This is my second time trying a Laura Anne Gilman novel. She has ideas that attract me, combinations of fantasy, supernatural, and mystery that I think ought to be excellent, but somehow I don't attach properly. This one has the Uncanny—all the supernatural creatures like werewolves and vampires—but they hide in the shadows. If they threaten humans, Huntsmen get sent to investigate and eliminate.
Aaron and Rosemary are siblings of a Huntsman family. They have been trained since they were children to wield weapons, to master the arcane knowledge, and to conceal their mission from regular humans. I loved their huge hound, Botheration, who is protection, early warning system, tracker, and defender, all wrapped in one furry body.
The Harkers get called to the scene of a cousin's death to determine its cause. They get mixed messages from both the clues and from the townsfolk. It's 1913 and industrialization is going strong. There's a new mill in town and no one wants to lose this economic driver. However, workers are thinking about unionization and women are active in the suffrage movement. It's enough to make a businessman cranky and there are a couple of grouchy movers and shakers staying at the same boarding house as Aaron and Rosemary.
The surname Harker may be suggest some relationship to the Harkers in Dracula? If so, it's very subtle. The siblings acknowledge that the Huntsman genome probably owes something to Fey ancestors, giving them a sensitivity to the Uncanny. Among their landlady's employees are two young women with a touch of the Sight and who end up helping them out in small but significant ways.
I like all of the ingredients, but the finished product failed to delight. It's good, but I am left reluctantly with the feeling that something crucial and unidentified is missing from the recipe.
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