Uncanny Vows by Laura Anne Gilman – Review

Published: November 28, 2023

Publisher: Gallery/Saga Press

Series: Huntsmen #2

Genre: Fantasy

Pages: 384 (Kindle)

My Rating: 3 Stars

A copy of this book was provided by the  publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Synopsis:
Following the events of the high-stakes and propulsive Uncanny Times, Rosemary and Aaron Harker, along with their supernatural hound Botherton, 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.

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I completely loved the first book in The Huntsmen series, Uncanny Times, and have been awaiting the sequel ever since. Uncanny Vows picks  up several months after the momentous events of the first book and the Harker siblings have been scraping by on their stipend and the meager wages they’ve pulled in from odd hunting jobs. It seems they’re on the blacklist and when they’re offered a job, it seems to be one that’s destined to be a failure.

Rosemary and Aaron are sent to Boston at the behest of a Huntsmen donor whose brother-in-law has fallen into an unexplainable sleep. Their investigations lead them nowhere conclusive and they fear the fey are involved, which would be terrible for a great many reasons, not the least of which is that the treaty between the fey and humans was broken on their previous job. The pair, along with Bother, their massive Molosser hound, are muddling along, investigating every angle, no matter how absurd or unlikely, just trying to stop anyone else from being targeted by the mysterious uncanny.

I was really hoping this would be as fast paced and engaging as the first book felt and that it would be another favorite. While this book was by no means bad, it did suffer with pacing because our characters were getting nowhere fast. They repeatedly found nothing and lamented the fact that they couldn’t identify the uncanny or why it had attacked, only to do the same thing in the following chapter. This book really felt like set up for a third installment and definitely had ‘middle book syndrome’. 

Overall, while this was entertaining and I enjoyed the characters and concept, it lacked the appeal brought in Uncanny Times. I was totally hooked on the first book and couldn’t put it down. I read through Uncanny Vows quite quickly, but it felt like it moved at a glacial pace and I just wanted things to move! I think this series has a lot of potential and I love the concept, so I’ll most definitely be checking out the third book with hopes that it’s on part with the first installment.