Author: Laura Anne Gilman

Review: The Good, the Bad and the Uncanny edited by Jonathan Maberry

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews
Review: The Good, the Bad and the Uncanny edited by Jonathan MaberryThe Good, The Bad, & The Uncanny: Tales of a Very Weird West by Jonathan Maberry, C. Edward Sellner, Keith R.A. DeCandido, James A. Moore, Greg Cox, Josh Malerman, Carrie Harris, John G. Hartness, Jennifer Brody, Scott Sigler, Laura Anne Gilman, Aaron Rosenberg, Jeffrey J. Mariotte, R. S. Belcher, Marguerite Reed, Maurice Broaddus, Cullen Bunn
Format: eARC
Source: publisher
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Genres: fantasy, horror, short stories, steampunk, Weird West
Pages: 350
Published by Outland Entertainment on December 19, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Gunslingers. Lawmen. Snake-oil Salesmen. Cowboys. Mad Scientists. And a few monsters. The Old West has never been wilder! THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UNCANNY presents sixteen original and never-before-published adventures by some of today’ s most visionary writers who have spun wildly offbeat tales of gunmen, lawmen, magic, and weird science. Saddle up with Josh Malerman, Scott Sigler, Keith DeCandido, Cullen Bunn, R.S. Belcher, Greg Cox, Jeffrey Mariotte, Laura Anne Gilman, Aaron Rosenberg, Maurice Broaddus, John G. Hartness, Carrie Harris, James A. Moore, Marguerite Reed, C. Edward Sellner, Carrie Harris, and Jennifer Brody! These tales twist the American West into a place of darkness, shadows, sudden death, terror in the night, bold heroism, devious magic, and shocking violence. Each story blazes a new trail through very strange territory – discovering weird science, ancient evil, mythic creatures, and lightning-fast action. Edited by Jonathan Maberry, NY Times bestselling author of A DEADLANDS NOVEL, the Joe Ledger Thrillers, V-WARS, and KAGEN THE DAMNED.

My Review:

I don’t normally start reviews by talking about the author’s – or in this case the editor’s – Foreword. In fact, I very seldom read the Foreword because I’m too interested in getting to the actual story – or in this case stories – to take the time. And they’re generally not all that fascinating. But I read this one and got hit with a sense of nostalgia so strong that I can’t resist mentioning it here. Because the editor and I grew up with those same Westerns on TV pretty much all the time in our childhood, and because we both emerged with the same favorite, The Wild, Wild West.

Not that awful 1999 movie. I mean – and the author meant – the one, the only, the original TV series with Robert Conrad and Ross Martin. I still remember, and can hear Ross Martin’s voice in my head, talking mostly to himself, as he often did, as he was whipping up “the spécialité de la maison of the Hotel Desperation!” to get them out of whatever fix they’d gotten themselves into in that act of the four acts that made up each weekly episode. It’s a VERY fond memory.

So, if you have that same fondness for Westerns – especially those that touched on, or were touched by, or dipped their whole entire six-shooters into the very, very weird, or if you’re a fan of more recently published ‘Weird West’ inspired stories such as Charlaine Harris’ Gunnie Rose series and Laura Anne Gilman’s Huntsmen, or if you just plain love it when the things that go bump in the night are armed with fangs, claws AND six-shooters, this collection might just be your jam.

It certainly was mine. It was mine so much, in fact, that this is one of the rare occasions when I’ve rated each story in the collection individually, so that you can get the full-bodied flavor – complete with actual bodies, for each and every one.

“The Disobedient Devil Dust-up at Copper Junction” by Cullen Bunn
Mad scientist meets even madder gremlins as Professor Dimitri Daedalus and his Navajo partner Yiske arrive in remote Copper Junction Utah, summoned by the Professor’s old mentor to be his next sacrifices to the gremlins tearing up every single human tool in town with applied chaos and malice, only to end in fiery glory sailing off a cliff. Good fun. B

“Devil’s Snare” (Golgotha #1.5) by R.S. Belcher
In spite of being part of a series, this story stands quite well alone. Love-lorn scientist/engineer Clay Turlough, who combines bits of both Dr. Frankenstein AND his monster, gets dragged out of his latest attempt to ‘save’ his ladylove by a more strictly medical case of a poisoned boy, his widowed mother, and the man who is a bit too invested in both. A-

“Bad” by Josh Malerman
Borderline horror about two idiots who think they can rob the most secure bank on ‘The Trail’ by pretending to be one of the bank’s regular depositors. A pretense they intend to enact by literally stealing the man’s face. A hard read because the murdering bank robber wannabes are really, really TSTL to the point where the story is just blood, guts and idiocy. D

“Bigfoot George” by Greg Cox
Gold fever grips a gang of humans claiming a strike in Bigfoot country. The ringleaders think they can treat sasquatch the way they treat their fellow humans – only one of those fellow humans isn’t to both the humans and the sasquatch’ detriment. The humans are nasty in ways that are all too familiar, but the heel-turn of their not-so-human companion is epic enough to nearly redeem their mess – if not them. C+

“Story of the Century” by C. Edward Sellner
A tale of angels and demons, vampires and newspaper reporters. A reporter with a nose for news follows a bounty hunter on the trail of a demon who can wipe out whole towns in a single breath, only to find herself the last witness to an epic confrontation between celestial and demonic forces that wakes a legacy she had no idea she possessed. B

“The Stacked Deck” by Aaron Rosenberg
A card sharp with a magic touch wins his way onto a gambler’s paradise of a riverboat cruise only to learn that the stake he’s playing for is his soul and the deck has been stacked by a demon who believes he holds all the cards. The weird side of the weird West with a fascinating magical system of drawing cards from the ether. Maverick would have fit right in. And won. B+

“Desert Justice” by Maurice Broaddus
A black man with a righteous cause, the will to back it up and the grief not to care if he goes down in the fight takes up a magical badge to battle the evil spirit of the dead Confederacy that white men are using to vilify, subjugate and lynch blacks who stand up for themselves in the west after they fled the ‘legal slavery’ of the sharecropping system. If you enjoyed the author’s novella Buffalo Soldier you’ll love this one too. I certainly did. A

“In the End, the Beginning” by Laura Anne Gilman
A still heartbreaking but slightly more hopeful alternate magical version of the white man’s invasion of the west. It can’t be stopped, but powerful spirits CAN, if they are willing to sacrifice themselves and their magic in the cause, alter the means by which it happens, in the hopes that the ones who can’t be stopped are the best of their kind and not the worst.  A

“Nightfall on the Iron Dragon Line” by James A. Moore
The inevitable train story because no western or weird version thereof would be complete without one train story. The concept is interesting, and a story about a lawman bringing in a dangerous criminal always works in westerns but this one needed to be longer for all the disparate elements – especially the worm and the Chinese engineers – to come together. C

“Simple Silas” by Scott Sigler
This is straight up horror and the story relies on the protagonist having an undefined intellectual disability (because they were back then) in a way that just makes the whole thing more uncomfortable than compelling. D

“Hell and Destruction are Never Full” by Marguerite Reed
A bounty hunter captures a man for more money than she’s ever seen in her life and doesn’t want to hear about the real reason the bounty was set – until she comes face to face with a vampire and his renfield who plan to shut up a witness and get a meal out of it at the same time. That this has a happy ending is a big surprise. It’s not the standout in the collection but it was pretty good all the same. B

“The Legend of Long-Ears” by Keith R.A. DeCandido
A meeting that never happened between two legends, Calamity Jane and Deputy U.S. Marshal Bass Reeves. Calamity is a seer who drinks to keep her visions of the future at bay, while she does her best to keep the chaos agent known as Long-Ears from taking more lives than he’s due. She saves Reeves but can’t save them all. However, she saves so many that Long-Ears himself travels the west telling any who will listen the tale of his greatest and most respected enemy. This one seems like the quintessential weird west story, or at least one branch of it, with legends meeting, native spirits interfering, respect between enemies and tragedies all around. A+

“The Night Caravan” by Jennifer Brody
A post-apocalyptic tale where the desert has returned, while technology and fallout have bred monsters and settlements are far apart while travel puts you in danger of being ridden by one of the monsters. The mix of high tech and low villainy with a mythical utopia that is probably a boondoggle makes the story interesting. B

“Dreadful” by John Hartness
A middle-aged widow and a tired vampire-hunting cowboy team up to wipe out a nest of vampires that is eating their way across the west like locusts. Separately, they’re victims, together they might just be enough to get the job done. And if there’s an after, they might have a chance at being happy in it, together. B+

“Thicker Than Water” by Carrie Harris
Families are terrible. His brothers are human monsters. Her sisters are sea monsters. But family is family and blood is thicker than water, even when the deck of the ship is awash in it. This one just wasn’t my cuppa, and I’m trying really hard not to think about what the tea in that cuppa would be made of. C

“Barnfeather’s Magical Medicine Show and Tent Extravaganza” by Jeffrey J. Mariotte
Another one a bit too high on the creep-o-meter for me, about a magical circus tent that steals children and eats them to keep itself and its avatar powered – or perhaps the other way around, pursued by a lawman hoping to rescue children who are already gone. C

Escape Rating B: I had to do math to get to an overall rating, just as I did for the review of a previous collection by this publisher, Never Too Old to Save the World, which is going to end up on my Best Books list for this year because I’ve referred to it so often.

I enjoyed this collection, well, not quite as much as Never Too Old, but still quite a bit. Even the stories that went too far into horror for my personal tastes, or the couple that just didn’t work for me, still added to the overall feeling of ‘those thrilling days of yesteryear’ even if it was a weirder and more uncanny yesteryear than The Lone Ranger ever imagined.

Or perhaps especially because it was a whole lot weirder and considerably more uncanny. Just as marvelously as The Wild, Wild West so often was.

Review: Uncanny Vows by Laura Anne Gilman

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B+ Reviews> book reviews
Review: Uncanny Vows by Laura Anne GilmanUncanny Vows (Huntsmen, #2) by Laura Anne Gilman
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: fantasy, historical fantasy, urban fantasy
Series: Huntsmen #2
Pages: 384
Published by Gallery / Saga Press on November 28, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Following the events of the high-stakes and propulsive Uncanny Times, Rosemary and Aaron Harker, along with their supernatural hound Botheration, have been given a new assignment to investigate…but the Harkers believe it’s a set-up, and there’s something far more ancient and deadly instead.

Rosemary and Aaron Harker have been effectively, unofficially sidelined. There is no way to be certain, but they suspect their superiors know that their report on Brunson was less than complete, that they omitted certain truths. Are they being punished or tested? Neither Aaron nor Rosemary know for certain. It may be simply that they are being given a breather or that no significant hunts have been called in their region. But neither of them believes that.

So, when they are sent to a town just outside of Boston with orders to investigate suspicious activity carefully, the Harkers suspect that it is a test. Particularly since the hunt involves a member of the benefactors, wealthy individuals who donate money to the Huntsmen in exchange for certain special privileges and protections.

If they screw this up…at best, they’ll be out of favor, reduced to a life of minor hunts and “clean up” for other Huntsmen. At worst, they will be removed from the ranks, their stipend gone—and Botheration, their Hound, taken from them.

They can’t afford to screw this up.

But what seems like a simple enough hunt—find the uncanny that attacked a man in his office and sent him into a sleep-like state—soon becomes far more complicated as more seemingly unrelated attacks occur. The Harkers must race to find what is shadowing them, before the uncanny strikes again, and sleep turns into murder—and the Huntsmen decide that they have been compromised beyond repair.

But their quarry may not be the only uncanny in town. Botheration and Aaron both sense something else, something shadowing them. Something old, dangerous…and fey.

My Review:

If the idea that the Harker family is somehow involved with the things that go bump in the night feels familiar but you can’t quite remember why, it’s because it IS familiar. Jonathan Harker got himself mixed up with a famous vampire in a little place called Transylvania a mere couple of decades before we first met Aaron and Rosemary Harker in the first book in the Huntsmen series, Uncanny Times.

Because the times they live in are very ‘uncanny’ indeed, the Huntsmen their family has always been a part of have a very long tradition and there are vampires in Europe. Not in America, not so far, at least not yet. But still, the idea that an uncle or a cousin got themselves mixed up in that other uncanny business is not all that far-fetched once the reader gets themselves fully immersed in the Harkers’ not-quite-urban-fantasy, not-exactly-alternate-history version of 1913 New England where the ‘automotive’ has just started sharing the streets with horse-drawn carriages, the Great War seems to have already begun in Europe, and the ‘uncanny’ things that populated Washington Irving’s Sleepy Hollow have put down long, deep roots in the local landscape.

And occasionally slip into nearby houses and offices to practice their mischief. Or commit murder.

That’s what sends the Harkers, brother and sister, on a covert mission to Boston to investigate what might be an attack by an uncanny. The organization that monitors and dispatches the Huntsmen have asked/ordered/voluntold the Harkers that one of the organization’s financial backers has called in some favors, that the man wants a discreet investigation of his brother-in-law’s mysterious illness/fainting fit/possible attack, in order to placate his wife and get back to his business.

It’s a far from ideal situation, and both the Harkers know it. The Harkers feel like the organization no longer trusts them after the events in Uncanny Times, and that they’re being sent on this mission without information and with their hands tied behind their backs because its a test that someone wants them to fail.

And they could be right on all counts. But that doesn’t change the mission, only make it a whole lot more difficult to resolve – with that desired discretion or without.

Not that discretion is even possible while there’s something uncanny watching and waiting for them to make a mistake – the kind that either gets the all killed, or the kind that exposes all their secrets to a world that is absolutely not ready. Or both. The way that the Harkers’ luck tends to run – bet on both.

Escape Rating B+: So far, at least, the Huntsmen series still feels like it’s part of the ‘Weird West’ tradition. It obviously isn’t, not with the ‘automotives’ [sic] on the streets and the Great War looming on the horizon, but it still feels that way, like it would fit right into The Good, the Bad, and the Uncanny collection coming out in a couple of weeks.

(Although, come to think of it, the author DOES have a series that is explicitly set in the Weird West, titled The Devil’s West and beginning with Silver on the Road. I think I just saw it shooting up the virtually towering TBR pile, chased by one of the Harkers’ specially-prepared bullets.)

With the first book in the series, Uncanny Times, I liked the idea of the story and the series more than the story I actually got. Although I loved the Harker’s hellhound Botheration and still do. He stole every scene he was in and does in this book as well. (Don’t worry, Botheration is a Very Good Boy and is just as fine at the end of this adventure as he was at the beginning – which is very.)

His humans, however, are a bit closer to the end of their tether than either of them realizes when this case gets wrapped up. Although it does, in spite of the roadblocks put in their way by both the organization and the favor-calling client and benefactor.

One of the things that makes this series work is that Rosemary and Aaron Harker are both of their time and place AND a bit outside it at the same time, making them excellent investigators of both the human and the uncanny aspects of the case. Even as they push at the boundaries more than a bit. Which is both the cause of their ‘outsiderness’ and its result.

That’s part of why I enjoyed this story more than the first, because we get a much fuller picture of the Harkers, their skills and their capabilities, we know more about what makes them who they are, and we see more of why the organization doesn’t exactly trust them but can’t afford to assign them to the equivalent of working in Siberia without proof of something. Not that some folks aren’t looking for that something, and haven’t been for most of Aaron’s life.

At the same time, the heavy lifting of setting up the world and the series has already been done in that first book, so this one is able to sink its teeth into the case from the very first page – and that they drive off in Aaron’s rented ‘automotive” gets things going that much faster, while Rosemary’s dislike of the speed, the dust, and Aaron’s relative inexperience driving the thing adds a bit of lightness to what is otherwise a rather dark story of obsession and possession.

I came back to this series for Botheration, but I stayed because the setting is getting more and more interesting as it goes, and the case was filled with plenty of twists and turns and still-fresh-from-the-water red herrings. All the while, Rosemary and Aaron’s different but equally jaundiced perceptions of their world grounded the story in characters that I could not merely empathize with but actually share the frustrations of along the way.

So if you like tales of the Weird West – even though this isn’t quite – or historical urban fantasy – which this most definitely is – or just like exploring a world that isn’t quite ours but is just enough like ours to really, seriously get into, take an ‘automotive’ trip to early 20th century Boston with the Harkers and their very good, and very large, boy, Botheration. It’s a wild ride from beginning to end – and not just because of Aaron’s driving!

Review: Uncanny Times by Laura Anne Gilman

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B- Reviews> book reviews
Review: Uncanny Times by Laura Anne GilmanUncanny Times (Huntsmen #1) by Laura Anne Gilman
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook,
Genres: fantasy, historical fantasy, urban fantasy
Series: Huntsmen #1
Pages: 384
Published by Gallery / Saga Press on October 18, 2022
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Huntsmen, according to the Church, were damned, their blood unclean, unholy. Yet for Rosemary and Aaron Harker the Church was less important than being ready to stand against the Uncanny as not being prepared could lead to being dead.
The year is 1913. America—and the world—trembles on the edge of a modern age. Political and social unrest shift the foundations; technology is beginning to make its mark.
But in the shadows, things from the past still move. Things inhuman, uncanny.
And the Uncanny are no friend to humanity.
But when Aaron and Rosemary Harker go to investigate the suspicious death of a distant relative, what they discover could turn their world upside down—and change the Huntsmen forever

My Review:

Uncanny Times feels like it’s set in the ‘Weird West’, but it’s not. Still feels that way though. Rather, it’s set in a kind of alternate early-20th century New England, but the New England that grew out of Washington Irving’s creepy folklore-ish stories such as Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.

Rosemary and Aaron Harker might never have hunted a ‘headless horseman’ but whatever they’re after in tiny Brunson, New York, on the shores of Lake Ontario – in November! – is certainly equally uncanny. They just don’t know exactly what it is – at least not yet.

It’s their job to find out. The Harkers are Huntsmen, from a long line of people who have the ability to deal with the uncanny. They go where they are sent, figure out the nature of the threat they have to face – and eliminate it without involving local law enforcement or putting the local populace in danger – or at least in any more danger than they already are.

But this case is different from the beginning. They are summoned, not by one of their superiors in the Huntsmen but rather by an old family friend who always knew about the uncanny and those who are tasked with fighting it.

Or rather, by the man’s widow, who makes it clear that his death was as uncanny as the creatures that Rosemary and Aaron usually hunt. One of the man’s last requests was that if there was anything suspicious about his death that his wife ask the Harkers to come. There was and she has.

And the man was right – his death was at the hands of something uncanny. Something that doesn’t seem to be recorded in the rather extensive records of the Huntsmen. But whatever it is, or was, or wants to gorge itself into becoming, it’s up to Rosemary and Aaron to take it out – or go down trying.

Escape Rating B-: Uncanny Times is kind of a gothic version of historical and/or urban fantasy, with a bit of alternate history thrown in for bodies and spice. I call it gothic because the creeping horror is very slow burn, and it’s imbued in the atmosphere of the town long before we see it manifest as any sort of creature that the story can sink its teeth into – or that can sink its teeth into the characters.

This also doesn’t read like the version of 1913 that history records. Instead, it reads like the Weird West, an alternate version of the late 19th century – or what followed in this case – where the things that go bump in the night are real and history has gone down a different – and much creepier – leg of the trousers of time.

So this may be pre-World War I by our calendar, and Woodrow Wilson is President – but he’s no pacifist in this version of history. So it’s 1913 by way of something like Cherie Priest’s Boneshaker – we just haven’t seen what the equivalent of the massive earthquake was. At least not yet. The world of the Huntsmen reads more like that of Charlaine Harris’ Gunnie Rose, or Lindsay Schopfer’s Keltin Moore than it does the pre-WW1 world we’re familiar with. While the Huntmen organization and what it fights reads as very similar to the Circuit Riders of The Silver Bullets of Annie Oakley’s alternate world.

The story in Uncanny Times is a slow build of creeping horror mixed with more than a bit of confused investigation. It takes quite a while to get itself going, but that feels like its a necessary part of the entire story. Not only is this the first book in a projected series, but the creature that the Harkers are hunting for isn’t something that is supposed to exist even in their version of the world.

Added to that, they have to operate in plain sight while concealing pretty much everything they really are and really do. Most people don’t believe, and the ones that do mostly can’t be trusted. They even have to hide the true nature of their dog, because he isn’t just a dog. Botheration (best name ever!), besides being a VERY good boy, is also a hellhound and an expert tracker of both ordinary humans AND the creatures that the Huntsmen hunt.

And he steals pretty much every scene he’s in. Botheration is an awesome dog. (Don’t worry about Botheration, he’s bigger and stronger than most things that he hunts – and he comes out of this story every bit as fine as he went into it. I promise!)

I recognize that I’m a bit all over the map about Uncanny Times. I picked this up because I loved the author’s Retrievers series, which still has a place in my heart and on my physical bookshelf even 20 years later. But I have to confess that the lightning hasn’t struck again in that I’ve tried some of her later series but haven’t gotten hooked.

And I have to say that I liked Uncanny Times but didn’t love it as much as I hoped. It takes a long time to get itself going, and its two points of view characters are very private people. We don’t get to see nearly enough of what makes either of them tick. A lot of their investigation is obscured by fogs of various kinds and it makes the story murky as well.

But I loved Botheration. And the setting is fascinating because it feels like alternate history but the reviews don’t make it sound like it actually is – which really makes me wonder if I read the same thing everyone else did. So I’m torn, but whole in my conviction that I’ll pick up the next book in the series, whenever it comes out, at least to see what Botheration is bothering next!