I’d heard a decent amount of praise for Katherine Arden’s Winternight Trilogy, but the TBR is too long to read everything that’s praised, and she dropped far enough off my radar that I barely noticed when The Warm Hands of Ghosts released earlier this year. But I’d seen people calling it their favorite book of the year and praising the character work and portrayal of familial relationships with death and tragedy all around, which was plenty to get my attention and add it to my list. 

The Warm Hands of Ghosts follows a Canadian brother and sister in World War I. Laura had worked as a nurse before being sent home after an injury in a hospital bombing, with Freddie lost and presumed dead in the trenches. But when Laura gets word suggesting Freddie may still be alive, she immediately looks for a way to get back across the Atlantic to track him down; meanwhile, Freddie is both fighting to stay alive in a literal war zone and fighting the despair that could see him give up on the first battle entirely. 

I’m not usually a huge fan of military fiction, but The Warm Hands of Ghosts contains almost no actual combat scenes, focusing instead on the psychological fallout of witnessing horrors on an enormous scale and losing friends and family. Stories about characters working through psychologically taxing situations are much more my speed, and The Warm Hands of Ghosts truly delivered. 

At the start of the book, Laura is safely back in Canada, barely holding herself together after losing three family members in quick succession. Freddie is missing, and the only speculative elements on the table are the early 20th century fashion for seances. But it isn’t long before we begin to see chapters from Freddie’s perspective, and the reports of interactions with ghosts start getting harder to deny, opening into a true dual-perspective narrative whose speculative and non-speculative elements progress in tandem. Both leads have witnessed horrors and have the psychological scars to prove it, and the natural horrors dovetail perfectly with a ghost story that borrows more than a few tropes from Fae tales, focusing heavily on memory, whether memory preserved or memory given up. 

While Laura’s story has a bit more complexity than Freddie’s, I found the latter to be on the whole more powerful. Don’t get me wrong, I like both a lot, but Freddie’s tale has a psychological rawness that makes it hard to look away, as he clings to one goal as singular motivation to stay alive, battling feelings of despair and worthlessness and the temptation to take the easy way out. It’s a mental slog that doesn’t admit of quick fixes, but it remains gripping to the reader even as the character wanders well-trod patterns. 

Laura can take a more active role in the plot, with a clear goal and the skills to serve those around her while waiting for information and the opportunity to act on it. But even so, she fights many of the same battles as Freddie, having herself been injured in her previous tour, having herself lost family, and being directly confronted with the callousness of those running the war. While she may be more focused and mentally whole, she still feels the full weight of a slow-moving tragedy that feels to those on the ground like the end of the world, and the echo of Freddie’s battles in Laura’s arc serves only to strengthen the thematic depth. 

If I have any complaint here, it’s in the romantic subplots, particularly the speed at which they move. It’s not at all surprising to see characters deeply attached to co-laborers in such an emotionally intense setting, but The Warm Hands of Ghosts speeds too quickly to the end, leaving the romantic elements feeling rushed and underdeveloped. 

But the romance is a minor subplot, and if it moves too quickly, it takes away little from a novel that is truly my favorite of the year so far. The Warm Hands of Ghosts is heavy yet easy to read, with both main character arcs combining wonderfully with both the historical setting and the supernatural elements to deliver a tale with oceans of psychological depth and an intense weightiness of living through manmade tragedy and despairing to find life again on the other side. It’s truly an excellent read, and one I highly recommend. 

Recommended if you like: war stories that aren’t combat heavy, fighting through psychological trauma. 

Can I use it for Bingo? It’s hard mode for Character with a Disability and for Survival, and it’s also Published in 2024 and features Dreams, Bards, and Reference Materials. 

Overall rating: 18 of Tar Vol’s 20. Five stars on Goodreads.