Ghosts in the Trenches: A Review of Ghost Talkers

Ghost Talkers (2017)
Written By: Mary Robinette Kowal
Genre: Historical Fantasy
Pages: 304 pages (Trade Paperback)
Publisher: Tor Books

Why I Chose It: I really enjoyed another book by this author, Shades of Milk and Honey. Since I love fantasy set in true historical settings and the premise of Ghost Talkers really struck me. I was immediately intrigued by the idea of ghosts and mediums in World War I.

The premise:

Ginger Stuyvesant, an American heiress living in London during World War I, is engaged to Captain Benjamin Harford, an intelligence officer. Ginger is a medium for the Spirit Corps, a special Spiritualist force.

Each soldier heading for the front is conditioned to report to the mediums of the Spirit Corps when they die so the Corps can pass instant information about troop movements to military intelligence.

Ginger and her fellow mediums contribute a great deal to the war efforts, so long as they pass the information through appropriate channels. While Ben is away at the front, Ginger discovers the presence of a traitor. Without the presence of her fiancé to validate her findings, the top brass thinks she’s just imagining things. Even worse, it is clear that the Spirit Corps is now being directly targeted by the German war effort. Left to her own devices, Ginger has to find out how the Germans are targeting the Spirit Corps and stop them. This is a difficult and dangerous task for a woman of that era, but this time both the spirit and the flesh are willing…

Spoiler Free!

Discussion: My first thought when I started Ghost Talkers was “this is so cool”. Like all good things I wanted to share it with the nearest person, who happened to be my husband. I had to explain just how cool this idea was, and I went on an on at length about ghosts in wartime who can communicate their last position and thoughts and how that would change the way battles are fought and won and… You get the idea.

So, clearly I was a fan of the magic system. I already love magic in a historical context, but I felt like with Ghost Talkers I got to explore a time period I haven’t spent a lot of time in. I’ll admit I’m not usually interested in much beyond the turn of the century, but I think I’ll be looking for more stories set in WWI. In everything I’ve read by Kowal so far, she is clearly very serious about historical context, but Ghost Talkers felt particularly immersive. Which made the fear and blood in the trenches so much more vivid.

And I really loved getting a look at the war from a woman’s perspective. This was first and foremost a spy novel, which is pretty exciting by itself. But underneath the obvious, it’s also a story about the courage, tenacity, and honor of the women serving their country from the home front to the front lines. It makes sense most of the mediums are women since all the able-bodied men are needed for things like shooting and dying, and along with that mentality came the very natural disregard from superior officers who didn’t quite understand just how much these women were doing. A familiar conflict with unique repercussions in this case.

Kowal is definitely very good at blending the expected and unexpected. A medium is able to see auras and therefore read the emotions of those around them. Obviously being inside a character’s head can give us insight into their emotions, but to be able to see them, visually, was really powerful. Kowal really captured the duality of human feelings. Ginger could see people struggling to merge courage with fear or swinging wildly between curiosity and frustration. This war between emotion felt very human to me and served as a striking counterpoint to the physical war being fought with bodies and souls.

I did feel like there were a couple things that were sacrificed for pacing and the need to move the story along. I would have loved more explanations about the mediums themselves and their abilities. Some things are spelled out, but a lot of the mechanics need to be picked up in context and I wanted more. Same with Ginger and Ben’s backstory. We get a good look at their romance as it is in the presence but only glimpses into how they got there. And several new recruits were introduced toward the beginning who seemed to present some interesting conflicts but they didn’t end up playing much (if any) of a role throughout the rest of the book.

In Conclusion: Those weren’t enough to really take me out of the story, and overall, I loved it. I loved the sheer idea of it, and for once a book lived up to my expectations based on the premise. My favorites are the ones with settings and characters I fall in love with and don’t want to leave. I really wanted to spend more time among the ghosts in the trenches.