Colleen Mondor Reviews The Warm Hands of Ghosts by Katherine Arden
The Warm Hands of Ghosts, Katherine Arden (Del Rey 978-0-593-12825-1, $28.99, 318pp, hc) February 2024.
As The Warm Hands of Ghosts opens, former field nurse Laura Iven is still reeling from the deaths of her parents following the catastrophic explosion of a cargo ship laden with explosives in the harbor of her hometown, Halifax, Nova Scotia. (This is based on a real event in 1917.) Laura was home after suffering her own grievous wound on the war’s western front in Belgium and can hardly bear this new tragedy. Then a trunk arrives with some of her brother’s personal effects and the suggestion, but not clear confirmation, that he has died in combat. Unable to get the answers she needs about what happened to Freddie, Laura jumps at the chance to return to the war and find people who might know more. Haunted by her mother’s ghost, compelled to pursue the possibility that Freddie is still alive, and unwilling to remain behind when the chance to do something commands that she return to Belgium, she boards a ship. What lies ahead are answers, nightmares, and the devil himself in this outstanding title set during the First World War.
In the hands of author Katherine Arden, who was inspired by how J.R.R. Tolkien’s war experiences influenced his creation of Mordor, the horrors of war in the trenches, and particularly the muddy nightmare that was the Battle of Passchendaele, are laid bare in the novel’s pages. Shifting back and forth between Laura’s return, with two new friends to Belgium, and Freddie’s experience on the battlefield a couple of months before, Arden sets events in motion for the two story lines to converge. They do so only after all of Freddie’s travails are detailed, many of them in the company of a courageous former enemy/fellow survivor named Hans Winter. Only a few miles away from her sibling, but kept separated by the nefarious machinations of a mysterious hotelier who seems to thrive in the chaos of war, Laura slowly works through the clues that bring her closer to Freddie. To save him, though, she has to stand up to evils perpetrated by both man and monster, and face down the creature who is fiddling away all of Freddie’s memories.
Whether or not readers are well-versed in the history of the First World War, The Warm Hands of Ghosts hits hard as a novel of survival, horror, and the melancholia of fleeting hope. In Winter’s determination, Laura’s gritty steadfastness, Freddie’s wistfulness, and the shocking revelations in the final pages that upend the plot and reveal disturbing secrets among supporting characters, this is a title that sets the ugliness of war at the center while crafting a beautiful tale of love (so much love), in the lives of those immersed within it. Yes, a truly crafty devil is at work here, but so is grace, and even sly humor. Fans of Pat Barker, Sigfried Sassoon, and Tolkien will all find much to love in these pages. The Warm Hands of Ghosts is a stunner, and a reading experience that will not be soon forgotten.
This review and more like it in the February 2024 issue of Locus.
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