The Warm Hands of Ghosts Review
If you’ve ever wondered “What if All the Light We Cannot See were actually good?” Wonder no more.
I got a copy of The Warm Hands of Ghosts by Katherine Arden from Netgalley — it caught my eye because I love WWI stories and history. This was everything I wanted from a WWI historical fiction book with a touch of fantasy. Katherine Arden is most well-known for her wildly successful folklore fantasy trilogy The Bear and the Nightingale which I have been meaning to read for years now. I think Warm Hands has given me the push to finally bump Nightingale up my TBR list.
Arden’s writing style is smooth and lyrical and I understand why fantasy readers would love Nightingale so much. I think it’s a challenge to use this style of writing for historical fiction, but it works! The fantasy elements are not introduced until about halfway through the story, so the first half feels reminiscent of All the Light We Cannot See but set in WWI and without glaring ableism. If you’ve ever wondered “What if All the Light We Cannot See were actually good?” wonder no more.
Laura Iven is a field nurse injured in an explosion that struck the field hospital at which she was working and was sent home with a limp, permanent scarring, and a Croix De Guerre. In 1917 she is boarding with a set of creepy old sisters reminiscent of Lillian and Adelaide Proctor in The Diviners after she has lost both her parents, and her family home, and received word from the Canadian army that her brother is missing and presumed dead when she receives a ghostly message saying her brother Freddie is still alive. We get a dual-perspective narrative (also like All the Light We Cannot See) with Freddie in this book — not only is he still alive, but he has teamed up with the enemy to escape a deathtrap in no man’s land, only to fall into the hands of a mysterious stranger who seems all too eager to help them. Laura returns to field nursing (and the traumatizing horrors of war) in Belgium to follow up on the cryptic message.
This story is grueling and heartbreaking. All the characters have endured unspeakable tragedies in the process of WWI unrelated to the meat of the main story, where they endure even more. Despite the dark nature of the narrative, it does not feel like trauma porn. Every line and action has a purpose and I felt transported into the action and the characters. Solid four stars.
