I read the Winternight Trilogy years ago, before I was really ever on bookish social media. I was captured by the descriptive and emotive prose of Katherine Arden, and when I heard she was going to write a paranormal historical fiction, I knew I had to pick it up. A huge thank you to Del Rey who provided me with a Netgalley arc of The Warm Hands of Ghosts in exchange for my honest thoughts.
Katherine Arden | Goodreads
During the Great War, a combat nurse searches for her brother, believed dead in the trenches despite eerie signs that suggest otherwise, in this hauntingly beautiful historical novel with a speculative twist from the New York Times bestselling author of The Bear and the Nightingale.
January 1918. Laura Iven was a revered field nurse until she was wounded and discharged from the medical corps, leaving behind a brother still fighting in Flanders. Now home in Halifax, Canada, she receives word of Freddie’s death in combat, along with his personal effects—but something doesn’t make sense. Determined to uncover the truth, Laura returns to Belgium as a volunteer at a private hospital. Soon after arriving, she hears whispers about haunted trenches, and a strange hotelier whose wine gives soldiers the gift of oblivion. Could Freddie have escaped the battlefield, only to fall prey to something—or someone—else?
November 1917. Freddie Iven awakens after an explosion to find himself trapped in an overturned pillbox with a wounded enemy soldier, a German by the name of Hans Winter. Against all odds, the two men form an alliance and succeed in clawing their way out. Unable to bear the thought of returning to the killing fields, especially on opposite sides, they take refuge with a mysterious man who seems to have the power to make the hellscape of the trenches disappear.
As shells rain down on Flanders, and ghosts move among those yet living, Laura’s and Freddie’s deepest traumas are reawakened. Now they must decide whether their world is worth salvaging—or better left behind entirely.
Some content warnings include: War, death, medical content such as surgery, PTSD, blood, gore, injury, violence
Review of The Warm Hands of Ghosts
Setting & Paranormal Elements
The setting of this book takes place during World War One, which is not a setting that I usually gravitate towards. I know there is a lot of World War Two historical fiction out there, and I don’t usually like to spend my time reading about wars in Europe when I have found other historical fiction settings to be more aligned with my interests. However, I will acknowledge that World War One really set the foundational stage to the geopolitics we have today in the West, and much of the imperialistic and capitalistic systems we experience today have important roots during this era as well.
With this setting as the backdrop, the author brings to the forefront the horrors and trauma of war; of poor folks fighting rich men’s wars, and the long-term impact that this kind of violence has on a psyche. The ghosts and the paranormal parts of this are the perfect addition to this setting, and it highlights the trauma and the desperation felt by people who have experienced the violence of war.
The paranormal/fantastical elements are a subtle haunting that’s written within the lines and in between the pauses of conversations. I wouldn’t personally recommend this to horror fans looking for a thrill because this is not that kind of book. Ghosts are there but not there, they are hidden in the moments and stuck in between moments. They come as a tantalizing relief, a pause between the violence, and a wishing for what could have been. To me, it really shows the skill of Arden as a writer to be able to delicately weave these instances within the brutality of war. It’s a poetic juxtaposition; and I absolutely loved this aspect of the book.
Characters
The cast in this novel carried the plot in compelling ways. We have two main points of view: the first is Laura Iven, who was a combat nurse who was sent home to Canada due to an injury, who then goes back to France to search for her brother. The other point of view is her brother Fred, who is on the front lines and trying to escape the hell that is no-man’s-land after he is left for dead on the battlefield. As the story progresses, the points of view carry the characters closer to each other towards a bittersweet but satisfying ending. Each character is full of depth and their goals are distinct and carry them through the plot with agency, and to foil all of them is our mysterious violin player who seems to offer all his guests exactly what they want.
Themes
There were two main themes that highlighted themselves to me. The first theme was the historical element of the poor folks fighting the rich man’s war. This is highlighted in stark reference to the generals and strategists living lives of luxury in French chateaus mere miles away from the trenches, which most famously inspired Tolkien’s land of Mordor. There’s an instance where the strategists decided to place a hospital by a large stockpile of explosives thinking the enemy would not bomb the hospital but the enemy did anyways. That event is often remembered by the characters not so much as the enemy bombing the hospital, but as a critique of the strategists who put the hospital there to begin with.
The second theme was a question that took the appearance of a faustian deal along the lines of “what would you give to forget all of this?” In the wake of the war being so utterly horrific for those on the front lines, the answer becomes incredibly simple for many characters: they’d give anything and everything they could. Both Laura and Fred have to claw through every emotion and hurt to find each other and cling to what they can to survive this ordeal. The existential questions that continually present themselves throughout the narrative challenge the characters to assess what is the meaning of their lives and what hope does their future hold.
Overall, this was a solid read. It was emotional and kept me engaged, it was heartbreaking and bittersweet all throughout. I definitely recommend it if you’re looking for a historical fiction with a paranormal twist, and a war story that doesn’t so much focus on the war, but on the horrors that war creates.
The Warm Hands of Ghosts by Katherine Arden is out tomorrow, February 13th, 2024!
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