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A review by toggle_fow
The Warm Hands of Ghosts by Katherine Arden
2.0
This book is for someone specific. If you loved The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue and are a fan of Natasha Pulley, you might be that person.
Unfortunately, I am not that person.
This book is a historical fantasy where Laura, a former battlefield nurse, goes in search of her brother, a soldier gone missing-presumed-dead under strange circumstances. We follow Laura and her brother's stories in parallel until they finally converge.
I was so ready to be insane about this book. WWI and ghosts? How can that NOT be a five-star read? I was all in for the first 20%, but atmospheric stories are always a struggle for me and this one is very much so. And then we took a left turn away from ghosts and towards an Addie LaRue-esque magical devil figure, which is not nearly as much my vibe.
I got bogged down in the middle and, if I wasn't traveling with little else to do, I doubt I would have finished this without a lot of travail.
The primary thing this book did well is atmosphere. Its prose is very effective at creating a fractured, ungrounded feeling where everything becomes unclear. Good, evil, identity, reality, and everything you thought you knew blending into a soupy morass that fudges the borders of sanity. It's very good at conveying the absolutely self- and psyche-shattering nature of the war.
The characters feel very far away. Freddie is drifting somewhere between barely sane and completely untethered at all times, but even Laura, who is matter-of-fact and practical at all times, felt extremely distant to me as a reader. Absolutely no one is talking to each other about anything important. Absolutely no one is processing anything. Everyone is acting wooden, like puppets jerking through the day-to-day motions with no thought because they can't do anything else.
This is probably deliberate, and perhaps accurate to the way the characters would be functioning (or not) under the circumstances. But it did hamper my ability to care about all of them. There were two hard-hitting moments for me. First, Laura closing her eyes and asking her mom to help them at the end. And second, Laura's tightly-controlled jealousy after they get home safely and she finds that Freddie and Winter's relationship means she's still, fundamentally, alone.
Other than that, I found it fairly hard to connect with this slow-paced fever dream. I think this book will find its audience among those readers who appreciate a transportative atmosphere above all other things.
Unfortunately, I am not that person.
This book is a historical fantasy where Laura, a former battlefield nurse, goes in search of her brother, a soldier gone missing-presumed-dead under strange circumstances. We follow Laura and her brother's stories in parallel until they finally converge.
I was so ready to be insane about this book. WWI and ghosts? How can that NOT be a five-star read? I was all in for the first 20%, but atmospheric stories are always a struggle for me and this one is very much so. And then we took a left turn away from ghosts and towards an Addie LaRue-esque magical devil figure, which is not nearly as much my vibe.
I got bogged down in the middle and, if I wasn't traveling with little else to do, I doubt I would have finished this without a lot of travail.
The primary thing this book did well is atmosphere. Its prose is very effective at creating a fractured, ungrounded feeling where everything becomes unclear. Good, evil, identity, reality, and everything you thought you knew blending into a soupy morass that fudges the borders of sanity. It's very good at conveying the absolutely self- and psyche-shattering nature of the war.
The characters feel very far away. Freddie is drifting somewhere between barely sane and completely untethered at all times, but even Laura, who is matter-of-fact and practical at all times, felt extremely distant to me as a reader. Absolutely no one is talking to each other about anything important. Absolutely no one is processing anything. Everyone is acting wooden, like puppets jerking through the day-to-day motions with no thought because they can't do anything else.
This is probably deliberate, and perhaps accurate to the way the characters would be functioning (or not) under the circumstances. But it did hamper my ability to care about all of them. There were two hard-hitting moments for me. First, Laura closing her eyes and asking her mom to help them at the end. And second, Laura's tightly-controlled jealousy after they get home safely and she finds that Freddie and Winter's relationship means she's still, fundamentally, alone.
Other than that, I found it fairly hard to connect with this slow-paced fever dream. I think this book will find its audience among those readers who appreciate a transportative atmosphere above all other things.