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She hated the way they spiced their food; the way they spoke more with their bodies than their voices; the way they carved their flesh with brightly colored artwork and pierced their faces with threaded copper. She hated the dogs they kept at their ankles.
The less of the Hunt I have to put up with, she always said, the better.
And yet, she’d claimed to love Boru, a son of the Hunt if ever there had been one.
In the story, Boru, the new Lord of the Hunt, returns home after spending an unwilling nine years as the Queen's Champion, the lofted position more a punishment than an honor. Upon arriving home, Boru must meet the son he did not know he had, grieve the wife he did not know he’d lost, and learn to care for the remnants of a people he can barely recognize. He is guided by his father-in-law and former Lord of the Hunt, Ollam, a distinctly unwell man, to make peace with Boru's mercurial and clever nine-year-old son, Iremi, who is both so much like Boru that it's infuriating and so different from him that they barely recognize one another as belonging to the same species.
When a miscommunication leads to tragedy, Boru must make peace with bitter Ollam and the memories of his wife, as well as figure out how best to support his ailing community in a way that speaks to their own growth beyond the tragedies of yesteryear and towards the future. But most importantly, he must accept and utilize his pain from his great losses so he can make a connection with his son, before they both lose the chance ever to know each other.
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Hounds Know Their Own by Sam Trathen is a speculative fantasy story, with themes of the generational trauma of colonization, positive vs. toxic masculinity, family secrets, the hollow pain of loss and the constant anxiety that echoes through generations affected by those losses.