The Warm Hands of Ghosts by Katherine Arden
Stars: 5

Perfect if you like:

Historical Fiction
Strong female characters
Dual Narration and multiple timelines
Descriptive imagery

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC.

Every year, at the end of November, Nova Scotia sends down an evergreen tree to Boston where it is raised and lit as the city’s official Christmas tree. It is a thank you for the assistance provided to Halifax in 1917 after two ships in the harbor collided and one, a French cargo ship carrying explosives, caught fire, causing a massive explosion that leveled parts of Halifax.

The impacts of this tragic accident are still being felt by Laura Iven when Katherine Arden’s book opens. Laura, a Red Cross nurse who has recently returned home to Halifax after being injured at the Front, learns that her brother has most likely died in Belgium. But when the news comes from the trenches that her brother, Freddie, has been killed, Laura can’t believe it. Something in her knows that he is still alive and she determines that she must find him, even if it means returning to the front lines as a nurse.

Arden’s story bounces between Freddie in 1917 and Laura in 1918, as the siblings move closer to each other not only in time but in place. But will they be able to survive not just a war but the devil and find each other? Arden’s novel explores the limits of human suffering but also the resilience of the human heart in the face of unimaginable horror. It examines the depth to which people will go to help each other, even at great sacrifice to themselves. Finally, it forces the reader to rethink what they might believe about good and evil, courage and cowardice.

I think when this book comes out next month, it is going to be a bestseller. The celebrity book clubs will be picking it and people will have it on their best of lists for 2024. And it should, this book manages to do many things well: keep the reader on the edge of their seat with a mystery while also forcing them to think about the nature of war, death, and the thin veil that separates the seen from the unseen. Arden states in her author’s note that the First World War deserves our attention and I hope that this story draws people in and encourages them to learn more about the events that impacted the rest of the twentieth century.

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for sending me this eARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

The Warm Hands of Ghosts is a magical realism novel set during WWI that combines the horrifying history of that time with a beautiful story full of love.This book dealt a lot with the impact and trauma of war and was at times very dark. It was hard to read at times and was not always fun to see the heartbreaking effects of war. Although the true heart of this book was definitely the characters. I loved both Freddie and Laura and their stories were both perfect ways to see the war through their own eyes. Through them I was able to see hope in such an awful time in history. I can see this book becoming a classic and even read in high school English classes as there is a lot of symbolism and deeper meanings.

I tend to read stories filled with lots of adventure and fantasy, and while this does have a bit of magic it was not like what I normally read. But I didn’t hate it! It kept me engaged and curious throughout. I would recommend this and will definitely be buying myself a physical copy of the book once it comes out.

This book was devastating and beautiful. And even while it was being devastating and showing some of the darkest parts of humanity, there was hope and love.

It made me feel so much. I thought I might cry several times, and my heart was actually racing near the end.

I fell in love with each of the main characters in all their pain, fear, love, and hope. Their story is beautiful.

This book is going to stick with me for a long time.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

4,5⭐️ This book is haunting, devastating, and beautiful. It was hard to get a grip on the narrative but once I did I couldn’t stop reading. The writing was unusual but that’s may be due to the setting of the time and I’m not used to read something from/about that era.

I’m gonna need a long time to get over the after effect of this book bc the pain destroyed me🥲

This was a complicated read for me. There were a few different storylines going on at the same time and they weren’t really making sense everything did come together near the end, except for who one of the characters was really meant to be and I guess that’s part of the story itself. I haven’t read anything else by this author. Although I’ve wanted to for a long time. I am not sure that this story is going to make me jump for that opportunity. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for access to this.eARC in exchange, for my honest opinion.

absolutely loved this one and katherine's writing style! new author to me but definitely will be checking out more after this one.

I really loved this book! The atmosphere, the characters, the writing style was all so good!

The Warm Hands of Ghosts is dual POV with Laura, a recently discharged combat nurse in WW1 and her brother Freddie, a Canadian soldier in the war.

After Laura is injured in the war, she returns to her home in Canada where she faces more tragedy. She’s deeply scarred both mentally and physically from the war and worries for her brother Freddie, who is still serving overseas.

When Laura receives Freddie’s things in the mail as a sign of her brother’s passing, she is devastated. But something feels off to her and she returns to Belgium to find out what happened to Freddie.

We find Freddie stuck in a pillbox with a German soldier. They must work together to escape and form a bond along the way that makes them both traitors to their countries but allies to each other.

Both Laura and Freddie experience supernatural things on the battlefield and it’s hard to tell what’s real and what’s not. The question is: will Laura and Freddie find their way back to each other?

Historical fiction is a widely popular genre but this puts a new supernatural spin on it. World War 1 novels aren’t nearly as common as World War 2 novels so I learned a lot about it.

I loved the writing style as well and the dual POV and dual timeframes were done very well. I was really invested in Laura and Freddie’s stories as well as the side characters.

I wanted to savor The Warm Hands of Ghosts, slowing myself down so that I didn't finish it too soon. It is a tragic, painful story of a nurse (Laura) and her brother (Freddie), a soldier during WW1. The particular horrors of that war are on every page, making this difficult to read sometimes, but Arden's deft storytelling skill make you want to stay in it. I cannot recommend this book enough.

THE WARM HANDS OF GHOSTS weaves together two alternating storylines during WWI; one of Laura, a stubborn, prickly combat nurse who returns to the warfront after being honorably discharged in order to discover what happened to her brother, a soldier presumed dead; and one that starts a few months earlier, of Freddie, Laura’s brother, and what exactly happened to him. Both storylines are connected through a mysterious man (but surely just a man, surely not the devil, right?) who plays the violin with unearthly skill and runs a mysterious hotel for lost souls, but at what cost?

Though the plot is straightforward, it never drags or bores. Arden’s vivid, straightforward prose starkly depicts the physical horror and emotional toll of war, the price of remembrance, and the mixed blessing of forgetting. Her characters here tend to have a singular focus as their driving force, which perhaps renders them a bit two dimensional, but also shows how these characters must grasp onto a single hope or goal as a means of survival and moving forward in a war that evokes the apocalypse (in keeping with some of the actual beliefs of the time, which Arden expands upon in her author’s note).

This is very much a war novel, and historical fiction, with a speculative twist, but not a novel I personally would classify as fantasy (I would have liked about 10x more ghosts, to be honest). Readers looking for a similar read to the author’s Winternight trilogy may be disappointed - the richly built world, folklore, and adventuring of that trilogy is nowhere here; instead Arden has created an equally rich but quieter novel of hope and desperation grounded in the realities of WWI.

The Warm Hands of Ghosts is a beautiful story of war and loss that glitters with magical realism yet shows the heartbreaking and very real consequence of war.

It’s very different to her Winternight Trilogy yet beautiful in its own right. Katherine’s writing style still shines through. It’s a story filled with heart that will break your heart and crack you wide open.

This was very character driven, taking the time to thoughtfully explore how each character responded to war and their traumas. Whilst reading this I was reminded of the grit, determination and resilience of the human spirit. How much humans can be faced with yet somehow not break.

As readers we are shown a world where ghosts also exist and anything is possible.

The Warm Hands of Ghosts is a powerfully poignant tale that is haunting and beautiful.

Thank you Random House Publishing Group and NetGalley for my gifted ARC in exchange for an honest review!

I would call Katherine Arden's The Warm Hands of Ghosts a "Faust variation," but that label doesn't begin to do it justice. It's an exploration of life in the midst of war time and the turbulent reshaping of our world by WWI. The devil is necessarily present, along with futile struggles for mud-soaked ridges, nurses working endless shifts in field hospitals at risk of bombing, and the millions mourning the losses that war inflicted on them.

I'm not interested in summarizing this novel. You can get that from the promotional material. Instead, I just want to urge you, whoever you are, whatever you usually read to Read. This. Book. It's a bit of grey magic, dark and light, old and new. Give yourself the gift of the experience of reading it.

I received a free electronic review copy of this title from the publisher via NetGalley; the opinion is my own.

This book was nearly impossible to put down! I appreciate the opportunity to experience this ARC.

The Warm Hands of Ghosts is a standalone novel by Winternight trilogy author Katherine Arden. It follows a nurse and her younger brother, a soldier presumed missing (and dead) during WWI. Laura struggles with her own bloody trauma as she goes back to war to unravel the mystery of her missing brother. Rumors of a strange fiddler wash through trenches and war hospitals... and for Laura, all roads seem to lead to him. This book has a paranormal twist to it and the performative madness that comes with strange creatures that like to meddle in the human world for their own pleasure.

I'd suggest this book to readers who enjoy historical fiction and the paranormal. I'd also recommend The Warm Hands of Ghosts to my fellow fae fans. The ones who love the creepy and confusing and weird fae that always feel like a maze of chaos! A great book for winter's dreary, muddy, and misty days.

I urge readers to read the afterword!

If this book had been written as a symphony, and Katherine Arden its composer, we'd have the grand swells of music that represented the perils and glories and chaos that accompany war. We'd be lost in the despairing tune of war when we heard a violin begin to enter its own world and play its own tune. A tune that would compel us to deviate from the horrors of the world, and leave all behind to have the peace of oblivion. Would we be tempted to follow that violin into nothingness so that we can escape our reality... or would we stay and listen to the symphony of war and the sounds of an unknown future?

4.5 stars

As a huge fan of the Winternight trilogy, I was so excited to dive into “The Warm Hands of Ghosts.” As always, Arden’s writing is exquisite: incredibly detailed, immersive, compelling, but leaving enough for the reader to interpret on their own. You’ll fall in love with her characters: prickly nurse Laura, old-fashioned Pim, single-minded Mary, unerringly competent Jones, steady Winter, and (no spoilers) Freddie. This creepingly terrifying WWI historical fantasy asks questions of identity, memory, and self.

After Laura is injured and discharged from her nursing position in Flanders, she returns home to Halifax shortly before her home is destroyed and her parents killed by an explosion. What follows is a letter containing her brother’s dog tags, stating that he is missing and presumed dead - but signs from beyond the grave suggest that he is still alive. Laura makes the choice to return to the war front, seeking answers.

Months prior, Freddie awakens after a battle locked in the darkness with a German soldier. Together they must fight to survive first the harsh environment of No Man’s Land, and then the conflicts between each other’s interests. They wander into a mysterious hotel, owned by a fiddler who seeks their stories in exchange for their stay. Stories of the fiddler abound among the soldiers, making him more myth than man.

I highly recommend this incredible read!

This was a highly anticipated read for me, especially with the synopsis. Unfortunately, I ended up DNFing so I am rating based on what I did read. I did love the close family relationship, and the need to find answers about the FMC brother. I enjoyed the war aspect, and how it affected soldiers. I also enjoyed the ghost/seance aspect. Sadly, I just felt bored, and I think I was due to the overall writing style.

An excellent ghost story to start the year. Laura Iven was a nurse during WW1 and was sent home after being badly wounded when the hospital was bombed. Her brother Freddie has gone missing on the front very mysteriously and Laura is determined to find out what happened to him - no matter the cost.

This book is a wild ride. It's extremely well written and engrossing. I loved all the characters, and I found myself deeply invested in what was happening to them all. The villain is deliciously hate-able. I haven't read many books set during WW1 and this one kind of makes me want to seek more out.

One of my most-anticipated reads of the year!. Katherine Arden followed up her fantastic Winternight trilogy with a quartet of middle-grade horror novels, but this is her first foray back into fiction for adults. Though those looking for the more playful fantasy of Winternight may find this overly grim, I really liked this story of Canadian siblings caught up in World War I. Laura Iven is a combat nurse, and a very good one, but a serious leg wound sends her back home...unfortunately, just in time for the Great Halifax Explosion. The disaster kills both of her parents, leaving her brother Freddie as her sole surviving family. When she receives Freddie's effects in a irregular manner, though, she finagles a way to return to Europe to find out how her brother died...or maybe even if he died at all. The story is told through both Laura's perspective and Freddie's, so we know very early on that he is, in fact, alive. He finds himself trapped on the battlefield with a German soldier, Hans Winter, and the two form a bond as they struggle back to the front. Both Laura and Freddie separately find themselves, when they are most in need of succor, in a mysterious hotel being run by an even more mysterious man, a violinist who calls himself Faland. This hotel and its proprietor loom large as the siblings continue to try to find one another. I have become a bit of a World War I head, so this book was extremely up my alley. It's an incredibly under-understood time period in American culture, and I appreciate that Arden shines a spotlight on it with this novel. The thing about World War I, though, is that it was a cataclysmic event, causing just staggering amounts of loss and destruction. Naturally, this makes for a much darker tone than her previous work. This book is largely about trauma, and survivor's guilt, and the way people coped (or tried their best to do so) in the face of what was without exaggeration the end of the world as they knew it. Arden's clear, eloquent writing and the plot's forward momentum keep it from getting bogged down in despair, but it definitely falls on the bummer end of the spectrum. I personally love a bummer book, so it really worked for me. I'd definitely recommend it, especially for people curious to learn more about World War I!

"The Warm Hands of Ghosts" follows Laura Iven, a former nurse in WWI who was sent home to Halifax after being injured, as she struggles with the tragic loss of her parents and the news that her brother, Freddie, is "missing, presumed dead" on the front. The return of Freddie's effects to Laura makes her suspicious of Freddie's disappearance, and she sets out with a fellow Halifax native wracked by grief to try and find out the truth.

As someone who adores Katherine Arden's Winternight Trilogy, I was so excited to hear about this new, standalone book for adults. I flew through my read of this, loving the balance of history, character building, tension between plotlines, and subtly fantastical elements that also appealed to my literary sensibilities. The book is beautifully written, the moments of grief and loss rendered clearly but achingly, and Arden's exigence for writing-- North America's lack of fascination with WWI compared to WWII-- proved expertly executed.

Although this was a very different read from the Winternight books, fans of those books will still love the interplay of history, literature, and fantasy in this new novel. 100% recommend.

Series Info/Source: This is a stand alone book. I got a copy of the for review through netgalley.

Thoughts: I really enjoyed this book a lot. This was very different from Arden's previous books (all of which I have loved) . This is a historical fiction set in WWI timeframe with some magical realism in the form of supposed ghosts and a mysterious fiddler. The story jumps between two POVs; that of Laura in 1918 (a dishonorably discharged nurse) and her brother, Freddie, back a few months before the timeframe Laura is in (he is a soldier on the war front).

The bulk of the story involves Laura trying to track down Freddie after receiving his effects with no body or explanation. Freddie's portions of the story involve a bit more magical realism. At first he is trying to survive a very dire situation on the war front and then he finds himself involved with the mysterious fiddler.

This was beautifully written and completely engrossing. I loved Laura's character and really enjoyed the people she meets on her travels to find Freddie. Freddie was also well done. There is a lot of seeing what happens to people in war and some of war in the actual trenches. However, woven into all of this is a mysterious story about a fiddler man on the front who makes the soldiers yearn for the escapism he provides, some soldiers yearn so much they go mad.

My Summary (5/5): Overall I really loved this, it was incredibly well written and engaging. It was nice to read a book set in the WWI time-frame, I feel like I have read a ton of books about WWII but there aren't as many about WWI. The characters were amazing and I loved the mysterious fiddler. There is a lot of violence and trauma in this book. You are reading from both a solider's and nurse's perspective and neither were very kind professions during wartime. I loved the ending to this as well, it was so hopeful. Arden is an amazing author and so far I have loved every book she's written. I will definitely keep my eye out for future books.

Hauntingly tragic, beautifully somber. I will like to first thank NetGalley and the publishers for this amazing opportunity.This book is about a sister who is a discharged field nurse that is trying to uncover the mystery of her brother's disappearance in January 1918 and a brother who is trapped in a pillbox with his enemy in November 1917.
This book was absolutely devastating. It paints the true horrors of war. It's not glamorous. It's ugly, infectious. The story depicts individuals fighting for their loved ones and themselves but also losing themselves due to the traumas they faced, while having an eerie haunting aspect. This book leaves you feeling empty at the end because it's so real. The language in this book is beautifully written. Overall, I highly recommend it

I read Katherine Arden's review of this book and understood that it took her five years to write this novel, and it was her most difficult due to really trying to pin down a difficult concept. Call me intrigued.

Goodreads describes it as "a hauntingly beautiful novel with a speculative twist." Storygraph gave me historical fantasy. The Author's Note describes WW1 as a clash of times, men in chainmail fighting tanks. Humans thrown into the future while experiencing the barbarism of the trenches. She writes about J. R. R. Tolkien fighting in WW1, then Frodo and Sam walking across the steaming, pocked ground into Mordor. She helped me understand WW1 as a time of such disreality that it inspired my favorite genre.

And I think that's really what this book is -- sometimes you need fantasy to help understand reality, because we cannot imagine such a fantastic time. I learned about WW1 because Katherine Arden taught me about the Fiddler, and the warm hands of ghosts.

And yeah, I'll remember this story for the rest of my life. So, five stars.

<I>Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.