234 – Katherine Arden & The Devil’s Train Timetable

Talking Scared

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16d ago 1:19:54

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In the week that the world changed, we’re talking about the last time things got this crazy.

Katherine Arden is the author of The Warm Hands of Ghosts — a novel set in the trenches of the First World War and on the borderline between horror and fantasy. It’s a Faustian pact made in No-Man’s Land, where our memories are the price we pay for keeping ourselves alive.

In this episode we talk a lot about history, about inflection points and moments of no-return. We talk about how systems of power can seem so complex that they lead only to ruin – but we also talk devils and fairies and angels and brave, brave nurses with scarred hands.

It’s a joy of a conversation, about the most hideous time to be alive.

Enjoy!

Other books mentioned:

The Bear and the Nightingale (2017), by Katherine Arden
The Buffalo Hunter Hunter (2025), by Stephen Graham Jones
Wasteland: The Great War and the Origin of Modern Horror (2018), by W. Scott Pool
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (2004), by Susanna Clarke
The Master and the Margarita (1940), by Mikhail Bulgakov
Lud in the Mist (1926), by Hope Mirrlees
Ghosts Have Warm Hands: A Memoir of the Great War (1968), by Will R. Bird
Between Two Fires (2012), by Christopher Buehlman
Ghost Eaters (2022), by Clay McLeod Chapman
Wake Up and Open Your Eyes (2025), by Clay McLeod Chapman

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