With hauntingly in-depth descriptions and lyrical prose, Arden has once again weaved together an unforgettable tale.

“The Warm Hands of Ghosts” alternates between two perspectives, each bringing us closer to the climax of the novel. While slow starting, every detail is found to be important to the culmination of the story.

There were numerous times in this novel that I felt my heart drop. From panic-inducing situations and shocking reveals, the moment we made it to the crux of the plot — it was an intense battlefield.

The characters were well-rounded in their feelings and actions, I watched as each of their personalities formed throughout their traumas and following actions. You could see the research that went into this tale of war and survival and it leaves you with a heavy heart.

I felt connected to our main characters and the others who helped them find their way. Between the descriptions of war, the warm hands that guide us, and the temptation of the new world vs the old, it is clear this will be a story that stays with me. That is all you can hope for from a novel.

Thank you Del Ray, RandomHouse Publishing, and Netgalley for allowing me to hear the tale of Laura, Freddie, Pim, and Winter with this advanced reader copy. It was such an honor to be chosen as an early reader!

First, thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

As I huge fan of Katherine Arden's Winternight trilogy, I was very excited to read this. I found this to be equally well-written and compelling, but in a different way than that series was. Warm Hands of Ghosts is less about fantasy and magic and instead centers on ghosts, the supernatural, and how people are haunted by their trauma. World War I is the perfect setting for this, and Arden made the horrors of trench warfare feel incredibly real. I know she did a lot of research for this novel, and it showed. Descriptions were vivid, and her characters felt lived in and realistic. These felt like real people scarred by trauma and still struggling to go on.

I think the blurb reveals enough about the plot - to say more would spoil things. I found it to be an excellent read and would highly recommend it. The only reason that I didn't give it 5 stars is precisely because it made the war feel so real. This is a grim, depressing read in many parts, and though it doesn't give up on hope in the end, it can make for a tough reading experience in places. I will continue to look forward to Arden's work and read anything she writes in the future. This book has proven that her work is consistenly strong, even in different contexts and genres.

Gosh, I really wanted to love this book. I went into this book totally expecting to live it, but it just fell really flat. Which is sad, because you can see so much potential here.

Firstly, it was really hard to connect with any of these characters. Across the board, they all needed more development. You spend so many chapters with Laura that you'd think she has the best development out of them all, that you'd be connected to her the most, but that's not what happened. Her character is really one dimensional, even as you watch her go through trauma. She just....never develops. And then there's the weird romance written into the past few chapters with Jones. Like, what? Where did that even come from? There were no hints of romance between these two, no tension, nothing. Why even add that, especially so late? As for Mary and Pim, also, meh. They served a purpose in the book, but I'm not really sure they were necessary.

The real heroes of this story were Freddie, Winter, and Faland. I actually think if these characters had been further developed this book could have been amazing. Just drop the ladies (at least mostly) and let the stars shine. We get a better idea of Faland from the author's note, but he could have used so much more description, development, etc. He could have been such a good plot point, but he was hazy at best. Maybe this was on purpose?

But, Freddie and Winter, man could this have been an amazing story. But again, we're spread so thin going between characters that we don't get to know them enough. We watch them walk through this huge trauma, but it's like watching through smoke. Not enough detail, not enough emotion, no enough development.... Like, we're expected to believe that all of a sudden these dudes in 1918 blindly accept romantic love for each other? Had either of them felt this way before? Are we exploring a trauma bond? It feels like there was a leap made with little to no explanation. I'm fine with the leap, but do it some justice.

And the ending? I think it's sad that Laura went through all that to basically lose her brother anyway? At least that's the way it seemed. And I'm supposed to be comforted by Jones showing up? I just....was let down.

This story had so much potential. I was expecting so much from an Arden book. But it was jumpy, underdeveloped, and just, lacking.

I'd like to thank NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced e-ARC of this book.

Can we talk about Katherine Arden’s books? I have been in love since The Bear and The Nightingale series! After I read those I went back and read everything! Sometimes you just click with an author’s way of telling a story and that is a gift!

It is January 1918 and Laura Iven has been wounded and sent home from the Medical Corps. She is not happy about this and volunteers locally. But her brother, Freddie, is still in Flanders, fighting. He is constantly in her thoughts and she believes she can find him and bring him home.

Returning to Belgium, she is notified of Freddie’s death. But she has a strong feeling something isn’t right. And when she hears stories of haunted trenches, and a strange guy who gives soldiers the gift of not knowing.

Maybe Freddie escaped and is now wandering around not knowing who he is!

November of 1917 and we hear from Freddie who has come to trapped under an enemy soldier and lots of rubble.
As the two form a sort of friendship, they decide to remain together and look, here is a guy offering oblivion!

Lots of Historical Fiction here, as well as some paranormal and I enjoyed it a lot!

Netgalley/ RHPG Ballentine Del Rey February 13, 2024

I was unprepared for how much this book would impact me. I don't often see books that are focused on WWI, and after reading the information the author shared in her note at the end, I was surprised. The juxtapositions she shared about how the advancements in methods of war being combatted by less effective methods that were still in use was absolutely jarring. Not being a history buff, or frankly knowing a lot of details about what a battlefield in this time period would have looked like, the description of Freddie and Winter's experiences was hard to actually visualize at times (I had to google what a pillbox on a battlefield was). Even though I didn't have that visual in my head, it in no way meant that I wasn't able to understand the horror that these men were experiencing. Arden did an amazing job making you feel as though you were there, in the muck and mud, right alongside these young men. To also feel the sheer terror of the women who were working in hospitals, also being bombarded and destroyed, while attempting to care for men who were damaged beyond what could be physically cared for.

Ultimately, this book is a love story. Laura refuses to believe that her brother is dead after signs point to this fact, and so she risks her life to find and bring him home. Freddie and Winter, enemies until stuck together, claw their way out and lean on each other for support. Pim is a mother grieving for her lost child, who she will go to crazy lengths to remember. Arden spectacularly displays how trauma can impact you, and how an excuse to forget certainly seems easier in the long run. But at what cost to yourself?

Overall, I loved this book. Thank you so much to NetGalley and the publisher for an opportunity to read this in exchange for an honest review.

This is not a book with a fast paced plot. This book takes it time digesting you. It sucks you into deep wells of mud and stares deeply into your soul. Magical realism sparkles at the edge of reality, making readers and characters question alike what is real and what is imagined.

Laura and Freddie’s story takes center stage in the plot, siblings separated by their duties to the First World War. Both the main and supporting characters in this story react to the horrors of war with such real and raw emotions, which is something I really appreciate. Oftentimes, supporting characters are there to do just that; support. But Winters, Mary, Pim and Faland (among others) each had their own stories to tell. They’re all characters that I came to know personally and intimately. Reading about their journey through WWI, a war often overlooked, broke my heart and repaired it several times.

This is a story so deeply rooted in all kinds of love. Sibling love, desperate love, unsure love and fake love. But it is also a story rooted in fear. Fear of what people can do in the most desperate situations and how far we’re willing to go for those that we love.

I greatly enjoyed my time reading this book and found myself on the edge of my seat, wondering what would come next. With a slow moving plot, suspense is difficult to maintain, yet I felt myself itching to get to the truth of the matter the entire book.

This review will be posted to the Instagram account @within_words on December 9th, 2023.

Katherine Arden is back with a dazzling book every bit as magical and emotionally powerful as her highly successful trilogy (which of course I advise you to read as well). This story was a wonderful tale of a sister's love for her brother, and the courage it takes to face the deepest, darkest parts of you. It is full of excellent detail of the horrors that were unique to WWI, and those who demand accuracy in their historical fiction will be well pleased. To me, this book was on par with "All the Light We Cannot See" - it was that brilliant. Thank you so much to Netgalley and the Publisher for letting me review this fabulous novel. I can't wait to tell everyone about it! TEN STARS!

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

What an achievement.

I followed Katherine Arden joyfully and with absolute trust from page one through the Winter Night Trilogy. I journeyed, a non-horror reader, with trepidation through the Small Spaces Quartet. Since her first novel, I have been prepared to follow where Ms. Arden would lead, to read what she would write.

I was not prepared for this. It took me a while to read; it is so stressful and heartbreaking and horrifying in its reality that I could often only read a few pages at a time and would step away on their verge of a panic attack. It is so terrifying, and yet also so hopeful and genuine and necessary. It makes me feel like healing is possible. And that is truly a gift.

An absolutely stellar accomplishment.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the ARC.

What would the Devil do in a hell created by humans? That is the question at the heart of this story, which starts out with extreme gruesomeness based in the horrors of WWI, and gradually shows a more tender side. War certainly shows the worst in human beings, but also brings out the best: their capacity for self-sacrificing love. The Devil wants to rob us of the emotions that both bring us pain and teach us of our indelible spiritual connections; he offers us oblivion to soothe the first, but in so doing breaks the second. With her images and events based in the experiences of war, Arden brings the situation to life and makes us how we would choose.

I adored Katherine Arden's Winternight Trilogy and was looking forward to this the moment it was announced. Her newest books is entirely different, but it a way that made me truly awed by the range she has as a writer. A brutal yet poetic brooding on the unique cruelty of WWI and its place in time, a beautiful yet heartbreaking example of two siblings with no one else left... I have rarely read something that so grimly depicts the violence and aftermath of a battlefront yet leaves room for glimmers of hope to grow. The speculative element is light though grows in importance and plays with the idea of reality in a way I really liked and felt fit the circumstances. Highly recommend.

[Note: I was provided a review copy of this book by the publisher.]

The Warm Hands of Ghosts is a standalone historical fiction novel with a touch of literary fantasy-horror.

The story centers on two perspectives told in separate WWI-era timelines: the post-Halifax Explosion life of Laura Iven, a wounded field nurse who receives word that her brother Freddie has been killed in combat and decides to go back to Europe when something isn't adding up about her brother's death; and the in-the-trenches experience of Freddie, her brother, a soldier who escapes a near-death experience alongside a German soldier named Hans and then finds himself taking refuge with a mysterious man often known by soldiers as the "fiddler."

As the earlier-timeline Freddie finds himself more ingrained with this mysterious man, the future Laura treks back to Europe and tries to uncover the mystery of her brother's death, which is intertwined with the constant rumors of the charismatic hotelier whose music and evenings are said to make the horrors of war disappear for those who indulge in them.

Arden has crafted a story that, at times, made me want to gnaw my own arm off--if you'll forgive the dramatic expression. Although the prose is more sparse than the writing found in Arden's fantasy The Winternight Trilogy series, it often cuts deep and hard and unforgiving. Parts of this novel made me wring my hands, get up and walk around to shake something off me, or sit up ramrod straight in bed.

Moving explorations of the futility of war, the way it destroys and reimagines people, the desperate situations it creates are beautifully woven into the story. Perhaps most moving of all is the blatant admittance that even those who survive war do not survive as themselves; they do not come out, in the end, as the same person.

Although Laura's story does offer an intriguing perspective and adds to the mystery, I do think that the book would have been better served by cutting the chapters from Laura's perspective and focusing on Freddie, Hans, and other supplementary characters instead. This would have allowed the relationship between these characters to develop more organically and fully than they ended up doing.

Laura's side of the story felt far too slow and static, and while I did appreciate the metaphorical points Arden made with Laura towards the end of the book, they could have easily been made without requiring readers to follow Laura's perspective for half the chapters.

The epilogue of the novel also feels far too rushed and the events and character developments seem too sudden and shoehorned-in. They needed more time to develop; perhaps throughout an entirely new "part" of the novel rather than a short epilogue.

Overall, though, I recommend this novel for fan's of Arden's previous works. Readers who are familiar with the Small Spaces Quartet may enjoy the "fiddler" character treading similar (and far darker, in many ways) ground in a novel aimed at adult readers. Readers who enjoyed Arden's The Winternight Trilogy will be in for a story far different from Arden's previous foray into fantasy, but I think that anyone who has appreciated Arden's writing will get something from this book.

It may not be perfect, but there's something special in these pages; something that, like the events in the story, leaves you changed. Even if it's only just a little.

Arden has jested on social media that she feels like she sold her soul to write this novel, and there may be something to that notion.

This was beautifully written and I wasn’t surprised as the author’s previous books have been similar. It took me a little while to really get engrossed in this book but it will stay with me for awhile as will the characters. The author does and excellent job of really transporting you back in time. I really enjoyed this, it was moving and poignant.

The Warm Hands of Ghosts is my first Katherine Arden novel, and I enjoyed it much more than I thought I would! I’m giving this a 3.5/5 rating. I felt like it was a bit slow to start, but I’m glad that I pushed through- I started to get pretty invested by the 70% mark, and by the end, I was pretty attached to these characters. This story definitely had some traumatizing themes (as most books about war tend to), but the characterization was really well-rounded by the end. Chapter 43 in particular absolutely killed me (in a good way!) and I will be thinking about the ending for quite some time. I really look forward to reading Arden’s other books, and I’m very grateful to have gotten to read this as an ARC!

As someone who absolutely loves The Winternight Trilogy, I went into The Warm Hands of Ghosts with very high expectations but the story fell very flat for me.

The writing style was stilted and I found it difficult to connect with Laura. I liked Freddie’s POV and wish Laura was completely cut out because I never found myself invested in her as a character. 

It’s obvious that Katherine Arden researched a lot about the setting but unfortunately the characters and plot just didn’t do it for me.

Katherine Arden isn’t capable of writing bad prose, and I certainly wouldn’t call this a bad book, but it is a bit of a mess. Unfortunately, the characters never came alive and the plot never came together for me.

I kept hoping to find myself absorbed in the story but it never happened. At first, I really liked that Laura, the heroine of this one, wasn’t the sort of plucky, fairytale heroine we got with Vasya in Arden’s Winternight trilogy. I adore Vasya, but I was also excited to get a darker, hardened, less likable lead.

But instead of a heroine made of edges, full of shadows and depth, we’re served up a character who is entirely flat. Laura is an emotional void. I don’t mind a heroine who has closed herself off from emotion, but I need to see that inside she does have some remnant of feelings and impulses and life.

Laura’s brother, our other protagonist, was a more interesting and dynamic voice. But he never became the wholly three-dimensional character I wanted either.

This book was missing what makes a story engrossing and immersive for me—drama. I want to see characters brought into conflict with each other; I want to see them forced to grow and change.

In a story as heavy and dark as this one, I truly expected I’d get some feeling of anxiety or angst for the characters, something to make me latch onto them and feel desperate to see their stories end well. In the novels I really enjoy, that desperation forces me to finish a book in a day or two. I just never got that here.

The amount of research that clearly went into this novel is wonderful. Rats in a pillbox. Wounded men in the trenches drowning in a few inches of rain. Titanic victims with their eyes picked out by seabirds. Arden absolutely hit the mark when it comes to setting a near-apocalyptic scene and transporting you to another time and place.

After she delivered not a single miss in the Winternight trilogy, who can knock Arden for finally having a bit of a miss with this one? I’ll still pick up her next book.

I will say that her writing in this seemed different to what I remember; particularly in the Laura chapters, it was very terse and direct. It was still good, just different from the flow and lyricism I expected.

Arden’s prose is very assured, with the specificity and precision in her metaphors that I love and think is missing in a lot of writing I come across these days. Her figurative language has context and meaning. When someone speaks “in a voice like a Lewis gun”—that’s not a phrase put there just to sound pretty.

I never thought I would be so okay with not loving a Katherine Arden book. I liked it just fine, and there were even parts that sparkled for me (particularly towards the ending) but it wasn't a favorite. And that's alright, because it wasn't a book that was written for me. I am not a historical fiction set during a war kind of person. That's not my vibe, even when undertaken by one of my favorite authors. But if that is your thing? If you want a book that seems gentle even when it's talking about horrific things, that feels like it has a honey-colored filter over the whole thing and moves slowly but deliberately and shows people falling in love without telling you that they're falling in love, with hints of the fantastical and people who make bargains with a mysterious figure with a fiddle, then yeah. This is the book for you. I'm glad that it's in the world, and I am so excited for the people who will find it and treasure it and get to experience a book that feels written for them.

A beautiful yet haunting story about the traumas of war. My favorite part of Katharine Arden books is the atmosphere that she creates. She has such a simple writing style, not overly flowery, and yet she still manages to invoke such a sense of place. I felt totally immersed while reading this book. The concept was interesting and like nothing I can recall ever reading. For the most part, the characters were also very memorable. You find yourself drawn to even the bad/evil characters. Her characters are also really believable. After having read the Winternight trilogy and this book and loving both, I will read anything Arden comes out with next!

A nurse, back home from the front lines of WWI, begins to suspect that her missing brother might be alive. But when she returns to find answers, a mysterious figure haunts her days. And when she discovers that this otherworldly being might know where her brother is, she vows to stop at nothing until she's knows the truth about her brother's last days.

Beautifully written and well-paced, Katherine Ardens newest novel is a tender but evocative look at the realities of war, told through the twin perspectives of a brother and sister. Alongside the harshness of conflict, the book peppers in the supernatural and makes a compelling case for how blind humanity can be to it's own destruction.

I was very intrigued by the cover of this book. It is truly beautiful. I did think it would be a vampire novel but I ended up being equally as intrigued by the description. Some of the reviews say the female protagonist is bland or unrelatable, but I actually really liked her. I don't even entirely disagree with those reviews but there's a difference between flat, terribly written characters, and characters who aren't naturally charismatic. She was a little unlikeable, but most real people are. I liked the realism in their characteristic and enjoyed the plot enough that that didn't even matter in the end.

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

To start, I have never been so compelled by fantasy-laced historical fiction as I am when I read a Katherine Arden book. This story gutted me, and kept me wanting more.

There’s so much to talk about, but here’s what stood out to me:

You can watch, easily, how someone would start to lose their mind while being in this type of situation. It’s not simple to explain, and many have tried.

This book, I think, does it well because there is a level of the fantastic in events of heightened emotion and tension. When you’re in the middle of it, nearly dead, any type of “out” is something so tempting that you might become desperate for it, if only so that you don’t have to relive the horrors of your memory.

It’s just as easy to see how someone might cling, instead, to the stern reality of the world around them. What good is it to dream when you’ve seen so much carnage? What good is softness when the world has shown you how sharp it can be?

If nothing else, we need each other, dividing lines blurred, if we’re going to stay alive.

Warm Hands is Tolkien-like in that Arden writes it as someone would who is intimately familiar with the subject matter: she isn’t expecting to have to explain herself. You either know what various terms mean, or you don’t. It doesn’t take away from the story at all, but it feels very much like she put herself in the time of the Great War, and can tell you about it as if she was there.

Warm Hands is just an incredible story of grief, pain, hope, and resilience. This is a beautiful novel, heartbreaking and rich, and I am so grateful to have read it.