The Warm Hands of Ghosts by Katherine Arden

I had seen this historical fantasy novel recommended for its good handling of a First World War setting, supernatural elements and a canon m/m pairing, and it was very conveniently available at the local library, so I immediately put it on hold...

The Warm Hands of Ghosts (2024) opens, not in the midst of the war, but in the wake of the peripheral disaster of the Halifax Explosion (Halifax, Nova Scotia; the name always trips me up for a moment). Laura Iven, a nurse invalided home with shrapnel in the leg, has just lost both her parents in the explosion; as if that wasn't enough, she then gets the news that her beloved little brother Freddie, a soldier, is missing following the Battle of Passchendaele. Due to some oddnesses connected with this news, she decides to go back to Flanders—accompanying a historical nurse and hospital founder—to investigate what's happened. Interspersed with chapters following Laura, other chapters show us what has happened to Freddie: this starts with finding himself in a desperate post-battle situation from which he escapes with the help of an enemy soldier, and then gets... weirder.

( You fought and you died in the mud and the rain, a mile into Hell and a mile back again )