4.5 stars!
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for providing me with an e-arc of this book! My opinions are my own.

I have read the Winternight Trilogy by Katherine Arden and I was mesmerized by her enchanting writing style. I love the way history, folklore and fantasy come together and leave me wondering what is real, what is not, and what might be real without me even knowing it.

While I was looking forward to reading this new book, I did wonder whether the fairytale-like undercurrent would be present in this story, too, seeing as it takes place during world war I. And yes - it sure is there. Throughout the book there's always this feeling that something just isn't right, something else is going on, something that cannot be understood through reasoning alone. It might be fairytale-like, but there's no guarantee for a happy ending.

The story takes place during the first world war and the atrocities, the fear, the pain... It's all there. It's in the writing itself, too: short, determined sentences, as if there's no time to say anything more. No use, either.

Katherine Arden just has a way with words and with storytelling that I haven't found with any other author quite in the same way. I definitely recommend this book!

uality Rating: Four Stars
Enjoyment Rating: Three Stars

War fiction isn’t generally a genre I’m interested in, but I’ve been homesick for the magic of Arden’s historical fantasy so didn’t hesitate to jump headfirst into this one. Her magical realism elevates any story and while The Warm Hands of Ghosts is far more rooted in reality than her other novels, the book balances both well to tell a story quite unique.

My one reservation about this novel was how slow it was to start. Arden takes real time to build depth in her characters beyond the typical war time portraits, but it’s more than a third of the way through before we get some actual fantasy. What becomes an almost timeless saga, seeing more sides to the war than trenches and hospitals, takes quite a lot of lead in time to grow in new directions.

The ‘some people cannot create, they can only use and destroy’ motifs are the real polish for me. While thematically it sometimes gets battered about, it is undeniably the core of a dazzling crescendo, and a very long thread tying each person and each story together. The narrative takes place over about a year or so, but far less consistently than we tend to be used to in modern novels - that thematic truth of nature is what marries it all together.

Laura herself is a great character to anchor the sweeping story, time period and ensemble cast. It could have been so easy to fall into stereotype but the brusque nurse doesn’t drown out the emotional person underneath - and likewise her logic is always there for Laura to fall back on in defence. Her identity, and her companions’, are crafted so well the story can be political without derailing the narrative for a moral high ground. Beliefs and actions are consistent because they align with the characters we are falling for.

I really do love Arden’s bittersweet style of storytelling. Everything always feels so rich and grim and exciting all at once. The Warm Hands of Ghosts harkens to so many references from folklore, to poetry, to music, to history and on and on. But her story feels uniquely original and new - and that’s hard to come by.

It's no secret that I'm a huge fan of the Winternight trilogy, its magical atmosphere and characters in particular. So I've been highly anticipating Katherine Arden's new Adult book since it's been announced. Yet upon reading the first chapters, I realized that I'd better adjust my expectations to get the most of this book : indeed if there *is* a speculative twist, The Warm Hands of Ghosts is a historical novel set during WW1 most of all, and in my opinion you shouldn't go in there expecting something reminiscing of Vasya's story. You won't find it. Her writing here is more raw, to the point—and if it suited the story so well, it's undeniably different.

You should still read this book, however.

The Warm Hands of Ghosts is hauntingly beautiful, eerie yet realistic—truly an all-consuming experience. It doesn't shy away from the horrors of war and is very graphic at times, and the dash of magic doesn't undermine the hopelessness of it all—on the contrary, it makes the unreality of war so much more pregnant. I was there with the characters, and I cared *so much*. Slow but never boring, it captured my interest quickly and never let go.

My only real complaint is the way the ending wrapped everything in a neat bow, but then how can I find fault in that when it made me so very happy? I can't, really. In this house we try not to be hypocrites, so. yeah. The romances might have been a bit underdeveloped, but I was rooting for them all the way. They *worked*.

This story will stay with me for a very long time. Recommended to Historical fiction readers.

I received an ARC from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

The Warm Hands of Ghosts is a story about what war does to people, told through the eyes of Laura, scarred and traumatised from her time as a field hospital nurse, and her brother Freddie, a solider who finds himself in No Man's Land with an enemy solider. It's historical fiction, but with a dreamlike and whimsical, but also dark, magical realism atmosphere. A bit like if The Night Circus was a war movie, with emphasis (interestingly) on movie.

I always love themes of normal people in war, and I think this one did that very well. It's in all the details, from our main characters Laura and Freddie and how their traumas affect the way they view the world, to their mother, a conspiracy theorist made worse in the face of war, to the contrast between normal soldiers dying on the battle field and their superiors throwing lavish parties that we glimpse here and there in Laura's adventures through Belgium. This also ties in with the magical aspect, the legends of the fiddler and his hotel where you can forget your sorrows for a second, but sometimes in exchange for your own sanity, as well as the ghosts that are ever present. It's also always interesting to read about war from the perspective of the women; Laura is no less involved, injured or traumatised from her time as a nurse than the male soliders are.

Even though the plot was tense enough by far to keep me hooked all the way through, the focal point of The Warm Hands of Ghosts are the characters. There's something about how the characters have gone through so much, and they're still surviving and making it through every day life because they have to, and they find little things to enjoy here and there. There's so much pain, no shying away from the horrors and the darkness, but also a good amount of love and hope. Further, one of my favourite aspects, and also part of why this book reads like a movie, is that we don't know everything about the characters. They all have traumas and experiences that they are doing their very best not to think about, and that they don't want to tell the reader about, so that you kind of have to piece together their histories yourself, and it makes them feel incredibly human.

I also really liked the romance arcs. It takes a certain kind of author to write a romance that is so intense you can feel it without the characters barely even touching each other, and Katherine Arden is that author. I also really liked that this book is almost a little too romantic, in an early 1900s girls book Anne of Green Gables type of way, it made for a really interesting contrast to the otherwise dark themes but also really fit the historical aspect, in some way.

This is such a unique book, I absolutely loved it, and I would highly recommend it, especially to fans of historical fantasy or magical realism books like The Night Circus or The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue. And if you like Katherine Arden's previous books you won't be disappointed either.

Laura’s brother Freddie was fighting in France in the First World War.
She has been sent his belongings but she does not believe that he is dead.
She returns to France to work as a nurse and look for her brother.
A story about family and loss.
Thank you to NetGalley and Random House UK, Cornerstone for my e-copy in exchange for an honest review.

As a huge fan of the Winternight trilogy, I was thrilled to read an early copy of the author's latest historical fantasy offering. This time the action is set in 1918 during the First World War. The story is driven by a Canadian nurse called Laura who returns to the Front after hearing her brother is missing in action. A few months earlier at Ypres, her brother Freddie is trapped in a pillbox with a German soldier, Winter. An unbreakable bond is forged as they are reborn from their living death. And then there is the mysterious Faland, a figure whispered about in the trenches.

In a man-made hellscape like war, the author asks what place does the Devil have? What would he want in such an environment? This character is the fantasy element of the novel but is blended beautifully with the historical setting. Pitted against the horrifying indifference of the war, Faland's curiosity about humans is endless, As Freddie comments later in the novel, "Faland might ruin him ... but he'd know him first".

The central dichotomy is that of the old world versus the new world. We have characters like Laura, Winter, and Jones adapting to the new world and Freddie, Pim, and Faland identifying with the old world. How can these characters survive in this new world? Is oblivion the better option? Seeing how the arcs of all these characters play out is fascinating. Pim's especially is the arc that will linger with me longest. As a war widow and mother of a fallen soldier, Pim is the epitome of the ideal woman and her beauty blinds both the other characters and the reader to the emotions roiling under the surface.

There is so much I could say about the brilliance of this unforgettable novel but it's one I'd highly recommend pre-ordering and discovering for yourself.

Set in war torn Europe, Laura Iven returns to Canada after being injured on the front line. Her parents are killed in the Halifax explosion and her brother is reported as dead. When an opportunity arises to return to Europe she is determined to find out what happened to her brother. The story unfolds through the twin narratives of Laura and her brother Freddie. There is an atmospheric quality to the writing which brings the war to life. Never having read any of KA's novels before, I wasn't expecting the mystical/fantasy twist. I chose to interpret the appearance of Faland as a metaphor for PTSD and the need for soldiers to lose themselves rather than as a character collecting souls..

Thank you to Random House and NetGalley for providing an eArc for review!

“In a way, it’s easier to imagine the world’s going to end. At least there’s a certainty to it. End—bam—done. But change—where does change stop?””

I want to start by saying historical fiction usually isn’t for me, especially not anything WW related. But god, I think I might start to love it. This was so great and atmospheric and human.

Warm hands of Ghosts by Katherine Arden is such a heartfelt story about humanity, love, attachment, death and war. And for some reason it was a page turner, I couldn’t stop reading. It was so so good.

I loved the characters, I loved Freddie and Laura, I loved the dispair and I loved the question of if everything in the world you love is lost to you, what do you do?

This is definitely one of my top reads this year!

“There’s nothing noble about suffering. It’s an ugly, petty, crawling business.”

A well-researched and eloquently told story of the trauma of World War One, both for those in the trenches and those who care for and about them.
Perhaps because I’d previously come across the theme of Tommies selling their souls to the Devil to escape the battlefields, I wasn't intrigued by the allegorical interludes with Farlad and felt the novel was strong enough to stand up well without them. The parts of The Warm Hands of Ghosts that interested me the most were the relationship between British Freddie Iven and German Hans Winter in no-man’s-land, the experiences of Laura and Penelope searching for their menfolk in Belgium and the action-led last quarter of the story.
With thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley for the opportunity to read an early copy in exchange for an independent review.

Liked but didn't love it. Found it hard to work out what was going on a lot of the time. Great characters but wondered how much was allegorical, how much magic and how much madness. The basic storyline was great, the bits about the strange violinist not so much.

I was really grateful to netgalley for giving me an ARC. I've always wanted to try this author.

I gave this book 4.5 stars.
It is mostly a historical novel with slight fantasy elements.

I really enjoy the characters and the writing and found the novel quite gripping.

I knocked half a star off because although I enjoyed it it didn't quite knock my socks off. There were also a lot of themed surrounding trauma and the horrors of war which went over my head a bit. Maybe smarter people would enjoy it more.

Headlines:
Rich characterisation
Palpably tragic
Deep mystery that turned the pages

The Warm Hands of Ghosts was a chokehold of a book; it got me by the scruff and demanded the pages turn. In many ways, this was a discomforting read because of the tragedy unfolding and the sinister characterisation of Faland. However, many of the other characters demanded my attention and made me love them.

Laura was such a tangible and admirable character, a nurse behind war lines, wounded herself in many ways. Her brother, Freddie was the counterpart to this story and his journey through these pages was hideous in many ways but compelling. Winter, Jones and even Pim were strong and deep side characters that made me lose myself to the story.

Faland was the kind of character that made the hairs stand up on my arms, I hated him and yet didn't understand who he was. I scoured the pages to work out his identity and felt most comfortable when the story moved away from him, but he was always lurking in the wings.

The sense of WW1 could be felt. Some of the experiences conjured sights and sounds that were just awful but no doubt true. I found myself curious about the Angels of Mons and found that tale to be based in legend of the times. The description was never long-winded and the show versus tell was balanced incredibly well.

This was a clever, memorable story. The writing was easy, even when the narrative was difficult. Arden led the reader carefully through the traumatic experiences and mixed the history with magic and myth rather seamlessly.

Thank you to Century Books for the review copy.

I honestly forgot just how much I love Arden's writing. Haunting and beautiful at the same time, she never fails when it comes to creating the exact atmosphere needed for a scene, and when I tell you that she took me through the emotional ringer with this book, I am not exaggerating.

Laura Ivan is one of those characters that you don't simply become invested in, you almost become her. Her wants and needs and hopes become your own, and you can't help but want her to get a happy ending, whatever that looks like. She's someone who has had to be tough her whole life, a nurse in the war who has seen her fair share of death, but after her hospital is bombed and she gets a piece of shrapnel in the leg, Laura finds herself shipped home to Halifax. But Laura isn't the type to sit idly by, especially when she receives notice that her younger brother, Freddie, is lost in action. Her journey takes her back into the trenches of WW1, her only clue a mysterious figure called the fiddler who her patients talk of with hope and horror in equal measure. She's someone who has spent so long taking care of others, she's forgotten how to take care of herself, she's stubborn, bullheaded in some cases, but she will not give up if there is even the tiniest bit of hope that Freddie is still alive.

Freddie signed up hoping for glory, instead he got death and more death. After an explosion he finds himself trapped in the dark, but he isn't alone, with him is a German soldier called Winter. The pair form a tenuous alliance to try and survive, and once out they realise that there is no where to go, no where they won't be shot, called traitor or deserter. So when they meet the elusive Fiddler, he offers a chance they struggle to turn down. Arden also graces us with a tight knit, but intricately developed cast of side characters, from Winter the German soldier Freddie befriends, to Pim, a woman trying to do her bit after being told her son had died in the war.

Through both Freddie and Laura, Arden shows the true horror of war, not the fanciful, almost glorified propaganda we get to see, but the deep, dark truth of it. She shows what war can turn people into, how men who were suffering from the worst kinds of PTSD were seen as cowards, traitors, and shot for their supposed weakness. She doesn't shy away from the horror, the brutality, instead she embraces it, shows us it in all it's haunting glory, but she also shows the things that can grow out of those kinds of situations, friendships, love even, and despite the dark and horrifying nature of the story, it's also one filled with hope. There's one certain story line that absolutely broke me, and shows how war affects, not just those in it, but the ones they leave at home. She shows there is a price to pay for these wars, and how it's never the men in charge who end up paying it. You can feel how deep Arden went with the research describing battles, towns, people as they were at the time, and all of this together added up to make a read that was both harrowing and hopeful in equal measure.

My expectations for this book were beyond high, especially having loved Ardens previous series, but this struck me in a different way. The fantasy element in this book was smaller, less intense, but that doesn't mean it didn't play an integral part in the story. Throughout the book we hear stories about, and eventually end up meeting the mysterious Fiddler. Someone shell shocked men have nightmares about, and people look on with both hope and horror. I thought how Arden wove the fiddlers specific magic into this story was so incredibly well done. It adds to the emotion and tension, and despite knowing that he wasn't a 'good guy' you couldn't help but empathise with the people who made the decision to follow him, knowing what would happen to themselves and thinking that an easier 'out' than living in the real world. It's something I wont delve too deeply into because I believe it's something you should experience first hand, without any clues, so as to feel the full emotional impact yourself.

Now I've talked about the dark, and hopeless side to this story, but there is a light at the end of the tunnel, I promise. There were two romance arcs in this book that I adored. They take up so little time, and almost slowly creep up on us as the reader, but I just felt they were so true to the time and the events that these characters had to go through. War can create horror and torment people, but it can also bring people together and I think Arden did a brilliant job at allowing us, and her characters, these little rays of hope, whilst never shying away from the horror and danger and outright hypocrisy of war.

I can't tell you how much I loved this book, I was so afraid it wasn't going to live up to my own hype, but if anything it exceed it. Arden is a skillful storyteller and knows exactly how to create an atmosphere and ring emotions out of her readers. Fans of her Winternight series might be in for a shock because this is overwhelmingly different in so many ways, but it's still beautifully written, and I found myself completely overcome with emotion reading the last 10% or so of the book, desperately wanting these characters to come out of this unharmed, but knowing that just wasn't going to happen.

A moving and mythical story of love and sacrifice in WW1

Tough no nonsense nurse Laura searches for her brother Freddie among the horrors of WW1. While searching she hears many stories of The Fiddler but who is he and what does he mean in her search for her brother?

It took me a bit to get into this one and I found the pace a bit slow but overall I enjoyed The Warm Hands of Ghosts. Told from the pov of Laura and Freddie, I particularly enjoyed Freddie’s chapters especially before he gets caught up with the Fiddler.

I actually think I would have enjoyed this book more without the ghost element. It is an interesting and well written story but I confess to getting a bit ‘lost’ in some of the Fiddler sections.

Thanks to Random House and Netgalley for the chance to read an early copy

This is far more historical than fantasy than Arden previous adult Winternight trilogy, however it works better for this kind of story. The main character, Laura Iven, is a WWI combat nurse who was invalided out of the army due to injury when the hospital where she worked was bombed. (For anyone who isn't aware of this, bombing a hospital or luring caretakers/ nurses in with injured people and then deliberately bombing them is a war crime. Then again, choosing to hide your munitions/ troops/ terrorist organisation next to or under a hospital to exploit this should be considered a war crime.) This is already an interesting perspective because for all the stories set around WWI, few seem to have considered that the trauma and horrors happening to the soldiers, were also happening to the nurses and medical staff. When Laura receives her younger brother's personal effects and dog tags with no telegram to say that he is dead, she goes back to the front as a volunteer in a private hospital.

Freddie, Laura's brother, is the second pov character and his sections are set just before her trip back to Belgium. No spoilers but the terrifying circumstances he finds himself in and the unlikely and unbreakable bond he forms with one of the 'enemy' because of this, become the driving force of his arc.

The story unfolds like a mystery novel occasionally nudged along by ghostly visitations that seem as terrifying as they are helpful, and all the while the fiddler player wanders, debonair and unaffected, amidst the horrors of the trenches collecting new songs.

I don't want to unravel anymore of the plot because it's best if you go in not knowing too much. What interested me especially, was making the fantastical elements so low key in comparison with the gritty realism of trench warfare. I think this worked especially well as it didn't elevate WWI conditions into anything noble or even sensical, even if the characters managed to be noble and brave in the moment. The takeaway point of war in the subjective is that no one is good or bad, everyone is trying to survive and everyone is capable of harm.

Weave that in with a sort of 'The Devil went down to Georgia' style folktale and a hint of the rising Spiritualist movement, and you've got an unusual and multifaceted story. If you're looking for the flowing, dream like prose from The Bear and the Nightingale, you won't find it here. The style is shaped to fit people who don't know if their next moment may not be their last, who keep a tight rein on their emotions because there is not time to break down. That said, it is still a beautifully told story, which at its heart examines how even when you strip away everything else, even when you yourself believe you are emotionally barren, there is still the potential for love.
Not really a ghost story, but a stunning and redemptive tale nevertheless.

DNF at 55%
I struggled with this book, but I guess I should have managed my expectations a bit better.
I gave it a fair shot but I can’t keep reading if at 50% mark I still have not connected with any character or plot point. The writing was all over the place and often it felt the author did not know where to take her characters.
I wasn’t expecting to feel…bored. It felt like a massive chore to pick up this book.
You can tell the author researched a lot to write this book. It is brutally realistic and no detail is left astray to setup the narrative but unfortunately that was pretty much the only good point of the book for me.
Many thanks to the publisher and netgalley for the copy.

Probably the most poignant and deeply moving First World War story I have ever read! Beautifully written with such emotive characters - I couldn’t put it down! I just wish I had read it before visiting the Somme a few years ago. We even visited the square in Poperinghe! Reading this story brought that memory back so vividly! Laura, a field nurse during the early part of the war, returns to the war zone to look for her brother Freddie who went missing during the taking of Passchendaele Ridge. It is here that both she and her brother come across Faland, a mystical violinist who literally plays on their memories together with friend Pim’s! Pim is looking to find retribution for her dead son Jimmy amongst the horror stories they all encounter! A truly wonderful story that had me in tears at its conclusion!

Thank you for NetGalley for providing me with this book for review. This is not my usual type of book, so I went into it with an open mind. Well what a glorious read it was, it took me away to another time, I would highly recommend this book.

Tragic, strange, mythic, alluring : First World War setting and collective unconscious

What a rich, horrific, strangely redemptive book this is. Arden has written several wonderful books which delve into the collective unconscious that myths, folk tales and fairy tales come from. There is never anything twee about her writing, though much which is heart-breakingly tender and compassionate. She absolutely satisfies head, heart and visceral gut for this reader, as her writing is precise and beautiful, her characters deep and unsettling, and she always serves the narrative drive of ‘tell me a story’, and does not overspend time thrashing about in the same place meaninglessly.

THIS particular book though, heralds a kind of departure, as its wellspring comes from that real, viscerally agonising tragic and horrific place of the trenches of the First World War. A place where so many varnished, dangerous, glittering myths of glory were sold to the naïve and idealistic, and the terrible outcomes left continuing scars in our collective unconscious.

Arden’s own forays into that myth landscape are not abandoned, though, which gives a particular rich resonance to this book, weaving known factual history – the explosion of a munitions ship in Halifax, Nova Scotia which killed nearly 2000 and injured 9000 more, and the often described horrors of Passchendaele/Ypres .

The Central character in this is Laura Iven, a Canadian Nurse, with a missing brother in the trenches. Laura has served one tour of duty, and suffered horrible injuries. Back in Halifax, further traumatised by that munitions ship explosion, she chooses to return to France, her hidden agenda to either confirm her brother’s death, or to find him.

Arden’s wonderful twist into the inevitable stories which sprung up in the trenches – ghosts, guardian angels and all – is the creation of a completely mysterious musician, Faland, who composes diabolic music sometimes so sweet and transporting, sometime brutal beyond measure, that he is both feared and yearned for. There are literary references to Milton’s Paradise Lost, so that the reader inevitably thinks of that fallen angel, Lucifer – but I also found myself deep in the myth of Orpheus. Orpheus, in Greek myth, weaves music so sweet that everything is enchanted, and the gods allow him the gift of going into the Underworld to rescue his beloved dead wife, Eurydice, and bring her back to the living world.

Faland is like some shadow Orpheus, his music taking the living into some terrible unspeakable darkness within themselves

This is a stunning, glorious and magical book. It took Arden two years to write, and has clearly come from some deep and authentic place. It will be difficult to start another fictional book, and I shall have to read something non-fiction till this book releases me from its clutches.

The Warm Hands of Ghosts by Katherine Arden

A different aspect from the usual WW1 genre books. This starts off in Nova Scotia in Halifax and a man and a woman , siblings .
We are then transported to Flanders and the horrors of war . As they as being a historical novel it also turns into being a supernatural / ghost story , which is something I have not come across before.