The Warm Hands of Ghosts
Aug. 17th, 2024 08:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
psocopteraThe Warm Hands of Ghosts, Katherine Arden, 2024 novel. I liked her Winternight trilogy back in the late 10s and am excited to see her return to adult fiction. This is historical fantasy set in a grimly real and specific World War I; a Canadian nurse has come home to Halifax from the front just in time to be in the Mont-Blanc explosion, and then gets caught up in the mystery of trying to figure out what has happened to her missing brother, a soldier, which she will eventually go back to Flanders to try to unravel. Arden can really tell a story and I was hooked from the beginning. Recommended so long as you have any interest in WWI and/or are willing to read war stories.
Before I get spoilery I would like to offer the open spoiler that there is a bout of influenza but it isn't a flu pandemic *novel*, like, it's set just before the pandemic breaks out and pandemic concerns aren't part of the story. (I got to the influenza part and was like "yikes I don't know if I'm up for this" so I thought it was worth the spoiler to provide information on this front.)
Major spoilers behind the cut.
I liked what Arden did with a mix of mythologies for the fantastical elements - early on I thought the whole thing was going to be Greek/Roman mythology, based on the Parkeys clearly being the Fates, but then Faland seemed to be much more of a Christian Lucifer figure. (The Greek/Roman expectation misled me at first and I was like Bacchus? Orpheus? but, no, he's a rebel, he's fallen. Right there in the name even.) I like the way the combination took it into a more general mystical/fantastical space, like what they did in the Green Knight movie.
Another way my expectations got thwarted I have more mixed feelings about. I thought, early on, that the book was going in an f/f romance direction - it seemed like there was chemistry between Laura and Pim, and their meeting was kind of a meet-cute, and there were possible parallels between Laura and Pim and Freddie and Winter (who I also couldn't decide if there was some hinted sexual/romantic tension there or just war-comradeship). So maybe it was going to be Queer Love Is What Saves Us. But then the Laura-Pim scenes that could have furthered the tension/sensuality didn't (there was haircutting! bedsharing!), and Laura maybe had something starting with Jones, and of course in the end Freddie and Winter *do* manage to save each other and Laura can't save Pim, and so maybe it is still Queer Love Saves Us and also the inverse that Lack of Queer Love Means No Saving. (Or, insofar as Jones saves everybody but Pim in the end, more generally Love Saves But Doesn't Have To Be Queer And Some People Are Just Straight, Go Figure.) But I was shipping them, darn it.
Before I get spoilery I would like to offer the open spoiler that there is a bout of influenza but it isn't a flu pandemic *novel*, like, it's set just before the pandemic breaks out and pandemic concerns aren't part of the story. (I got to the influenza part and was like "yikes I don't know if I'm up for this" so I thought it was worth the spoiler to provide information on this front.)
Major spoilers behind the cut.
I liked what Arden did with a mix of mythologies for the fantastical elements - early on I thought the whole thing was going to be Greek/Roman mythology, based on the Parkeys clearly being the Fates, but then Faland seemed to be much more of a Christian Lucifer figure. (The Greek/Roman expectation misled me at first and I was like Bacchus? Orpheus? but, no, he's a rebel, he's fallen. Right there in the name even.) I like the way the combination took it into a more general mystical/fantastical space, like what they did in the Green Knight movie.
Another way my expectations got thwarted I have more mixed feelings about. I thought, early on, that the book was going in an f/f romance direction - it seemed like there was chemistry between Laura and Pim, and their meeting was kind of a meet-cute, and there were possible parallels between Laura and Pim and Freddie and Winter (who I also couldn't decide if there was some hinted sexual/romantic tension there or just war-comradeship). So maybe it was going to be Queer Love Is What Saves Us. But then the Laura-Pim scenes that could have furthered the tension/sensuality didn't (there was haircutting! bedsharing!), and Laura maybe had something starting with Jones, and of course in the end Freddie and Winter *do* manage to save each other and Laura can't save Pim, and so maybe it is still Queer Love Saves Us and also the inverse that Lack of Queer Love Means No Saving. (Or, insofar as Jones saves everybody but Pim in the end, more generally Love Saves But Doesn't Have To Be Queer And Some People Are Just Straight, Go Figure.) But I was shipping them, darn it.
no subject
Date: 2024-08-18 04:17 pm (UTC)Interesting bit about the mix of mythologies. I also saw the Parkeys as the Fates, but missed the name clue of Faland and thought of him as a sort of Hades, offering food and drink with strings attached.
no subject
Date: 2024-09-27 03:43 am (UTC)