Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Never Knew Another (Dogsland #1)

3.68 of 5 stars 3.68 · rating details · 202 ratings · 53 reviews

Fugitive Rachel Nolander is a newcomer to the city of Dogsland, where the rich throw parties and the poor just do whatever they can to scrape by. Supported by her brother Djoss, she hides out in their squalid apartment, living in fear that someday, someone will find out that she is the child of a demon. Corporal Jona Lord Joni is a demon's child too, but instead of living...more

Paperback, 256 pages

Published February 1st 2011 by Night Shade Books (first published January 16th 2011)

more details... edit details

Get a copy:

More…

Friend Reviews

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

Lists with This Book

A Dance With Dragons by George R.R. Martin

2011 DGLA Fantasy Book Nominees

47th out of 84 books — 293 voters

Good Books To Read In 2012

201st out of 331 books — 157 voters

More lists with this book...

Community Reviews

(showing 1-30 of 1,190)

filter | sort: default (?) | rating details

May 11, 2012 Bastard rated it 4 of 5 stars

Quick reaction: http://bastardbooks.blogspot.com/2012...

Well, this was a unique one. Really hard to put into words what I feel about it, but at the end of it I really loved it. Beautiful prose that contrasted the ugly world it depicted. It's a very short novel, yet quite packed. The story itself is not that complex, but the storytelling technique is. It's easy to get confused since POVs are not always easily identifiable, but that's part of the charm. Part of the story is experienced through a c...more

like 4 likes · see review

May 31, 2012 A.E. Marling added it

Shelves: dark-fantasy

This book is a hallucination caused by snorting demon blood. You think I'm joking? Well, maybe about the snorting part, but it's a frame story from the perspective of two wolfish demon hunters who experience the life of a demon through his bones in order to track down the taint of his blood and sweat. The novel is written in a surreal style, more a piece of modern art than a plot. The content of that blood-and-mud painting surprised me.

Never Knew Another depicts the other, the persecuted demons...more

like 1 like · see review

Feb 10, 2012 Shauna added it Recommends it for: people who like ethical questions in their fiction

I usually don’t summarize the books I review because a reader can find a summary on the inside cover flap, on the back cover, or in listings at Goodreads and online bookstores. However, this book requires a summary because the one give in those places is wrong.

This is not a book about Rachel Nolander. She appears only as a minor character in the backstory and mostly through second-hand memories. The book instead is about a couple, part human, part wolf, who track and kill people who, through no...more I usually don’t summarize the books I review because a reader can find a summary on the inside cover flap, on the back cover, or in listings at Goodreads and online bookstores. However, this book requires a summary because the one give in those places is wrong.

This is not a book about Rachel Nolander. She appears only as a minor character in the backstory and mostly through second-hand memories. The book instead is about a couple, part human, part wolf, who track and kill people who, through no fault of their own, have demon ancestry. In this book (the first of a trilogy), she uses the skull of Jona (a demon’s child who has been discovered and murdered) to reconstruct his memories so that she and her husband can find and kill the woman he loved (Rachel Nolander) and a mysterious demon who has lived in the shadows for centuries.

What I didn’t like:
First, the couple finds neither Rachel Nolander nor the mysterious demon. The book ends with no conclusion, as if one book had been split into a trilogy with random breaks.

Second, the demons were far more sympathetic characters than the demon hunter protagonists. I understand that the demons taint everything that their body fluids touch and that if they are not careful, they can injure or kill other people. But Rachel and Jona take great pains to avoid injuring others. They are two very lonely people who are surviving the best they can, always on guard because one tiny slip-up could mean being burned to death. (That’s right: The demon children aren’t killed quickly or painlessly; they are burned alive.)

What I did like:
First, the novel is nicely written and is a pleasure to read.

Second, the core ethical issues in the novel echo some in our own society. What can we do about people with the HIV virus who continue to have sex without telling their partners? What can we do about child molesters who fulfill their sentences but still have overwhelming urges to sexually abuse children? The rough justice in Never Knew Another suggests the answer is to kill them and possibly everyone who may unknowingly have been affected. I reject that solution. Surely there is someway to separate these people (or demons) from the rest of society so that they can have a semi-normal life
.
I understood the protagonists’ mission, but I disliked them anyway. When they hurt people or burned down people’s homes and places of business, I was reminded of the Religious Right and other wacko far right fringe groups in our own society who act against “the other” (black people, gays, independent women, etc.) who are other through no choice of their own. Their cure is worse than the supposed crimes of “the other.”

So J.M. McDermott did a good job of making me think. I wish that the book had been advertised more accurately and that it didn’t end so arbitrarily. I probably will read the next book in the series, despite my misgivings.
(less)

like 2 likes · see review

Nov 27, 2011 Yune rated it 3 of 5 stars

Love the title, love the cover, love the opening:

My husband and I placed the head from the body we had found upon a rock face at the top of a hill, where the sun and moon would always fall upon it. He had worn the uniform of a king's man in life, but he had demon in his bloodline, and he had stained the earth where he had fallen. My husband and I prayed there, with the head on the stone, to the goddess Erin, and raised our eyes to the sky, to her. We fasted and fasted all day. We drank only wate

...more Love the title, love the cover, love the opening:

My husband and I placed the head from the body we had found upon a rock face at the top of a hill, where the sun and moon would always fall upon it. He had worn the uniform of a king's man in life, but he had demon in his bloodline, and he had stained the earth where he had fallen. My husband and I prayed there, with the head on the stone, to the goddess Erin, and raised our eyes to the sky, to her. We fasted and fasted all day. We drank only water when the moon slipped from behind the clouds. We prayed and we prayed. In the morning twilight, Erin granted me the vision. I cried out in pain. Where is my body? screamed the skull. Where is Rachel?

He and Rachel were lovers as true as any in the city. She left him. He died chasing her.

I asked my husband if he would die for me. He said no.

The nameless narrator is one of Erin's Runners, with a wolfskin that lets her run and chase down the demonspawn whose blood is so potently poison it will cause leaves to wither and men to sicken. I could have read about her all day. Unfortunately, most of the book is occupied with the way she dips into the dead man's memories, trying to find traces of other, living, demon-children so that she can hunt them down too.

Jona, the dead man, is a city guard, and his life is as messily urban as you can expect in a vaguely medieval-scape world. He is careful not to share drinks (his spit, too, is dangerous); he doesn't sleep at night; and at times he has strange moods which lead him to grow dangerous. I didn't care for him but was drawn into his corrupt world anyway.

The structure was strange, too, passing from perspective to perspective and skipping along the timeline. Mostly the prose kept me going.

This is definitely a book with a sequel; very little's wrapped up except for a greater understanding of the dead man's connections to other demon-children. But while the city, with its intrigue and squalor and nighttime crime, became vivid to me, I knew next to nothing about the awesome Runners of Erin; only how relentless their mission was, how sometimes they were vulnerable to frailer human emotions. I will read the next book to find out more about them.

Note to the picky: something went wrong during a production phase of this book, and you'll find repeated sentences and other egregious errors.(less)

like 2 likes · see review

May 31, 2011 Courtney Schafer rated it 5 of 5 stars

Never Knew Another is a haunting little gem of a book, the kind that lingers in your head long after you’ve turned the last page. It reminded me of Gene Wolfe’s novels: while reading, I had that same sense of deep truths hidden between interlocking tales, where words left unspoken hold equal weight to those on the page. The framing story for the novel follows a married pair of shapechanging hunters, whose sacred mission is to seek out and kill the halfbreed children of demons, and cleanse the ta...more

like 3 likes · see review

Jan 12, 2011 Sarah rated it 4 of 5 stars

When you receive a book that is a gift or a prize you never know if you are going to enjoy it or not. Book prizes are often surprising. It is kind of like putting your hand into a bag that you can’t see into. You never know what you are going to pull out.

I won “Never Knew Another” on a little Twitter contest J.M. McDermott posted. When it arrived, I marveled at the wonderful artwork on the cover by Julien Alday. The very subtle use of colors gives you an indication that this is not just another...more

like 1 like · see review

Aug 05, 2011 Efseine rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2011

Ambitious, but flawed and ultimately unsatisfying.

McDermott has created a compelling and original world rife with conflict, some of which he mines in this book; I'm of the opinion that he could have written one long book rather than a trilogy, considering how short this volume was and how void of anything resembling a solid conclusion. The narrative arc just stops, at an almost arbitrary moment it feels like. I honestly don't know why he separated this into three books, but perhaps the next two...more Ambitious, but flawed and ultimately unsatisfying.

McDermott has created a compelling and original world rife with conflict, some of which he mines in this book; I'm of the opinion that he could have written one long book rather than a trilogy, considering how short this volume was and how void of anything resembling a solid conclusion. The narrative arc just stops, at an almost arbitrary moment it feels like. I honestly don't know why he separated this into three books, but perhaps the next two volumes will make sense of it.

McDermott's real strength is his prose, though. I don't always like all of his sentences, and he has an unfortunate habit of repetition that drives me up a wall, but that's made up for by the rhythm of his prose, the way the sentences flow together in a deeply evocative way. And there are some simply devastating sentences, truly beautiful turns of phrase that reminded me what words can really do. Unfortunately, this book's copyeditor - if it had one - should be ashamed of himself, because there were so many errors left in, especially egregious with McDermott's poetic sort of prose. The cover is beautiful, but the volume of mistakes makes me question the production values somewhat.

My problem with the story is this: It's a fascinating world, a compelling plot, and a fabulous non-linear storytelling conceit, but none of it quite works in this form. There's a note that rings false to me, partly to do with the flaws of the otherwise gorgeous prose, partly with characters who don't quite ring true, partly with the honest absurdity of calling this a complete story. Maybe it is a koan, as Felix Gilman says in the cover blurb, but it fails to feel like a fully-formed one. I'm going to keep reading, I think, because, despite the dissatisfaction I felt by the end of the tale, I feel like McDermott has ambitions and takes risks, which I appreciate.

He wanted this to be a great book, and though it's not I'm hopeful that he might one day write one (or have written, as I've not read his first novel yet).(less)

like 1 like · see review

Apr 02, 2011 Phaedra rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: nook, 2011

When i read the description about this book it made me expect something different. Instead of being voiced by the demon children Rachel and Jona, the story follows two shapeshifting hunters who exterminate the demon kind. Jona and Rachel's story unfolds through their hunter's quest to track the lovers down. Because I was expecting something else, I was a little disappointed in the narrative. However, all the characters were engaging enough that I'll read the next two books in this trilogy. I fou...more

like · see review

Apr 18, 2012 April Steenburgh rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: fantasy

They slip in among the men and women of day to day life, the offspring of demons whose blood is acid and whose very presence can cause a person to sicken. Their deformities, reminders of their demonic heritage, can be hidden like the wings Jona's mother cut from his back, or debilitating like the long forked tongue, black scales, and talons Rachel's father left her.

To be a demon child is to be marked for death. So Jona works hard as a Kings Man, passing for mortal day by day. Rachel moves from...more

like · see review

Feb 02, 2011 Ranting Dragon rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: stephan

http://www.rantingdragon.com/never-kn...

“My husband and I arrived in a city that I shall call not Woodsland, but, rather, Dogsland. That is the name for human places in the language of the wolf packs.”

Dogsland is the setting for J. M. McDermott’s Never Knew Another, the first book in the Dogsland Trilogy. In this novel, we follow two of Erin’s Walkers – half wolf, half human, all demon hunter. When they find the skull of a half demon child, they leave their woods to explore the city, following t...more http://www.rantingdragon.com/never-kn...

“My husband and I arrived in a city that I shall call not Woodsland, but, rather, Dogsland. That is the name for human places in the language of the wolf packs.”

Dogsland is the setting for J. M. McDermott’s Never Knew Another, the first book in the Dogsland Trilogy. In this novel, we follow two of Erin’s Walkers – half wolf, half human, all demon hunter. When they find the skull of a half demon child, they leave their woods to explore the city, following the memories left behind in the skull to chase down other demon children. The story is narrated from the first person viewpoint of one of these Walkers, whose name cannot be uttered in the human tongue. The memories she sees introduce us to Jona, the owner of the memories, and his lover Rachel, also a demon child.

Shades of gray
This two-sided nature of Never Knew Another, exploring both demons and demon hunters, erases all boundaries of right and wrong and takes readers on a dark journey filled with shades of gray. This is not an adventurous story of hunter and prey, but a tragic love story of two lonely and frightened people who know that when their true heritage is discovered, they will be burned alive for it. Neither has ever known another demon child, and when they meet, they are finally able to share who they are.

Weird rhythm
Dark, strange, and poetic, Never Knew Another can be typified as a fourteenth century urban fantasy. The style of writing is very different than anything I’ve read before. It is fast, sharp, creative, and almost philosophic at times. It’s as though McDermott planned every word carefully, creating a book that reads like a page-turner, not for its suspense, but for its weird rhythm and raw emotion, with hints of original magic.

A beautiful city
The city of Dogsland is beautifully crafted. The mud in the streets of the poor district, the stench of dead animals in the pens, and the shallow parties where the noble ladies try to impress each other feel as realistic as walking through a fourteenth century city filled with people with their own stories, fears and dreams. When I read about the rainstorms drenching everything, I felt as though I was sitting in the rain myself. When I read about the hot, stale, windowless rooms, the room around me felt hot. McDermott’s greatest skill is definitely his writing style that makes the world he created come to life for me.

Colliding timelines and stale plots
The characters in Never Knew Another will draw you in and carry you away. The conflicts they face every day and the struggles between doing what’s right and doing what is needed to survive a life as a demon are truly enthralling. At times, though, the number of viewpoints and the randomness of memories and intertwined timelines make this book a bit hard to read. For instance, during some paragraphs set in the past, a random thought from the present is thrown in unexpectedly.

However, the biggest problem I had with this novel was the lack of progress. This is without a doubt a brilliant book, but there aren’t enough events to carry it. Only near the end were a little mystery and political scheming thrown in the spice things up. For me, this came too late.

Why should you read this book?
Any fan of the genre might like McDermott’s novel. Whether you like Steampunk, Epic, Low or Urban Fantasy, or if you enjoy reading something weird and different, you will enjoy this. Never Knew Another is a wonderful story of emotions and conflicts set in an atmosphere that will blow you away. This novel had the potential to push the boundaries of the fantasy genre, becoming a fantasy and perhaps even literary classic, but though it is good, the lack of events and the mere 230 pages of the book aren’t sufficient to make this a classic. I hold high hopes for the sequels, though.(less)

like 2 likes · see review

Feb 12, 2013 Ευθυμία Δεσποτάκη rated it 5 of 5 stars

Θα παραθέσω πρώτα το κείμενο του οπισθόφυλλου:

[quote]

Fugitive Rachel Nolander is a newcomer to the city of Dogsland, where the rich throw parties and the poor just do whatever they can to scrape by. Supported by her brother Djoss, she hides out in their squalid apartment, living in fear that someday, someone will find out that she is the child of a demon. Corporal Jona Lord Joni is a demon's child too, but instead of living in fear, he keeps his secret and goes about his life as a cocky, self-as...more

like · see review

Mar 02, 2011 Jesse Bullington rated it 5 of 5 stars

I have a weakness for badasses wearing animal skins as hoods. This weakness has led me down many paths, most of them utterly terrible, and yet still I follow the siren song of the badass-with-an-animal-skin-hood...and now, at last, I have found my reward. Yet rest assured--even if you don't give half a puma pelt for the cover art and the promise therein of a badass wearing a wolfskin, this book will rock your socks.

The beautiful writing and perfectly realized characters combine to create a heady...more

like 1 like · see review

Mar 19, 2012 Jess rated it 4 of 5 stars

http://lightningtreelive.wordpress.co...

Never Knew Another is a novel that is not content to ride the wave of convention. Shorter and sleeker than your average fantasy offering, it nevertheless delves deeper and more relentlessly into its characters than most. Its prose, too, is a departure from the easy, (and sometimes rather lazy) straightforward style we often witness, instead possessing a maturity, deftness, and economy that is more common to short stories than novels. The story’s structure...more

like · see review

Feb 18, 2011 Karen rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2011-books

J.M. McDermott’s tale, Never Knew Another was both engrossing and frustrating. But I think my frustrations stem from the fact that this book is only Part One in the Dogsland Trilogy.

The tale follows two Walkers (People who can turn into wolves and are servants of the Goddess Erin), whose job it is to find Demon Children and erase their stain on humanity. The books open with the husband and wife Walkers discovering the corpse of a Demon Child. Through her connection to the Goddess Erin, the fema...more

like 1 like · see review

Apr 09, 2011 Robert rated it 3 of 5 stars

Disclaimer-If you read the review and feel there is a spoiler in it, please let me know and I will remove that section. Also, if you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask. Thank you.

Never Knew Another is the second book by author J.M. McDermott and the first book in the Dogsland trilogy. His first book is called Last Dragon.

Never Knew Another is about a pair of hunters who are trying to rid the world of demon born and the main plot focuses more on the back story of the life of the few demon...more

like 1 like · see review

Nov 10, 2012 Alex rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: fantasy

This is a Joe McDermott book so it's hardly going to be anything other than 5 star awesomeness is it? If you've not ready any yet, why not? - you only live once and you don't want to die before experiencing one of the greatest voices in modern fantasy fiction.

As for reviewing Never Knew Another, it became clear to me towards the end that this is more of a first chapter than a self-contained novel and that the reason I was struggling to get a handle on what I'd been reading was that it was far fr...more

like 1 like · see review

Mar 07, 2011 Jo rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: fantasy-and-science-fiction

Wow. Breathtaking, intriguingly original story.

The author’s world building is both spare and almost decadently lush -- hard to do, but read it, you'll see! It starts as the story of hunters, two skinwalkers who follow an old religion, bound to destroy what they call demons and heal the damage done to the world by these creatures. In order to seek those who have had contact with the demon child, the hunters must take in and re-live the thoughts and memories of the creatures they hunt, stealing t...more

like · see review

Nov 06, 2012 Jennybeast rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: scifan, dystopian, were, witches_magic

Well, it sounded very promising but unfortunately is the sort of stream of consciousness that falls in the verbal diarrhea category. Ok, fine, you want to write a book with shifting points of view that results from minds melding. Ok, it's supposed to be about memory, and sifting through another's memory to find clues. All of those are really interesting things, and the world is an interesting world and yet. I kept wondering when the story would start. I kept waiting for something interesting to...more

like 2 likes · see review

Apr 01, 2011 Christopher Litsinger rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fantasy, read-in-2011

As with Last Dragon, McDermott has created an imaginative world, and reveals it slowly and carefully with layered voices. The approach works if you like a book that slowly reveals itself, and makes you think hard at the beginning of the book.
Well worth the read if you like Mieville or other more literary fantasy, but oddly, I'll give one of the same complaints that I had of Last Dragon, which is that the editing seems occasionally off, which tends to drag me out of a book.
It seems this it to be...more

like · see review

Jan 30, 2013 Gregory Evans rated it 5 of 5 stars

This book left me filled with emotional attachment for the characters. I can only remember feeling this attached to a character (or characters) in a novel twice before, with A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry and Blackout/All Clear by Connie Willis.

Refreshing and different from normal fantasy, if you are a lover of fantasy, you will love this. If you are a lover of fiction but not a regular fantasy reader, I suggest this book even more to you, it is a good example of how great the genre can be wh...more

like 1 like · see review

Oct 13, 2012 Zachary Jernigan rated it 5 of 5 stars

Full disclosure: Joe and I are friends. We both attended the Stonecoast MFA creative writing program, where I became quite familiar with his work. Oftentimes I've struggled with his writing, as though it were an alien creature I'm forced to dissect. Ultimately, however, my mind has been greatly expanded by my encounters with his stories. He is a careful, thoughtful and compassionate writer whose approach is deceptively simple and head-scratchingly dense by turns.

As with his other works, NEVER KN...more

like · see review

Jul 06, 2012 Karen rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012, specfic

This is a strange, interesting, uneven book. McDermott's prose is lovely in places, and he writes with assurance. His fantastic world is several angles off from our own, and he pulls us into it without laborious explanations or coddling.

We open in first person, in the voice of a woman/wolf who's hunting, together with her husband, the trail of a dead demon-child. In other words, a man of demonic ancestry has been killed and they're following up to find who killed him, and to purify anything and...more This is a strange, interesting, uneven book. McDermott's prose is lovely in places, and he writes with assurance. His fantastic world is several angles off from our own, and he pulls us into it without laborious explanations or coddling.

We open in first person, in the voice of a woman/wolf who's hunting, together with her husband, the trail of a dead demon-child. In other words, a man of demonic ancestry has been killed and they're following up to find who killed him, and to purify anything and anyone he's touched. At first this seems like it might be a reveal waiting to happen--but in fact the demon child really is a demon child, and his blood and bones do corrupt and sicken others. The twist is that he wasn't actually an evil creature, just a man of unfortunate parentage. Not a very nice man, but just a man. That doesn't matter to the hunters. They spend the whole book tracing him and igniting anything he's touched. Whole buildings get torched to keep the demon's taint from sickening more people.

Most of the story is third-person, told through the memory connections that the wolf/woman hunter makes with the dead man's bones. She recounts his life, his crimes, his fears, his eventual meeting with other demon-seed people. The world he lives in is brutal, a Breughel painting crossed with a noir Dickens novel. He's a member of the king's guard, basically a brute in a uniform, who patrols the poorest neighborhoods. At night--demon-children never sleep--he's co-opted into serving as an assassin for the shady Night King, who threatens to reveal his identity and have him and his mother burnt alive.

It gets even more complex from here. This is a dense book, and at times a fairly sickening one. There's nothing in here that doesn't stem directly from the miserable conditions for the poor in early industrial England or America, for instance--filthy tenements and muddy basement apartments, women and children exploited and abused, casual violence and cruelty everywhere. It's just grueling to read two hundred pages of it. There are some good characters--Jona, the demon-child king's guard, gets particularly rich treatment--and some really lovely details. The world feels mature and fully imagined, as well as really original.

I like a story that doesn't spoonfeed me, but at times this one crossed over into incomprehensibility. There were plot points I didn't quite get, scenes I had to read and re-read and occasionally give up on. Plot threads didn't always follow through. And in retrospect, there's an awful lot of the book's middle that feels like description and character exploration without much action. By the final few pages, when the hunters are actually on the move, I was reading much faster and more avidly, because something was actually happening. (Unfortunately, I didn't quite understand what it was.)

This is the first book in a trilogy, but I don't think I'll read the others. I admired this book but I didn't much like it. It's sort of like an elderly relative who continually tells stories of the bad old days. You believe the stories, you respect the teller for how well he tells them--but in the end it's all kind of a downer, and you don't really want to go back for more.

And a note to small publisher Night Shade--thanks for bringing this book to press, but please copyedit more closely! I found lots of typos, and I don't think we can afford to depress this author any further. (less)

like 1 like · see review

Feb 20, 2012 Jm_oriol rated it 3 of 5 stars

Se trata de un libro incompleto, en realidad es el inicio de una novela, ya que deja todas las tramas en el aire, sin concluir ninguna.

La historia empieza muy bien, con la presentación de un matrimonio de sacerdotes/druidas/inquisidores que se dedican a perseguir y purificar los rastros de una linea de sangre “demoniaca” (demon childs), maligna por naturaleza y que es tóxica para la naturaleza y el hombre, en un territorio que se recupera, pasados ya unos años, de una gran guerra.

Después de este...more

like · see review

Aug 26, 2011 Laura Lulu rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: angels-demons, dark, fantasy

I had a really hard time with this one. I wanted to like it, I've been looking forward to reading it, and I loved the cover, but it just didn't measure up for me.

First of all, the blurb is pretty misleading. It leads you to believe that you'll be reading about the demon children, and I guess you are, but in a roundabout, convoluted way--it's written in 1st person from the POV of a shapeshifting demon hunter, who has all the personality of a macadamia nut. It is all "must kill all demon children....more

like 7 likes · see review

Apr 05, 2011 Louise rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fantasy

Completing this book is like coming up from a dream. The layered storytelling is done really well here. What you see on the cover with the person in a wolfskin is the outer layer of the story. It's hard to describe the book without giving too much away. I guess I could say it's about demons and demon children and the sense of isolation they feel from the rest of society.

The world is so rich that even though I was fully invested in some of the character (Rachel and Djoss, for example), I still fe...more

like 1 like · see review

Jan 30, 2012 Doug rated it 3 of 5 stars

Definitely a book for those who prefer character over action, though the best quick description I could give this book is that it's a series of sketches. The characters and the world are fleshed out slowly and indirectly in passages ranging from a paragraph to a chapter in length. Many of the short descriptions are quite evocative, and the book as a whole has a haunting, dreamlike quality about it. I'm looking forward to the next two parts of the trilogy.

like · see review

Jun 19, 2011 Glenj rated it 3 of 5 stars

I've never been a fan of fantasy written in the first person POV, just a a preference of mine and I fond the style of writing to be an utter disaster. Full of awful typos and inappropriately used modifiers, I kind of found it distracting. Yet, despite that there are some solid characters, and it kind of just felt like one large prologue so there is enough good for me to eventually want to see where the series goes from here.

like · see review

Aug 23, 2011 Megan rated it 4 of 5 stars

I was going to give this book less stars but then I realized that the reason it bothered me was because the story touched a bit close to home- two people just trying to find someone to understand and love them unconditionally, appreciating their faults rather than merely tolerating them. You know, while being part demon and killing people randomly (but accidentally!) and being hunted down by wolf people.

like · see review

Mar 26, 2012 Bernie Mojzes rated it 4 of 5 stars

J.M. McDermott doesn't write stories; he weaves tapestries with words. It takes some time for the patterns to develop (so it's maybe not the best book for those who need to thrown into the action on page one). Soft-spoken and understated, McDermott weaves the threads deliberately and masterfully into something haunting and beautiful.

like · see review

Jul 19, 2011 Chris Shaffer rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Weird, fantastic and brutal. I'm looking forward to the second book in the trilogy. The hidden memories and warped perspectives are neat.

Who is the protagonist? Why? I'm not sure I know. The main character is definitely not sympathetic.

like · see review

« previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 … 39 40 next »

new topic
Discuss This Book

topics	posts	views	last activity
Romance Lovers fo...: The Dogsland Trilogy by J.M. McDermott	1	6	Oct 27, 2011 02:17pm

combine
Other Editions (4)

Genres

Fantasy

87 users

Paranormal > Demons

9 users

Fantasy > Paranormal

8 users

Adult

8 users

Fantasy > Urban Fantasy

8 users

Paranormal > Shapeshifters

4 users

Romance

4 users

Fantasy > Low Fantasy

2 users

Horror

2 users

Fantasy > Dark Fantasy

2 users

See top shelves...

Readers also enjoyed similar books

Secrets of the Sands
by Leona Wisoker
Blackdog
by K.V. Johansen
The Winds of Khalakovo
by Bradley P. Beaulieu
The Cloud Roads
by Martha Wells
Of Blood and Honey
by Stina Leicht

About J.M. McDermott

His first novel was plucked from a slush pile and went on to be #6 on Amazon.com's Year's Best SF/F of 2008, shortlisted for a Crawford Prize, and on Locus Magazine's Recommended Reading List for Debuts. His short fiction has appeared in Weird Tales Magazine, Fantasy Magazine, Apex Magazine, and Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, among other places. He has a BA in Creative Writing from the Univers...more

More about J.M. McDermott...

Books by J.M. McDermott

When We Were Executioners (Dogsland, #2)

More…

Share This Book

Facebook Twitter Your website

Trivia About Never Knew Another

No trivia or quizzes yet. Add some now »

title link	preview: Never Knew Another
avg rating	preview: Never Knew Another Goodreads rating: 3.68 (202 ratings)
small image	preview: click here [close]
med image	preview: click here [close]
BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9359810-never-knew-another?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1331399206l/9359810.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9359810-never-knew-another?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]Never Knew Another by J.M. McDermott[/url]

Never Knew Another (Dogsland #1)

Friend Reviews

Community Reviews

Share This Book

Share This Book on Your Website