Having just finished the Dogsland trilogy, and been blown away, I couldn't help but make a post about it. I feel this is a fantasy trilogy that definitely deserves more attention than it gets. Many thanks to/u/Mr_Noyes for the initial recommendation! I wrote a quick review for those interested (and for those not, look at the cover art, and just you tell me that's not worth a punt...).

The Dogsland Trilogy:-

Cover art:

Never Knew Another

When We Were Executioners

We Leaver Together

Review: The Dogsland trilogy is a story of daily struggles, of hidden demons, forbidden love, and revenge all in front of a backdrop of a decaying city and backroom-political machinations. On the one hand, the Dogsland trilogy ticks all the well-worn boxes required for ‘great fantasy’: convincing world-building, characters so good you feel every emotion, a gripping plot with twists abound. On the other, McDermott uses these familiar elements to ask such different questions of the reader, and to such different effects, that I find it hard to think of a writer to compare him to.

Central to the trilogy is a meditation on memory, identity, and truth. The trilogy begins with the narrator, a hunter-priestess, stumbling across the corpse of a demon-child; the sacrilegious offspring of human and demon, who poison and destroy all they touch. Granted the power to assume the memories and experiences of the demon-child, the narrator melds her mind with that of the deceased half-demon, Jona, in order to track down all he came into contact with in his life, to heal the damage he left and to root out any other demon-child in hiding. Far from beings of outright evil,, demon-children are as much human as demon, with hopes, dreams and fears. Throughout the trilogy, we get to know in intimate detail the internal life of Jona, and are constantly forced to ask the question - is his nature enough to condemn him, or is the world more complex than that?

McDermott masterfully interweaves a whole number of different narratives to tell his tale. At one level, there is the tale of the priestess and her husband, their search for the echoes of Jona in the present and the priestess’ struggles with sharing her identity with Jona’s consciousness. At another level there are the memories of Jona himself and the tale of his falling in love with Rachel Nolander, another demon-child. At another level, the priestess attempts to reconstruct the past of other individuals through rumours, Jona’s offhand conversations and detective work.

The priestess’ judgements on Jona, Jona’s judgements on others, and the reader’s judgements on all of them constantly call into question the reader’s initial assumptions.The result is an at times surreal, confusing but always powerful mix of fact and fiction, of the past and present and of many different perspectives into a seamless, dream-like whole.

Such a complex construction could easily have bogged a text down in literary navel-gazing, but the beautiful, minimalistic and gritty prose of McDermott has an astounding ability bring to life the grim world and intense emotions of his characters. Make no mistake, this is a book about the daily struggles of individuals not a grand epic narrative, almost like experiencing A Game of Thrones but from the perspective of the extras and the bit parts. It feels like a breath of fresh air in a sea of fantasy fixated on heroes, anti-heroes and villains.

The Dogsland trilogy is at times a hard read - it does not hand hold, immediately throwing heavy slang at the reader and leaving the world’s history and society, and character’s motives and complex plans to be discovered by the reader, not expounded through lengthy monologues. It fully rewards the effort however. Days after finishing it, I just can’t stop pondering and mulling it over; surely the mark of something special. I would highly recommend it to any fans of fantasy, if only for the fantastic cover art, especially those interested in the more ‘literary’ end of the genre.

TLDR: A masterfully written tale of demons, wolves, love, memory and revenge. What more could you want? In fact, it might even be greedy to ask for more.