primeideal

So, full disclosure, this book was one of the inspirations for "Debrief," and has kinda sorta been on my TBR since then. On the one hand, if it was anywhere close to as affecting as Debrief, I might really really love it; on the other, if it was anywhere close to as affecting as Debrief, I might have too many feelings and be self-conscious about writing them up. Ahem. So the good news/bad news is that this was not as affecting as Debrief, however, it's a fast read, well-plotted, and has some fun worldbuilding! And overall, I enjoyed it more than "The Calculating Stars," which is the other Kowal novel I've read.

The premise, both here and in Debrief, is that the British military employs "spirit mediums" to get messages from ghosts who have died in battle. Here, it's WWI, and Ginny Stuyvesant is from the US, but her fiance is a British officer. When they become aware of a threat to the mediums, they need to investigate and find the traitor in their midst, amid all the perils of war. So there are red herrings and questionable motives like "this guy may be a cad, but he didn't deserve to be murdered."

Like in "Calculating Stars," Kowal is very conscious of both the diversity in historical settings, and the ways in which women and ethnic minorities are held back by discrimination. (There are a couple cases of threatened sexual abuse, sometimes leading to "why are you guys fighting each other, you're all on the same side," but nobody gets away with it.) In this case, I think the earlier timeframe is an advantage for "Ghost Talkers"; the didacticism is slightly less heavy-handed, and there are cases where the characters are like "okay, let's consider how our prejudices may have interfered with our enemies' plans; maybe the allies we dismiss as unimportant or beneath notice are also people our enemies dismiss as unimportant or beneath notice, and therefore, they aren't moles!"

And then there are conversations like:

"Please. Surely you have seen men in his condition before."

"If you are referring to the shirkers, who pretend to 'shell shock' so they can get away from the front, then yes. I have."

Oof.

There's a lot of more pleasant "did do the research" moments, though. One character learns about martial arts from reading Sherlock Holmes; and there's a brief cameo from an RL historical figure, of the sort that's kind of gimmicky if it's the entire plot of the book, but works well for a throwaway appearance. Kowal cites the history of Spiritualism as taught by Andrew Jackson Davis and Emanuel Swedenborg as background to the spirit mediums.

She also shows her work with book ciphers that characters might actually have used, and even over-the-top free-verse poetry encoding the numbers for the cipher. However, this turns into a nerd snipe; if we see the decoded messages, we don't really need the numeric codes, unless we need to double-check that they aren't also a code for this book (which they're not...I don't think.)

There's also a harrowing description of sneaking out to a "listening trench," which isn't even a post set up with radio tech, just a tunnel near the front lines where you can (try to) spy on enemy troops. Doesn't need ghosts to be disturbing and well-drawn.

Unlike in Debrief, holding frequent summonings requires a team effort; Ginny is part of a "circle" that consists of two mediums and four "mundanes"--the way she and her partner pass "control" of the circle back and forth, so they can get some rest between ghosts, is very reminiscent of Wheel of Time!

"My next shift ends at eight p.m."

"Twenty--"

"Twenty hundred. Yes, I know. But this is a social call, so...pick me up at my billet at half past."

A century later, Americans are still bickering about "yeah sometimes we use military time but sometimes we use civilian time, deal with it."

At one point, the characters are returning from Amiens via train, and they get held up talking about "is this train going to Étretat or Le Havre." Just like Lupin! :D

More broadly, just the general implications of "soldiers become ghosts when they die" are interesting on plot and worldbuilding levels. Ginny realizes she can send messages via dying soldiers. Enemies have to be captured alive because they can just kill themselves to deliver secret information back home. Soldiers who die in inglorious circumstances need to be prompted for their last words:

"Who raised you?"

"My da."

"Shall I tell him that you died honorably and that your last thought was of him?"

"Yeah! That sounds real fine, only...I died in bed."

"It was still in service to your country, and you are to be commended for it." Ginger tried to project reassurance. "At ease, soldier. You are relieved of duty."

So yeah, even if these characters probably won't live rent-free in my head, it's still a cool worldbuilding premise!

Bingo: "Title with a Title." Looks like it was also a Book Club at one point!