katfeete reviewed Uncanny Times by Laura Anne Gilman
The Hunt Begins
5 stars
Rosemary and Aaron Harker are Huntsmen. A knock on the door in the winter of 1913, a summons to some unusual, uncomfortable death? That's normal. The uncanny and the human don't often mix, but when they do, it ends badly for the human.
But this hunt isn't going right. The uncanny beast killing folk in a little New England town doesn't match anything the brother and sister have ever fought or heard of. The locals think they're union agitators, the police want them out of town, and Rosemary and Aaron might be facing, not the uncanny they're trained for, but the thing that did in their own Huntsmen parents.
Magic.
-- I am a long-time Laura Anne Gilman fan and this delivers: a fun (if prickly) set of protagonists, an intriguing historic mystery, and just the right touch with the paranormal that binds it to the story without rendering it …
Rosemary and Aaron Harker are Huntsmen. A knock on the door in the winter of 1913, a summons to some unusual, uncomfortable death? That's normal. The uncanny and the human don't often mix, but when they do, it ends badly for the human.
But this hunt isn't going right. The uncanny beast killing folk in a little New England town doesn't match anything the brother and sister have ever fought or heard of. The locals think they're union agitators, the police want them out of town, and Rosemary and Aaron might be facing, not the uncanny they're trained for, but the thing that did in their own Huntsmen parents.
Magic.
-- I am a long-time Laura Anne Gilman fan and this delivers: a fun (if prickly) set of protagonists, an intriguing historic mystery, and just the right touch with the paranormal that binds it to the story without rendering it mundane. The time period isn't one I've read a lot about but Gilman does an excellent job rendering small details and large about the US before the First World War, just on the cusp of what we think of as modernity. That interacts really well with the tension in the story itself -- the Harkers are in many ways people of their times and concerned with normal people questions (like "why can't women bloody well wear trousers"), but they have fae blood and concerns outside the ken -- and for that matter, the desire to ken -- of their peers, concerns that date back to an older and wilder time that we never actually left behind.
Also: there is a dog, and I love him.
A really lovely, fun read for a dreary and rainy start to the new year.