THE WARM HANDS OF GHOSTS by Katherine Arden – Review

I received this book for free from the Publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

The Warm Hands of Ghosts by Katherine Arden
Published by Del Rey on February 13 2024
Genres: Adult, Historical fantasy
Pages: 325
Format: eARC
Source: Publisher
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The nitty-gritty: A gruesome war story with surreal, ghostly elements, The Warm Hands of Ghosts is an emotional tale of a brother and sister during WWI.

“Sometimes, as he walked the hotel corridors, Freddie told himself he was trying to find the door that led out, but he wasn’t. He didn’t have enough hope left to really try. All his doors were locked, and the hotel was his entire world.”

I rarely read stories that take place during wartime—at least real wars, not fantasy or science fiction wars—so I was not prepared for the level of emotions I experienced while reading The Warm Hands of Ghosts, which takes place in 1917-1918 during World War I. Katherine Arden states in her author’s notes that she spent years working on this book, trying to get everything just right, and all that research and time paid off. I felt like I was in the trenches myself, living the horrors of war first hand. This is an immersive, emotional story that offers up moments of brightness despite the heavy subject matter, and I’m so glad I had the chance to read it.

In dual timelines, we are introduced to two main characters, sister and brother Laura and Freddie Iven. Both are serving in the war: Freddie has enlisted and ends up fighting at Passchendaele Ridge in Belgium, but word is he died during an attack. Laura is a field nurse but was badly injured when her hospital at Brandhoek was attacked and destroyed. After being discharged for her injury, Laura is back in Halifax recovering with friends, when she receives word of Freddie’s demise. Someone has sent her a package containing Freddie’s military jacket and tags, but the accompanying note is vague and doesn’t explain what happened to him.

A strange experience during a seance at her hosts’ home—a Ouija board sends a message that Freddie is actually alive—convinces Laura to return to Belgium to find her brother. Laura joins Mary Borden, who owns a field hospital in Flanders, and Pim Shaw, a distraught woman whose son Jimmy has died in the war, and together the three women make the transatlantic journey to help in Mary’s hospital.

In alternating chapters we follow Freddie, who has been trapped in a pillbox with an injured German soldier. With no way out except to work together, Freddie and the German, Hans Winter, form an unusual alliance in order to survive.

And in both timelines, a mysterious man named Faland bargains for stories and memories, turning them into haunting melodies on his violin. Faland will show you your heart’s desire, but his price is steep. Laura and Freddie both encounter Faland as they desperately try to find each other and survive the war.

This is a complex tale that weaves back and forth between Laura and Freddie, as their stories gradually come together, although it takes many detours along the way. It’s the relationships that keep the story going, as we follow Laura and Freddie, who are both trying to find each other (and neither one knows for sure that the other is alive). Then there’s Pim, who can barely go on without her son Jimmy and is driven to do unthinkable things in order to make peace with his death. 

My favorite relationship, though, was the one between Freddie and Winter, two men on opposite sides of the war who decide to keep each other alive and risk being branded as fugitives. Their story was so emotional and harrowing, as Arden describes their time in the pillbox, finally escaping, and then making a long journey by foot, both of them weak and injured, to find Laura, who Freddie is convinced with help them.

At the center of all this drama is Faland, a man who may or may not be the devil, and might not even be real. Some of my favorite scenes were set in Faland’s bar and hotel, where he lures desperate people with false promises, and then steals from them. It was so hard watching Freddie and Pim especially agree to Faland’s terms and then find themselves trapped with no way out. Faland and his horrible violin (you’ll understand when you read the story) seem to be a metaphor for the war itself, and I thought adding this weird, supernatural element was a brilliant idea.

And as you might guess from the title, the story is also populated by ghosts, both real and imagined. Laura sees her dead mother everywhere she goes (the way she died is horrifying, and I won’t reveal it here), and other characters claim to see dead loved ones as well. Despite the awful setting, Arden’s prose has a dreamy, magical quality to it that makes you wonder what is real and what isn’t. 

Arden does a great job of dropping other real life events into her story, like the famous Halifax explosion of 1917, as well as some medical advances during the time, which I found fascinating. She even includes mentions of the Titanic disaster of 1911, which seven years later is still fresh in people’s minds. The specifics of war in the trenches are painfully described, and as hard as it was to read at times, I have to applaud the author for pulling off such an immersive reading experience. And do make sure to read her author’s note at the end, in which she explains her themes and inspirations.

My only hesitation in giving this a full five stars is the way it ended. Arden gives readers an almost perfect happy ending, perhaps as an antidote to all the suffering the characters went through. But I wonder if the story would have had even more impact on me with a more open ended, not so neatly tied up finale. Still, I’m so happy this was my first Katherine Arden book, and it certainly won’t be my last.

Big thanks to the publisher for providing a review copy.