"Ghost Talkers" by Mary Robinette Kowal

This was another pick by a local Sci-Fi and Fantasy book club that I am a member of. Ghost Talkers is billed as perfect for fans of Naomi Novik's Uprooted and the show Downton Abbey. Although, I am a fan of both Novik's novel and the TV series, I did not get distinct vibes of either one.

Ghost Talkers is a historical fantasy/mystery novel set in Europe during WWI. As you can guess from the title, ghosts and mediums are real and both are in fact in England's service in the Great War. Here are the points that I really liked about this book:

• The historical setting. I thought Kowal did a great job creating the atmosphere of a British military base in France during WWI. The attitudes and notions of characters were also on point for the era, and even the language, I thought, was contemporaneous to the setting.
• The main character Ginger. As a medium serving in the Spirit Corps, Ginger is not strictly part of the military. However, she accesses information provided by ghosts of British fallen soldiers that is of vital strategic importance to the British military forces. Ginger gets her fair share of not being taken seriously by the military brass not so much due to her occupation (in this world no one questions the reality of ghosts and mediums) as due to her gender. But she is obstinate, determined and in the end no one has doubts about her abilities, intelligence and strategic thinking.
• The mystery twist. Apart from being a historical fantasy, this novel has a major mystery plot line. There is a traitor in the British camp and both Ginger and her fiance (who works for the military intelligence) are on a mission to find and neutralize the spy before vital information about the Spirit Corps' operation is leaked to the Germans. The mystery line was not predictable, which is always a huge plus. I did not figure out who the traitor was and was just as blown away as Ginger when it happened.

Now on to the things that I thought did not work so well:

• Side characters. There were several characters introduced early on about whom we got a fair amount of details but who never reappeared in the story. I am talking about the newly arrived mediums. Some of them seemed interesting enough to warrant a bigger role in the narrative so I was a bit confused that we never went back to them. 
• The romance. I don't want to spoil anything, but let's just say ghost stories are not quite my thing.
• The attempt at diversity. Kowal introduces a West Indian medium in the story, as well as an East Indian regiment that ends up playing a critical role. Although both the West and East Indians make major contributions to the war effort in the novel, the racial discrimination they suffer is painful and indisputable. Even though I salute Kowal for thinking of introducing some diversity to her characters, they were still relegated to playing a second fiddle. We do not get much of a background story on them and they are not as well developed as they could be. Token diversity is what I kept thinking when reading the novel. I would really like them to be a bigger presence in the story as that would provide a very interesting and unexplored perspective.

Overall, I rated this book 3 out of 5 stars. I do recommend it particularly if you like historical fiction and ghosts. I do like the former but not so much the latter. I am, however, curious about Kowal's other books and hope to get to them at some point soon.