The Warm Hands of Ghosts 😪 + The Briar Book of the Dead 💖



At the start of the year I requested many arcs on NetGalley, as usual yes, and I'm reading them slowly but steady. Two of the first three were really good (The Many Lives of Charlie and The City of Stardust) and the third (The Book of Love) was...well boring. Sadly, The Warm Hands of Ghosts (Katherine Arden) fell in that same category. To be fair, it wasn't a given that I was going to love this book since it's historical during WWI, but I went ahead anyway because there was a promise of fantasy (ghosts!), the setting was my home country, Belgium, and I was very curious to discover Katherine Arden's writing. As I said, I was pretty bored waiting for the ghosts and at 100 pages, these were only mentioned so I DNF it. I'm disappointed because the synopsis still sounds really good, but I just couldn't continue.


On the contrary, The Briar Book of the Dead (A.G. Slatter) was amazing! Ellie, the main character, comes from a family of witches and is the first to not have any magic of her own. They rule over Silverton, protecting their people from the Darklands, while also being under strict supervision of the church. The Briar witches know of their story through tales, and Ellie may well discover that they may have been somewhat revised. Indeed, the Briars have a lot of secrets (and what was funny is that they were almost always the same). 

This book follows Ellie in her day to day life and work at the same time as she tries to discover what is happening in Silverton. I don't know if the plot twist was predictable but I did guess it early on and wanted to scream at all the characters; I even felt relieved when they finally understood what was going on. The Briar Book of the Dead is full of love, secrets and grief, and I loved Ellie's path to understand that she's not less than her family just because she is not a witch. 


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The Warm Hands of Ghosts TW: death, grief, war, blood, pain, gore

The Briar Book of the Dead TW: death (adults, infants, animals), murder (mentioned + attempts), demons, blood, self-harm, poison, depression, plague (mentioned), the term "crazy" is often mentioned and kind of challenged, all kinds of grief
Rep: sapphic couple (secondary characters)



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