The Warm Hands of Ghosts by Katherine Arden
SYNOPSIS
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, Laura recieves 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, where she soon hears whispers about haunted trenches and a strange hotelier whose win 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 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.
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After The Winternight Trilogy, Katherine Arden has become an auto-buy author for me and the excitement I had to be reading another book from her after so long was unmatched. The Warm Hands of Ghosts did not disappoint. Arden has a way of turning words on pages into chaotic fever dreams with vivid settings and feelings that dig deep into your heart. The alternating timelines between Laura and Freddie and the overlap in their stories kept me hooked, rooting for them to find even the slightest trace of the other. I love historical fiction but I haven’t read a lot based around WWI and certainly not from the Canadian point of view so I also found that extremely interesting. Bringing in the trauma from the Halifax explosion as well when I’ve never even connected that being during wartime had me thinking hard about coincidences and how they tied into the book themes of hell on earth. I do feel it was a slow paced book with a very short climax but the writing was so beautiful that even slow-going, I loved reading it.
We follow two different timelines as you can see from the synopsis. We start with Laura in the aftermath of the Halifax explosion finding out her brother is missing in action and deciding to go back to the front to find him. Throughout her story she overcomes trauma, sickness, disability, and mistrust to go back to the place from her nightmares and help in a hospital while searching for signs of her brother and only hearing stories of an elusive fiddler instead. We follow Freddie while he escapes certain death on the front, forming an unbreakable bond with the German soldier who was trapped with him in the trenches after an explosion. To save his new friend, Winter, Freddie gives himself over to the mysterious Faland, hotelier and fiddler… sound familiar? It’s never explicitly stated what Faland is but I think it’s quite obvious he’s some form of the The Devil. Which begs the question, which is worse? Dying in hellish trenches surrounded by fear and death? Or languishing in luxury and oblivion in what you know is actual hell?
The characterization in this stumped me. And not in a bad way, but I definitely had questions. Laura is somewhat cold and distant yet we see small glimpses of softness in her. Even knowing these aspects of her character, I don’t feel like I really got to know her even though she was our main character. I felt like I knew her the least of the entire cast. I also had some holdbacks with Laura’s friend Pim. Pim lost her husband and then her son to the war. She goes with Laura back to the front to find answers and is slowly entranced by the fiddler. I struggled with my frustration for her. Knowing that if I were in her position I’d probably do the same to find out why my family was taken from me, but as an observer, her actions meddled in affairs much larger than herself and I had no patience for it. I did, however, find her struggle with faith to be an interesting plot point and the obvious answer for her loss had her turning to the adversary instead. She’s almost damned from the start of her journey so seeing it play out was fascinating. The foreshadowing of what she was up to wasn’t very subtle but I enjoyed it anyway. I think the thing I found most relatable in Pim wraps up well in this quote:
"It was so much easier to hate a man than a system…”
I found Freddie another character that was hard to relate to as, for most of this book, he’s losing himself. But I also felt like I knew him the best as we spent so much time inside his head during his points of view, witnessing everything that made him who he is from the happiest moments to the lowest of lows. I did find his chapters to be fever dream in quality and almost unbearably hard to keep my interest yet I was also very impressed with the disjointed imagery and how realistic the writing portrayed this sense of loss and madness. I found the romantic side plot (no spoilers I promise) to be an interesting turn but I also felt like romance almost didn’t belong in this book. All these characters are so traumatized that is a trauma bond the best reason to start a relationship? I know it happens extremely commonly during war times but the characters themselves reflect in this very book how careless it is to commit to a relationship because of a bond built by impossible situations. So seeing them fall into the same situation felt off. I did find the romance heart-rending and it was the one part of the book that had me snot-crying but I also feel like it fit like a crooked puzzle piece.
I really enjoyed getting into the mind and characters of Arden again after all these years and she still has such a mighty pen to write such heartbreaking, realistic, vivid scenes and characters. I gave this book 4 stars and it’s wonderful if you love historical fiction with a bit of magical realism.