of Freddie, and learns that his disappearance might be tied to rumors of a mysterious hotel and a man who plays the fiddle, both of which may or may not exist. We also see the story from Freddie’s POV, in the events leading up to his disappearance. Freddie is trapped in an overturned pillbox with a German soldier named Hans Winter. Freddie and Winter form an alliance with only one goal in mind: survive.

In the beginning, I wasn’t sure on this one. It was a very slow start, and I’m typically not the biggest fan of wartime historical fiction. It admittedly took me a good while to get through the first 35% or so. But once I got hooked, I really was in it and my feelings changed quickly. Arden truly is meant for the historical fantasy genre, she has great ability to take real, historical settings and add something otherly, usually in a beautifully devastating way. I think a highlight of this book is the way she took the evil nature and the pain of WWI and gave it a physical manifestation, an eccentric fiddler offering dangerous deals to desperate men. It’s hard to say too much more about what I enjoyed without spoiling, but if you enjoy things Hotel California-adjacent, I think the imagery Arden has woven here will hit home.

The characterization of this book was also very strong. Laura has been absolutely put through the wringer, but still maintains her signature dry humor. She’s generally very logical and practical, but lets her heart get in the way when it comes to Freddie, the most important person to her. The rest of the cast was fully formed as well, I really enjoyed the details that were put into Freddie, Pim, Winter, Jones and the rest. It’s once again hard to say all I need to say here without spoiling, but just know these characters mean a lot to me.

As for my favorite part of the book, the last 20% hit me so very hard and I absolutely cried. I’ll be buying a finished copy just so I can read chapter 43 over and over again, because I’m going to be thinking about it for a long, long time.

While I definitely enjoyed my experience reading this book, I hold back from 5 stars because of the very slow pacing and I also felt there were a few loose threads that weren’t quite wrapped up well in my opinion. Overall though, a great read and I will always want to read more from Arden.

Thank you to Del Rey and NetGalley for a copy of the ebook in exchange for an honest review.

Pure perfection of a book—but I didn't expect anything else from Katherine Arden.

My old World and European History teacher used to tell us that the world was brought to the moment it is now because of WWI. When I think about that now, particularly in a 2024 lens, I'm reminded of how right she was. The first world war leading to the tensions that were the building blocks for WWII. The Romanov dynasty was eradicated, leaving the Soviet Union in its place. The Ottoman Empire fell due to revolution and scheming of the British, much to their colonizer excitement. The Spanish Influenza killing more people than the war itself. Without WWI the world would look extremely different. Everyone tends to gawk at the younger sibling of the two—WWII—because it has bigger events, but WWI truly set the stage for everything within the 20th century to 21st.

You can tell Arden does immense research for all of her projects. The PTSD of both Laura and Freddie in their respective war duties felt like reading a diary from a veteran or medical professional. Freddie's self doubt in himself and his actions made me extremely emotional. I could see some people finding his unwillingness to accept forgiveness or help to be annoying, but it only reinforces how genuine his trauma and pain are. I was crying so frequently throughout his scenes. Plenty of people in small ways will see themselves reflected in him, specifically when we've been the hardest on ourselves. Then, Laura's unwillingness to return to the war until she realizes she must to save her brother... UGH. Again, cue the tears! The sibling dynamic overall is the best damn part about this book, and now every time people ask me for a good sibling read, I'll recommend The Warm Hands of Ghosts.

Now the magical element to this book is much more nuanced and mysterious than Arden's Winternight trilogy. Faland is our antagonist to the story upon first glance, but I'd argue he's representative of the horrors of war. He only comes when pain and death arrive. He's drawn by the blood and terror. If my memory serves correctly, he confirms once about being a fallen angel aka Lucifer. I did some research and found that Faland may derive from the Latin word falx, meaning sickle, or falsus, meaning false. Whichever one may be Arden's reason—both words invoke this idea of death or Lucifer for this book. The sickle is essentially a shorter scythe, which we all known is a symbol of the Grim Reaper, and Faland is creating a false reality for his victims so that he can obtain their memories. He's deterring them from coming to terms with their traumas by manipulating them with his magical hotel. The Faland moment that I cannot help but recall the most is his admission that he cannot recall his own past: Heaven. He's always searching for what he feels is missing from his soul, his identity, but these human victims will never satiate his needs. He's doing the exact thing to them that he happened to him; they're merely distractions to him for a moment before the emptiness comes back.

A lot of times people say music is the way to one's soul. Arden definitely spearheaded this phrase because Faland's music truly does invoke one's inner soul, even one's inner music. The memories he takes from his victims ultimately becoming the music he plays is simultaneously one of the most beautiful yet horrific things I have read about. I interpreted this as Faland taking his victims' souls because their souls are not the same once their memories are gone. They would be mere shells of themselves. Another interpretation could be that people's trauma and pain starts to break away the individual's sense of self and soul. Faland is not just death but a representation of the internal cruetly we inflict upon ourselves, essentially disrupting—maybe even destroying—the inner music within us.

Lastly, I wanna talk about the romance.

Freddie and Winter truly brought me to my knees. The fact that two enemies come together after their shared trauma is such a greater message to leave readers with. Wars are not played by the big players but by the citizens of that country. Neither Winter nor Freddie had any issues with the other besides the fact that they were on opposite sides of a war. Their shared trauma and survival creates a bond deeper than near anything. It made sense that Freddie killed his fellow Canadian to save Winter because Winter was with him in the pillbox. They survived it together. Furthermore, their ultimate romance made complete sense. Their love was formed all the way back in the pillbox, and from Freddie cunningly saving Winter via the Allies to Winter's unwillingness to leave Freddie with Faland—these two warmed my heart. Again, I think their message says a lot.

The other romance is much more casual. It does not present itself very much throughout the story, but it's also a romance that doesn't even begin until the end: Laura and Stephen. Stephen's respect and care for Laura truly made me smile. Laura is so set on saving Freddie that she misses time and time again the actions Stephen is doing for her. She's says at one point early on that she has no interest in relationships, particularly after her experiences in the war, but to see her walls break and crumble with Stephen did make me happy. Love is always a healing salve for many when it comes to war, and I think only a surgeon/doctor could be the one for Laura. He appreciates her strength and intellect, and everything about that just makes me wish we could have had more time with them. Albeit, their final scene together of Stephen knocking on her door was a perfect end to this book. It's a reminder that life and people move forward; love does not stop.

Overall, this book was my last 5 star read of 2023. It took me so long to write this review because I had a million thoughts to unpack. I still think this review is probably a bit jumbled with my thoughts all over the place, but that just means I need to return to it again haha.

Thank you to Del Rey for the review copy. Arden will always be a favorite author of mine, so it means the world that I got to review this early.

There are a great many things I love my books to have: complex characters that resonate, beautiful writing, plots that keep me riveted, and oftentimes powerful themes that make me sit back, and think. The Warm Hands of Ghosts has this all in droves, and then add in a staggeringly complex antagonist (who I loved), the haunting and harrowing backdrop of the First World War, plus a connection between to characters that went beyond just love and some of the most impactful historically accurate events I’ve read. The cast of characters are all haunted by the war, by the people they could not save, the lives they took, their regrets and pain, love lost and the sweeping hand of the war itself. I in turn, will be thinking about this story for a long time to come.

Ghosts is at times a very heavy read, but if you’re anything like me, what gets dug up along the way amongst the miasma along the way is so very very worth it.

CHARACTERS
Split into a dual POV between Laura and Freddie, the two protagonists of this novel, we see both the narratives of a nurse and solider amongst the chaos of WW1. Set in 1917-1918 Europe in the Forbidden Zone, during the ‘battle of Passchendaele’, we follow both Laura and Freddie as they desperately seek each other - Laura believing that Freddie is dead and Freddie desperately seeking some sort of escape from the war itself.

Freddie’s character speaks heavily to the destruction of war on the mind, on the impact of soldiers asked to go over the top, into war, into war-torn lands that were once teeming with life. Trapped in an overturned pillbox, here is where Freddie meets German soldier Hans Winter, and here is where the trajectory of both men’s lives splits off and becomes something new. Arden writes two characters brought together in a way that is so wholly transformative that it alters their actions for the rest of the novel; their connection is deep, and something for both Freddie and Winter to cling to, with the sheer certainty that without each other, they would not have made it. With each other is how they survived the whole ordeal - from the pillbox onwards, through their time apart, and during the encounter with Faland (our complex antagonist, one of two in this book…)

Laura is also another character I loved; for some, it may be easy to read into her as being distant, even inaccessible, but her character is reversed out of necessity. She represses her emotions in order to cope, which is something I feel anyone who’s shut themselves down to cope will resonate with. She is strong throughout the novel, offering a determined and capable voice compared to the more ‘fever dream’ narrative that accompanies Freddie. I found her compelling, her humour dry, and her dedication to her brother inspiring.

But that’s not to say that there isn’t an impressive selection of side characters who bring as much dynamism to this novel as its main perspectives. Pim, or Penelope Shaw, was one of my favourite characters to read - she is a rebuttal to the propaganda that mothers would be happy and willing to sacrifice their sons to the war. She’s a character that reads as barely holding it together under the veneer of a polite smile, and I found her presence on the page a much-needed foil to Laura. Her arc was surprising and satisfying in equal measure, and spoke deeply to women subverting expectations at the time.

Faland was, incredible. He’s our complex antagonist, one of two in this novel - the second being the war itself. As one of the main supernatural forces in the novel he was simultaneously charming and manipulative, intriguing and frightening. There are so many details I loved with Faland, but most of all is his position as being deeply entwined with the war - hating and loving it all at once. His appetite for humanity clashed with his disdain for the indifference of war, and whether or not he provided a refuge for broken soldiers is up to interpretation. For me, I found him engaging and challenging, a lens through which many of the more philosophical questions of the novel were asked.

And Winter! And Jones! These were Freddie and Laura’s much-needed second halves. They offered an almost parallel storyline for the siblings, of people found in unexpected places and who offer that, something, to keep them both going. Winter was a sure presence for Freddie, and Jones offered Laura a much needed breath of fresh air. I loved them and what they brought to this novel.

PLOT/WORLD-BUILDING
This was a rich historical novel, with many of the events - large or small - directly inspired by real life occurrences during this time. Whether it’s stories of purple horses or ship explosions, the research and the level of detail adds to the heaviness, the weight of the novel as we progress; but it also adds a level of immersive reality that makes this story so rich.

The plot was simple: we follow a brother and sister trying to find each other in the war. But it’s so, so much more than that. As we are split between Laura’s desperate search to find her brother, and Freddie’s attempts to escape both the war and the agony of his own mind, we alternate between following Laura through the war-torn towns and lands in Europe and the unsettling, fever-dream like experiences of Freddie in Faland’s hotel. While the plot pushes forward, the narrative itself is deliberately disjointed, with much of Freddie’s story has time skips, as a result of his time with Faland and what he gives to Faland in order to escape the horror in his own mind and the ghosts that follow him. This also served to break up the story itself into snippets, chapters and encounters that furthered each perspective without us being too weighed down by the heaviness of each.

The parallels and subtleties of the plot were also so enjoyable - the direct parallels between Laura and Freddie’s ghosts, Laura haunted by someone she could not save and Freddie by someone who’s life he took, served as mirrors held up in their individual arcs and how they each handled their trauma. There were TONNES of details about Pim and Faland that I personally cannot wait to reread, to soak in the foreshadowing even more. Winter and Pim’s involvement was pivotal to the plot, each ‘side’ character bringing their own necessary actions that drove us closer to the resolution which making the story itself richer for them.

The main scene of conflict at the end of the novel wrapped up a little too quickly for me - I would have liked a touch more struggle between all our characters who’ve journeyed so far to find each other and reconnect than the final moments once it was clear how Freddie might be saved. The ending itself was a touch of hope in the darkness, a flash of light amongst so much heartache, that I cannot even bring myself to mind how objectively ‘tidy’ it might seem. How can we mind some small happinesses for characters who have struggled so much?

The Warm Hands of Ghosts is an intense, thinking book, with powerful themes of love and trauma, of the burden of war on families and individuals, it is a tale where even making deals with devils seems the lesser of two evils. It made me cry, it made me think. If it can be said that I ‘loved’ a book that was so filled with horrors, but also hope, then I do.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing for an e-arc of The Warm Hands of Ghosts!

This book was so intense and so emotional, being at its core about the effects of war on the people who are expected to fight in it and the love between a sister and brother.

Seeing the way that ordinary people deal with trauma and grief in different ways, from Laura’s witty humor and determination to just always keep working, to Freddie’s natural instinct to forget but choosing to live with the grief, to Pim… well just read and see Pim’s fate for yourself and prepare for heartbreak.

We got not one, but TWO lovely and sweet romantic relationships in this book, one starting with Freddie and Winter being bonded by their situation and the other being Laura and Jones, who understand and compliment each other’s personalities.

Laura and Pim’s friendship was so sweet too and I’m so sad for them.

The supernatural aspect of this story, between Laura learning to accept her mother’s ghost to Freddie battling his demons (aka Faland) just added another layer of complexity and perspective to this story and the development of the characters.

Go read this one!

I loved this author's other books, so I was really excited for this one. I know I'm in the minority, but I did not like this at all. The generous 2 star rating is just because her writing style is beautiful as always, I just hated the story.
There was no character development at all. I didn't connect with them, so I didn't care what happened. Based on all the high ratings, this book is obviously appealing to a lot of people, but it did not work for me. It deals with war, grief, death, ptsd, with paranormal twists.
I was bored and thought it was way too long. If you're looking for another Bear and the Nightingale, you will be disappointed.

God, Katherine Arden could sell me a post-it note with a smiley face on it & I would die & give it eleven stars. She didn’t have to write such a devastatingly tender magical war book with an afterword that made me outright sob BUT SHE DID. In this world there are people who pause their entire lives when Katherine Arden or Naomi Novik publish anything & if you are one of these people I have great news for you: this book SLAPS. Give it a preorder!

I’m always interested in the intersection of magic and trauma, and this book is a compelling contemporary reimagining of WWI through that lens. I am a poet and read Vera Brittain’s haunting memoir during my PhD & I now spend my life passionately lecturing undergrads about Wilfred Owen & Paul Fussell’s book “The Great War & Modern Memory,” so this book 100% had my number from the very beginning. I loved the story & I also loved Arden’s incredible essay that closes the book where she describes WWI’s “steampunk” aesthetic with regard to sci fi & Tolkien. KATHERINE I WOULD ENROLL IN THIS WHOLE DAMN LIT SEMINAR PLEASE SEND ME THE SYLLABUS.

Anyway, a million thanks to the publisher for letting me read & think about this dazzling, dark & stunning novel from one of my favorite writers.

In her author’s note for The Warm Hands of Ghosts, Katherine Arden writes that she struggled to get this story from idea to the page. For an author known for her magical, lyrical prose in the extraordinary Winternight Trilogy, having to sweat over every word must have been exhausting. Somehow, though, the laboring suits the brutal, surreal setting of her latest novel, which takes place in the final years of the Great War, following a decorated an injured Canadian nurse who returns to France after learning her brother has supposedly been killed in action. The circumstances of Freddie’s death are shrouded in mystery, and something seems not quite right, even before the trio of old fortune tellers who Laura cares for seemingly contact a dead soldier who claims Freddie has not died after all.

In truth, it took me about a third of The Warm Hands of Ghosts to really get into the story. It grabbed hold of me once the narrative shifted back to France and the strange circumstances around Freddie’s disappearance during the bloody push on Passchendaele Ridge begin to be revealed. Who exactly is the fiddler, and what strange power does he wield?

The scenes set among the shell craters-turned-mud-filled death traps of no man’s land and overrun hospitals are told with unflinching clarity. There’s no poetry in the apocalypse. But because it’s Arden, the world still holds something magical: Music is both a nightmare and testimony. The devil offering oblivion may be the kindest path.

Don’t come to The Warm Hands of Ghosts if you’re hoping for heroic wartime adventures or a sweeping, star-crossed romance. Instead, pick it up for the honest, gritty, human story told against the backdrop of one of the world’s darkest hours. Good things can grow in rotten earth.

⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ 💫 4.5 stars rounded down

Thanks to NetGalley and Random House – Ballantine for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This book might have converted me to like historical fiction, which is no small feat.

I thought the fantastical elements would be a lot more pronounced but its actually rather light on it. That is the strong suit of "The Warm Hands of Ghosts".

The actual horrors of WWI are not altered just included with these fantastical elements that elevate the reality.

The writing here is also beautiful but easy to read. I was afraid that this book would be hard to get through but I eased through the prose.

And just thinking about it, there's not much that I have to critique about this book. There was never a moment where I felt it got off track or included unnecessary information.

It's a solid read and earned a definite recommendation from me.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine, Del Rey for this ARC.

I really enjoyed this book. World War I sometimes gets overshadowed by its successor, so having read a glut of recent books set in WWII time, this is welcome reprieve. If "welcome" is the word to use here. It is a pretty bleak book, but so worth the read. The characters feel real, the otherworldly elements don't feel that otherworldly at all. So even if you aren't a fantasy reader, the supernatural elements serve as a metaphor more than anything else.

Faland=Voland, but I don't think that was meant to be hidden from the reader, even upon the first meeting.

Lastly, I've read first 2 books of the Winternight trilogy, and this book is a much more mature read than the trilogy was, in the matter of topic, character building, and overall plot. And imho, a superior book!

The Warm Hands of Ghosts
By Katherine Arden
4/5⭐️

-historical fiction
-strong sibling relationship
-supernatural
-magical realism
-WWI setting
-dual POV/timelines

This is a gripping story on the horrors of war and what you will go through for a loved one. I appreciated the characters and how driven Laura was to find her bother. I did find the beginning to be a little slow and then it picked up for me, which is why I dropped a star.

If you like historical fiction, a touch of magical realism, and a story of siblings who will do anything for each other, try this book out!

Thank you NetGalley and Random House for the ARC in exchange for a honest review.

This was an achingly beautiful story of how war can change a person to the point of no return. And what I mean by this is that Ghosts did a phenomenal job of depicting the horrors that came with WWI and how the survivors tried to continue living despite maybe not wanting to. 💔

The book follows a pair of siblings as they try to find their way in the ending year of WWI. Laura is a woman traumatized by her recent past in Halifax that learns that her brother has mysteriously died. She was practical and pragmatic, really keeping a level head throughout her story, even when she felt like her sanity was slowly disintegrating. Her brother, Freddie, finds himself locked in a dark pillbox with an enemy soldier, but working with him in order to escape. His POV was the most heart wrenching as he slowly learns to trust Winter. His relationship and desire to save Winter was so sweet and their ending was just *chef’s kiss* 😚

Faland as a character I thought was really interesting. He comes off as a tragic figure, but his need to feed off of others emotions reminds me classic deeds with devils plots. Pim was so incredibly interesting that her ending left me speechless on an overnight flight. I don’t think I’ve been this shocked by a character plot twist since El-Arifi’s Battle Drum. 🎻

In general, this was a harrowing story filled with mystery and historical settings. This should definitely be on lists of fans of Carlos Ruiz Záfon. A fair warning to prospective readers: it is gruesome the depictions of war. Don’t go into this if you’re not comfortable with graphic depictions of human suffering and gore. Also, this should be on people’s radar for just WWI history. ⚔️

Thank you goes out to Del Rey Books and NetGalley for accepting my request to read in exchange for an honest review, and to Katherine Arden for writing an incredible story about the tragedies of WWI in such a harrowingly beautiful way. 💛

Overall: 4.75/5 ⭐️

Thank you to Del Rey for sending me an advance copy of the book!

As we saw this with the Winternight Trilogy, Katherine Arden has a talent for being meticulous in her research of a subject and weaving it seamlessly into a story. Though the subject matter couldn’t be more different, The Warm Hands of Ghosts still reflects this same talent.

At its core, this is a story about the brutality of war and the loss of innocence, and finding a way forward when it seems all hope is lost. The true villain of this book is war itself. After all, how do you create a villain when nothing you can dream up would be worse than what soldiers experienced during this time? The answer is: you don’t. You lean into the natural horror and tweak things just a bit to include a character like Faland, the violin playing ghost of a man intent on taking the souls of broken soldiers. I thought it was exceptionally harrowing to have the villain be something that represents the dreadfulness of war and slowly chips away at your humanity and your very own sense of self.

The Winternight Trilogy is known for being incredibly atmospheric, and the same can be said for The Warm Hands of Ghosts. It just so happens that this atmosphere is nightmarish and bleak. That’s not a negative thing in regards to the book, though. It was imperative to convey just how dire this situation was, and Arden did an excellent job at doing that. Yet even so, the book still leaves you with a thread of hope and the promise of a future.

Overall, I really liked this book and I recommend it, but expectations should be adjusted. I think this is being billed as an adult fantasy, and I would not categorize it as that. This is historical fiction with just a hint of the supernatural, so don’t go in expecting heavy fantasy elements.

I appreciate that Arden went in a wildly different direction in her follow up to Winternight. Also, as a history major, I just found the historical setting really interesting, particularly the Halifax explosion. It sent me down a Wikipedia rabbit hole because I’m a nerd who enjoys learning new things.

I love WWI stories. They are not as many as those set in WWII, but they resonate more with me. Having visited battlefields and memorials throughout France and Belgium, this book hit hard.

It's realistic, and slow, and gritty, and it shows you the horrors of war in zoomed-in detail. Slowly, a magical thread in woven through the first half of the book, creeping around the plot until neither reader nor characters can ignore it any longer. And then the story really blooms.

Unfortunately I did not finish this book. I just couldn't connect with the characters or the story. I'm sure many will enjoy this book but I am just not the right audience for it.
Thank you NetGalley, Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine and the author for the opportunity to check out this book.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC. I’m a huge fan of Katherine Arden’s Winternight Trilogy and was really looking forward to The Warm Hands of Ghosts. This had so many positive elements for me: strong sibling relationship, historical fiction, the supernatural. It’s a strong story full of emotion but at some points the writing fell a little flat for me. Overall, 3.5/5 — the author’s note gave me more appreciation for the story as a whole.