Top critical review
3.0 out of 5 starsAdequate genre fiction, but mostly doesn't make sense
Reviewed in the United States on October 26, 2012
I read this series, and the related Paranormal Scene Investigation series during a month-long cheap-fiction bender. Mostly because "Pack of Lies" was recommended as a best Sci-Fi of the year choice on NPR, and because the theme reminded me of the "Dresden Files" series.
I really wouldn't bother with "Retrievers" unless you have nothing else better to read. To be fair, the prose is workmanlike. The characters are mostly stock standard, but Gilman does write pretty decent character interactions. The emotional landscapes of her major players ring pretty true, and are the best part of all her books. The relationship between Sergey and Valere is decent, and the triangle between Sergey, Valere and PB is good.
But, I like world-building in my fantasy, and here she falls completely flat. One of the major premises of the two series (PSI and the Retrievers) is that there are supernaturals among us, but we don't recognise them. This is a common trope, but Gilman doesn't explain it with any adequacy - in fact most of the people in her books can see these supernatural creatures, and recognise their presence and effects. This agnosticism about the 'Costa Nostradamus' thus feels completely arbitrary.
Especially given the counterplot: that a subset of normal people of the world HATE the supernaturals, and want to destroy them. One of the worst scenes in this regard is where a mother and her young son ambush a (Chinese) unicorn. The mother pushes her son to kneecap the unicorn with a baseball bat while the child cries, she jeers, and the unicorn benevolently takes it. Gilman is apparently trying to evoke the mood of a brewing pogrom, but the 'bad guys' are just set pieces that lurch on and off, whose motivations are never adequately explained. There is a (poorly rendered) acceleration of paranoia and discrimination across about 4 books in the series that ends in a random battle in the middle of the city. Two large groups of people-supernaturals on one side, and humans on another-meet on a bridge, Jets and Sharks style, sort of randomly one day, and kill each other for hours, destroy a few blocks of New York and then... Nothing happens.
Likewise poorly explained is the personal arc of the main character, the retriever Valere. She's more-or-less a thief (talented to be sure) and Gilman goes out of her way to try and portray her as morally gray. But somehow despite her ethical anomie, and though even the Cosa Nostradamus barely notice her, they force her into a position of acclaim and authority, and turn to her to help them navigate out of their darkest hour.
I probably shouldn't have read past the first book, but I kept hoping. It didn't really get better. I felt like things happened, just for the the sake of happening, and nothing followed logically from anything else. I didn't hate these books, and kind-of liked some of the characters, but that's about all. If you don't demand anything from a book beyond an easy read, go for it.
