Haunting, desperation, yearning, and beautifully written.

Katherine Arden is a wonderful storyteller.
A novel about a injured woman on a quest to find her dead brother that she suspected isn’t dead. And a brother who struggles to survive a war and the demon who wants to consume is soul.

Mesmerizingly written, the scenic and tone of the setting can be vividly painted thru Arden’s rich metaphors and contrast. Her strong language of magic can be felt in the pages of this book. The ghost and the haunting jest of a man who present salvation but is the anthesis of it.

I love that Arden presents romance not thru blatant actions but small gestures. A glance. A promise. And ultimately a debt called in.

Three loves in the end. One a tragedy. One being healed. And another blossoming.

Definitely a great story to read!

In the author's note, Katherine Arden calls the time period of WWI "darkly surreal" and I must agree, especially considering the care and knowledge the author put into this recreation of a time that is less understood by many than, of course, WWII.

A brother and a sister separated by this war. Laura is in Nova Scotia when a ship explodes, killing many, including her parents and destroying her home. Soon after, she receives a box of her brothers belongings, including his jacket and tags, a note saying that Freddie is missing and presumed dead. After some strange occurrences, Laura travels to France with a few friends to once again take up the mantel of the nurse and search for her brother.

Freddie, meanwhile, finds himself trapped and only survives with the help of a soldier from the enemy's side. To save this person, he sacrifices himself, but not in the way you may think. Will Laura find him? And, what will she risk in the process?

I have feelings!!!!! Romantic, devastating.. . This book is not just "one of my favorites"... this has to be the best book I have read in quite some time. I can not wrap my head around the author's ability to in this one book, break my heart, and then completely rebuild it. The attention to every single harmful effect of war on all different people juxtaposed with a touch of magical realism that scorched me completely... this is absolutely brilliant. I'm honestly speechless, and I know I'm going to now be searching for the next book that hits this hard, this deeply and yet has me holding onto it for dear life.

Out February 13, 2024!

Thank you, Netgalley and Publisher, for this Arc!

I enjoyed reading the author's previous trilogy. However, I stopped reading this title fairly early on due to the seance that was taking place.

Thank you to NetGalley for the chance to preview this book.

I really loved this! It was a great historical fiction with a little bit of added fantasy spookiness with the ghosts and the character Faland. I enjoyed the dual timeline and how it all comes together. The ending I definitely did not see coming but it made perfect sense all at the same time. Those twists are always a good surprise!

I fell in love with Arden's storytelling with the Winternight series so I was super excited to read this new one. Very different from the Winternight world but still steeped in history and complex characters who you can't help but love. My favorite characters were Freddie and Winter especially when they were together. I thought the pacing lagged a little in the second quarter but once it picked up at the halfway point I couldn't put it down. Finished it in a day!

If you are expecting a similar escapist floaty feeling kind of read ala the <i>Winternight</i> trilogy, be warned, you won’t find it here. Instead this was heavy, grounded, both by the realities and horrors (which sometimes feel like UNrealities) of war and loss. And the writing felt very reflective of that. Almost stark instead of carrying one off into the imagined world above. Again, grounded feels like a good word for it. But, notably, not weighed down by it, either.

The entwined timelines of this story carry us through the time of The Great War, each lead by an Iven sibling, Laura, a nurse, honourably discharged back in Nova Scotia to recuperate after her hospital was bombed, and Freddie, a soldier, months before, where we see him become as Laura knows him to be in her present/his future : missing, presumed dead. We see what happens in the months before she’s notified and it’s the uncertainty of his fate that sends her back to the front. Running from the ghosts that haunt her at home to face the ghosts she left behind in the hopes her brother isn’t counted among them.

<i>Armageddon was a fire in the harbour, a box delivered on a cold day. It wasn’t one great event, but ten million tiny ones that you faced all alone.</i>

So much of this is, little surprise considering the title, about what haunt us. Choices and chances, sacrifices and desires, and literal losses, too. Memories and moments and how it all comes together to make us who we are. It can be frightening and fantastical to face those things. Much like it’s frightening and fantastical for the characters standing at death’s door, inches from a war that cares only for the whole and not the individual, as sinister forces both large and small dog their steps.

<i>There’s no man’s will stronger than the war.</i>

Arden condensed so much history and fact into this novel and it’s heartbreaking and horrible in its realness. I learned a lot from the perspectives included, particularly Laura and her nurse and doctor counterparts, but equally having Pim, Laura’s gently reared widowed friend, along for the ride provided a contrast of the Victorian ideals and manners that were fading away in the face of the realities of this new modern and war-filled age; the blood and the despair and fickle fate that could kill one son, one brother, one loved one, and leave another alive. It’s through Pim that we experience another dose of contradiction as she sis seated next to high ranking army personnel having luxury meals and abiding by societal custom just a stone’s throw away from the wounded and dying, laid up in makeshift hospitals housed in abandoned buildings, who had been sent to the front to survive on rations and suffer until the end. Realities and unrealities.

<i>Men stripped the war of emotions as best they could. They didn’t think of what it all meant. They did what they had to, then packed their memories away and sat on them.</i>

Even Freddie, as his chapters caught up to Laura’s, felt that disconnect both from the circumstances he finds himself in as well as the added trauma and grief from surviving.

The whole experience was dark and surreal but not, I want to say, without hope. Because sometimes, in the darkest hours, both literally and figuratively and sometimes both at the same time, we find the strength — the person — to carry us through to the other side.

While there isn’t a happy ending in the traditional sense — <i>We won, screamed the people outside. [but] don’t they know, Laura thought, we all lost?</i> — there is some bittersweet satisfaction to have by how the story wraps up. And I think that’s incredibly fitting because of the content and the experiences that Arden has done her best to capture within. Sure, there’s fiction but most is fact, is real, and it’s a hard pill to swallow. Not just because of what happened, the losses, the atrocities, but because it wasn’t the end of the wars. And we’ve still not learned.

This read is going to stay with me for a long time and I definitely see myself revisiting this because there were so many passages I lingered over, cried over, even occasionally felt bizarrely giddy over, and it was truly so well done. I hope you give it a chance and that maybe in the reading of it you’ll not only take something away from the experience but also, maybe, think warmly towards your own ghosts.

Highly recommend.

4.5 stars

Thank you so much to Net Galley, Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine, and Katherine Arden for providing this book for my honest review. This is such a beautifully written atmospheric book. Katherine Arden can write in such a way that it makes the reader feel they are a part of the story. I love that this book takes place during WW1 as we don’t often get many historical fiction books during this timeline. I also like the multiple POV’s and the sci- fi/ fantasy elements. This is such a haunting and unforgettable book. Despite it being a slow burn and a bit of a heavy read, I very much enjoyed it. Katherine Arden is an auto buy author for me now! I highly recommend this to anyone who enjoys historical fantasy books, slow builds, and atmospheric settings. Thank you again for alllowing me to review this powerful book.

Thank you NetGalley and Random House Publishing for the eARC in exchange for an honest review.

3.25 stars

WARM HANDS OF GHOSTS is a multi-POV novel set in WW1 that follows siblings Laura and Freddie Iven. Laura is a combat nurse who was honerably discharged after being wounded. Freddie is a soldier fighting at the front. Laura is sent home to Halifax and, one day, receives Freddie’s dog tag and jacket. She gets the sense things are not as they seem and finds a way back to the front to find answers.

Laura’s POV, while it gives valuable background information and context, was a bit more difficult to get into, especially when compared with Freddie and Winter. Freddie and Winter were beautifully fleshed out and compelling characters. I wish we had more of them or the book was written from their perspectives.

Pim and Mary were largely ignored after they arrived in the Forbidden Zone. They were set up to be interesting side characters and I was disappointed we didn’t get more interactions with them. I have a similar feel for Faland. He was a partially finished character. I very much enjoyed how he was presented as morally grey, instead of pure evil. He was a great comparison to the pure evils of war.

GHOSTS is a very dark novel that gives an accurate view of what WW1 was like for those on the front. It’s bleak, depressing, apocalyptic, and haunting, just as the soldiers, nurses, and doctors experienced. The first 40% is fairly slow and can feel like a slog, but it picks up VERY quickly and keeps going right until the end.

This book is VERY different from Arden’s Winternight trilogy and may not appeal to the same reader base. In her author’s note, Adren mentioned struggling to finish this book. You can sense that throughout the novel.

Overall, I enjoyed reading this book. It’s far from perfect, but it had some compelling characters and some very relevant and well-done themes.

The hands of ghosts may be warm, but they are also heavy. Arden's meticulously researched story of love and war and the fog between the two offers readers a harsh look at the depths of war's trenches and men's souls but never loses sight of what we live for at the end of the day. Prickly combat nurse Laura returns to the front, but finds more questions than answers about the fate of her brother, all the while quietly nursing the hope that he is still alive. Equal parts enchanting and horrifying, Arden weaves a story that haunts readers long after the final page, much like the faint sound of violin music in the wind.

In all honesty this was a 3.5/3.75 star book.

Okay: let’s quickly break this down. The first 60% of this book was a slog to get through, but the next 20% actually gripped my attention while the very last 20% was captivating. So it’s hard to rate a book where I felt a lot of different emotions while reading it.

This is gonna be a messier review than I usually go with, but bear with me here:

First off I think this is a huge jump creatively for the author. Going from Russian mythology to a WW1 story definitely shows her ability to write whatever she chooses, but I also think it’s going to attract a different audience and reader than her previous books. I definitely picked this book up initially because of my love for The Bear and the Nightingale, and I’m sure others will as well. But it probably will come as a shock to some readers about what a huge change of pace this book is.

I really wanted more from Laura initially. Her story wasn’t nearly as compelling as Freddie’s from the beginning so reading her chapters definitely left me wishing from more from her as a character. I wish that her character arc had been expedited a bit to give us more depth.

Mary and Pim were necessary additions but unfortunately Mary was basically discarded once they got to the Forbidden Zone. I wish the same time and attention had been given to fostering her relationships with all of the secondary characters because they all felt flat and I didn’t feel like they were given the time they deserved. It would have made the ending much more impactful if there was more attention to characters. Also, I wish we could have had a bit more time between her and Jones to better solidify that relationship.

Freddie and Winter were what I wanted from this story. They had depth, they were interesting, and I wanted everything to be centered around them. I could go on and on about how I felt about these two, that’s how strongly I feel about them.

Final thoughts: I wish this book had been told solely from Winters and Freddie’s perspective. I think it would have made a significant difference in the overall storytelling and given more depth to the characters that were the most compelling and dynamic. Going through everything that Winters go through in order to get back to Freddie while reading about the trials of Freddie and Faland would have been so heart wrenching in all the right ways. It would have made the ending just exquisite.

This book! Wow this book leaves part of it in your soul. It takes ahold of you and it digs itself into you. This was so freaking amazing! I will definitely pick up more books from Katherine Arden!! Historical fiction at its best right here!!
I just reviewed The Warm Hands of Ghosts by Katherine Arden. #TheWarmHandsofGhosts #NetGalley
[NetGalley URL]

Thank you to Netgalley and Del Rey publishing for an ARC.

Laura Iven is a wounded WWI nurse who’s honorably discharged and sent back to her home in Canada. She leaves her brother, Freddie, fighting at the front. Soon after, she receives a box of his belongings and note of his death. Laura feels something is off, something's not quite right, and goes back to Belgium to search for an explanation of what happened to her brother.

Readers are given two different storylines - Laura’s story at the beginning of 1918 and her brother’s experience the last couple months of 1917.

I loved The Bear and the Nightingale trilogy, which is why I was so excited to read Katherine’s new book. While The Warm Hands of Ghosts did not reach the same level of The Bear and the Nightingale, it was still a beautifully written story. Ghosts is colder and darker, which makes sense as it is a story of the brutality of war and the after effects on a person’s spirit.

In the author’s note, Arden explains her struggle in completing the novel. As a reader, I could almost feel that as I progressed through the book. There was just something missing and a few plot points that seemed either unnecessary or not fully fleshed out. While I did enjoy Laura and Jones’s relationship, I had a hard time connecting with many of the other characters. The “villain” wasn’t enough of a villain for me; I needed more from his character as well.

Overall I am happy to have read this book, but it fell short in a few places.

The story takes place within six months of 2017 to 2018 during WWI. A wounded Canadian combat nurse returns to Belgium, after her parents are killed in the Halifax harbor explosion, to find her brother. Her brother, in a separate timeline and storyline, is almost killed but escapes with a German soldier. Both story lines merge and, at first, meander around the supernatural. While in the beginning the mystic supernatural happenings seem superfluous to the main story, it becomes the thing that defines the story. Slow to star, I could not put in down in the end and it became sort of a personal allegory for me. It is an allegory of good and evil.

If you’ve read The Winternight Triology by Katherine Arden, then you’ll enjoy The Warm Hands of Ghosts. Part love story, part mythology/folklore, part historical fiction (WWI). Dual POV and dual timeline that eventually comes together. Strong FMC in Laura Iven, who is searching for her missing brother during WWI. The supporting cast was really fleshed out and their stories were equally important to the overall arc of the book. Highly recommend to anyone that likes historical fiction but is looking for a little spin and not the usual tropes.

Overall, this is a 4/5 for me. I think it would make an excellent book club pick. Thank you for the opportunity to read and review this title!

"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."


A combat nurse telling tales of purple horses while patching up children. Blackthorn house. A missing brother from the War, Freddy. A soldier who used to paint pictures & write poems.

The Gothic Victorian feel of this novel is poignant. Bleak seances. The Departed and their soulless, black gazes. Snow falls, on and on.

Halifax. Four Horsemen. The Beast from the Sea. The Devil Riven and Falling. The sky is on fire and the sun is black.

"Do not give up Hope, my dear."

Horns, dragons. Winter, prisoners, & the cold. Managing through a war torn country. A trembling mad soldier crying out, "the dead ones! You see them in the dark."

This novel gave me chills while reading it. There's an eeriness that crept about every sentence and creepiness that I felt flipping through it's pages.

And then mentioned one of my favorite posts, Alfred Lord Tennyson, The Lady of Shallott. A roaming Fiddler. Mirrors. The heart's desires. Falling rain.

A spiderweb. A chateau. Violins. Mugs of tea. The little details are the most important - the most atmospheric, and this book has no shortage of the emotions it invokes in its readers.

Stars. Souls for wine. Tombs. The ghosts. "Ask the ghosts." The forbidden zone. A very good read! 🌟🌟🌟🌟/5 Stars!

This is more of a 3.5 stars book. It’s honestly pretty depressing. The ending gives a bit of a feel good vibe, but the majority of it is sad. I get it, it’s during the Great War and pretty much at the front lines. But there is something about Laura’s POV that isn’t great, she is just kind of there. Freddie’s POV is much more raw and engrossing. The overall story definitely has potential, but my inability to connect with Laura really dragged it down for me.

As a fan of Katherine Arden's Winternight Trilogy, I had been looking forward to her next project since she shared some research and inspiration images on her social media accounts in 2019. The Warm Hands of Ghosts proved to be every bit as eerie and layered as those early images of soldiers, battlefields, and skeletons. The story touches on many different kinds of love and grief, and is sure to resonate deeply with anyone wrestling with loss of family, loss of purpose, or loss of identity. Though set amidst the violence and devastation of WWI and accurately described by other reviewers as "haunting," the story left me in a reflective and hopeful headspace, rather than with a lingering sense of despair. Certainly a book I plan to return to many times!

The Warm Hands of Ghosts is a historical fiction book with a twist of horror/supernatural elements. We have Laura, a combat nurse during WWI and her brother, Freddie, who is a soldier fighting in the war. When Laura is injured and sent home, she receives Freddie's dog tags and jacket but does not know if he is dead or what happened to him. She has the opportunity to go back to Belgium and look for answers about her brother.

This book was so haunting and dark. WWI was a terrible war and we were knee deep in it for this book. We have a lot of description of the fighting and the injuries. On the flip side, there is a lot of love in this story. You feel the love between brother and sister, the love between the nurses and doctors, and the love between friends. We get different POVs throughout and it hops around from Laura and Freddie. I enjoyed the different POVs because you were able to really get into the heads of each character.

The characters were all very well developed and you felt very deeply for them. Everyone was battling their own demons throughout this book and it was easy to sympathize with the characters. The relationships were also very realistic and you rooted for the characters. I kept finding myself not wanting to put the book down because I needed to know what happened to these characters.
The writing was also very good in this book. The imagery made it feel real and that is why it was so haunting and dark.

I do wish the supernatural elements were a bit more present. This book seemed to me to be more historical fiction. That is not my usual genre but I did enjoy this one. I feel like the title and cover make it seem more horror/supernatural than it really is. I also feel like the pacing was just a bit off. It felt slow in the beginning and it took a little while for me to get in to the story.

I feel like there are not a lot of stories centered around WWI. This one did a great job at highlighting the atrocities the veterans and the nurses went through. Thanks so much to netgalley and Random House for the arc of this book in exchange for an honest review. I think a lot of people will love this book!

Thank you to Del Rey and NetGalley for an arc!

First off, do not go into this thinking it is fantasy. It is not, it is more speculative fiction with a bit of an element of the other - supernatural.. Now, with that out of the way I think this book is going to be one people either really enjoy or are just going to be “meh” on if they’re looking for something like the Winternight Trilogy. THIS DOES NOT MAKE IT BAD. THIS BOOK IS GOOD. Sorry, I wanted to be VERY clear about that, set your expectations, because if you don’t read the summary you will be surprised.

Arden’s writing is still spectacular, but it is a different writing style than her other books. It is no less good, just different. I felt that it worked very well for the theme of the book. You have two main characters, siblings, both going on their own journeys, and I feel that it was depicted so well. The cadence of the book is often how the war is described in the book - jarring. I feel like that was the way that Arden intentionally did that, because it was how it felt.

Laura is such a great character, and so is Freddie. I enjoyed both their parts equally in this book. I hate to say this is a “good” book, because while it is, it is also a sad one, a harrowing tale. I was absorbed in this story, and there were some dark, dark moments.

As with her previous works, this book really built on atmosphere and mystery at certain points – it made the book hard to put down. I think the book is very hard to describe as there is so much that is best left to experience first hand as you read.

The descriptions, everything, was just so well done. I cannot commend her enough for how she took a time in history and made it come alive. It was a great read, and I recommend it to people who like both historical fiction and books with a bit of otherness/supernatural elements.

Thank you to NetGalley and Del Rey for the ARC!

I don't usually read war stories, but I do love Katherine Arden's work, so this was an obvious must-read for me. I appreciated the ways in which the trauma and brutality of war are shown here—a purgatory world full of ghosts, the hotel setting, the lengths we'll go to save each other when our humanity is quickly fading—and it all feels incredibly relevant to current events. As always, I'm a sucker for mood and atmosphere, and Arden once again delivers both in this story. That being said, this book did feel a bit heavy and sluggish at times, and I had a hard time connecting to Laura's character especially. I ended up looking forward more to Freddie's sections than hers. I wanted a bit more character work for this one, but again, the writing offers up great and terribly tragic atmosphere. It's a worthy addition to Arden's bibliography, and I'm excited to read her next project, whatever it may be.

While I very much enjoyed the Winternight Trilogy, I did not enjoy The Warm Hands of Ghosts by Katherine Arden. This novel is more for fans of historical war books with the lightest touch of fantasy and a lot of religious rhetoric. In this case, it's set in WWII and the the characters, soldiers and combat medics, are extremely bland and monotonous. The dialogue is extremely stilted as if the novel was written in phrases and spliced together roughly through time. The plot dragged quite a bit though I do think the ambiance was well done.

Beyond the dullness of the novel, there is a large number of times the word "savage" was used to describe and illustrate 'uncivilized' behavior. It rubs me the wrong way reading a book written by a white author liberally using a slur that has been historically used to dehumanize certain groups of people and is said to be rooted in colonialism and oppression. In my honest opinion, in the examples listed below, quite a number of words could have been used in place of the slur without reducing the intended meaning of the text.

--

"But you'll wear a proper uniform. Not one of those field-modified things, hemmed to the knee."
"Am I a savage?" asked Laura. "I'll look perfectly proper."
--

"Gott in Himmel," sai the voice, right in his ear, savage, "will you listen to me?" - and then a fist came clipping across his jaw.
--

"Nothing a bite and a drink won't fix," said Laura. (...) Laura had to sit on her hands so she wouldn't seize it and drink it off like a savage.
--

He grinned around his cigarette. The ember made something savage of his smile. "Beeindrucke much," he added, (...) Freddie, taking the words for a threat, groped for his knife.
--

Laura was furious, which is why she permitted herself to retort, low and savage, "Yes, well, I'm sure that will be a great comfort to him, to be buried with two legs and no gangrene."
--

Faland put his violin to his shoulder and began to play. The music curled out, (...) tentative, sweet. (...) And then the music turned savage, as though Faland had killed them awhile, only to snatch the rage right out of Freddie's heart...