I loved the Winternight trilogy, and have been eagerly awaiting Katherine Arden’s next project. I am happy to report it was worth the wait.
In this standalone, Arden steps away from the warmth and cheer of the Medieval Russian winter into the warmth and cheer of Flanders 1918. The protagonist, Laura, is a nurse who was wounded by artillery fire, given a few medals, and sent home to Halifax where her parents (and half of Halifax) were killed when a ship carrying munitions exploded in the largest detonation to that point in history. While there, she receives the effects and dog tags of her brother Freddie - but no word of his death. Determined to learn what happened to the only family she (maybe, possibly) has left, she sets out to return to Europe with a few friends.
Meanwhile, we travel back in time several months to Freddie’s point of view, trapped in an overturned pillbox with a number of dead soldiers and a living German one. It’s not a spoiler to say that the two of them manage to work together to dig their way out. But by that point they’re no longer enemies in any real sense, and they’re in the middle of no-man’s-land with no way of knowing which direction is the Canadians and which is the Germans.
They also - Laura and Freddie both - meet a strange man named Faland, running an inexplicably cozy hotel/bar right behind the lines, where the wine flows freely, the music is wonderful, and the war feels much further away than it should be.
This book is excellent, but it’s not fun. It’s a thorough exploration of trauma, different kinds of love, and the connections that people can make under unimaginably bad conditions. Other themes include the futility of industrialized war and the callousness of the generals in their châteaux sending men off to die by the thousands and thousands (the “lions led by donkeys” notion isn’t entirely fair, but it’s not unfair either). From everything I know of WWI history, Arden has done her homework.
Something Arden paid particular attention to capturing was the almost science-fiction aspect of the First World War. More than any other war that I can think of, it marked a sea change. You had flying machines dropping bombs and chemical weapons and artillery raining death from tens of miles away. You also had messages being sent by pigeons and that same artillery moved into position by mules. And you had men and boys fighting a war that wasn’t at all what they were told war was supposed to be, and men and women doing their best to keep them alive.
As I said, this book is excellent, but I’m very glad I’ve got something lighthearted on hand to follow.
Comes out on February 13.