A review by izzalice
The Warm Hands of Ghosts by Katherine Arden

dark emotional mysterious medium-paced

5.0

The Warm Hands of Ghosts by Katherine Arden is a haunting story set during the First World War told from the perspective of two siblings. 

We start off in January 1918 with Laura Ivens, a nurse honourably discharged due to injury and sent back to her home in Halifax, Canada. While there, she receives word of her brother’s death on the fields of Passchendaele, but something doesn’t seem right. 

Then we switch to the Passchendaele Ridge in November 1917, with Freddie Ivens trapped in a collapsed pillbox with an enemy soldier. Miraculously, the two men manage to dig themselves out and, having saved each other’s lives, form an intense bond of friendship. And then they meet a man- a fiddler- who seems to have the power to make the murdering chaos around them disappear, but at what cost? 

Convinced he is still alive, Laura goes to France as a volunteer for a hospital near the front line off battle to try to unravel the mystery. 

Imaginative, deeply humane, and never shying away from the gritty horrors that soldiers faced, The Warm Hands of Ghosts is such an exquisite and harrowing story. The incorporation of ghosts and the mysteries surrounding the fiddler is so well done and despite the jumping around in time, the novel has such a rhythmic flow to it. Katherine Arden has created such an excellent blend of the historical and the fantastical and you truly won’t want to let these characters go.