“Give people God’s power-to build ships like islands, or fly like birds, or set fire to the bowels of earth like the devil in his damned pit—it just writes their stupidity larger and larger until they drown the whole world.

Our hands get bigger and our spirits shrink. Is it any wonder, really, that God’s done with us?”

From the devastating aftermath of the Halifax explosion to the horrors of the trenches, The Warm Hands of Ghosts by Katherine Arden is a novel which starkly captures the tragedies of World War One.

The year is 1918 and Laura Iven, a discharged combat nurse, is sent to Halifax, Canada where unknowingly further turmoil awaits her. When she receives her brother’s military identification tags, she is left uncertain whether he has died fighting overseas in the trenches or if he’s missing. Seeking answers Laura travels back to Belgium and volunteers as a nurse in a private hospital, whilst also desperately searching for any news of her brother.
The year is 1917 and Freddie Iven is trapped under the remains of an upended pillbox with an enemy soldier. Together they must fight their way to freedom and traverse across no man’s land where survival is never guaranteed. In the midst of both these lives is the fiddler, a strange figure who can grant your heart’s desires, who can take away your worst memories and turn them into melodies on his violin, yet the price you pay for these small blessings may just be too much.

From the author’s note we immediately know how historically detailed this novel will be and this proved true as many events during that period were included throughout. I have to applaud Arden for this as the novel really immerses the reader and gives an air of historical authenticity. I do however think my expectations for the prose were too high as I had expected atmospheric and poetically descriptive scenes but that is not what we get here and this unfortunately left me disappointed. Yet I realise Arden wanted to show the toll war takes on everyone in a stark and more blunt manner. There are scenes of utter despair, harrowing grief and not just the physical casualties but the mental too. This is not always an easy read, but it is a powerful one. 

Through alternating perspectives and dual timelines we weave through Laura and Freddie’s lives as they try to reach each other. As a combat nurse Laura is a character who has experienced the horrors of war first hand. She’s a woman who has seen soldiers with missing limbs, children burnt, families distraught, and to be able to face that amount of trauma day in, day out is to become emotionally hardened. Laura is a woman who is practical, methodical and not easily swayed by blind faith or the comfort of hope. She’s a woman of facts. It’s easy to call Laura cold-hearted but look a little closer into her character and you’ll see that’s far from who she is—she’s just a survivor. Her chapters are much slower paced, which is something I struggled with as I felt many of her chapters didn’t move the plot forward enough. Nevertheless they do effectively paint the grim reality of a nurse’s job during the war.

“They flung themselves flat and began crawling. A whizz-bang whined and splashed into a shell hole, nearer still, but this one didn’t explode. Cover—they needed cover. A machine gun chortled, far too near. There must be a hole there, not yet flooded, a trench… something. Another shell splashed down, and another howled as it flew. They reached the lip of a crater and Freddie tumbled in, his cry lost in the almighty noise.”

In contrast, Freddie’s chapters were much more tense and filled with claustrophobia and urgency. I personally felt significantly more engaged with his character as we see through the eyes of a young soldier, completely out of his depth and caught between wanting to remain a loyal soldier and saving an enemy. Throughout Freddie is afraid, naive and often on the cusp of giving up and without Hans Winter he surely would have. Experiencing their closeness blossoming amongst all the death and devastation was actually quite endearing to follow. It is easy to see why our Freddie is drawn in by the fiddler because any escape is better than none. The fantasy elements in this novel are very subtly played out and are included only as a backdrop to the wider story, it was still well done.

The Warm Hands of Ghosts is a historical fantasy that will touch the hearts of many readers. 

ARC provided by Rachel at Penguin Random House UK in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for the copy!

The Warm Hands of Ghosts is out now. You can order your copy on Bookshop.org