A review by dtaylorbooks
Black Dog: Hellhound Chronicles by Caitlin Kittredge
5.0
I’m not sure what I was expecting going into BLACK DOG but it wasn’t what I got and I was so incredibly surprised and happy by it I pretty much swallowed the book whole.
It reminded me a lot of Chuck Wendig’s Miriam Black series, with the super gritty, foul-mouthed heroine that doesn’t take shit from anyone and makes her own way, with a little Black Knight syndrome going on (think Monty Python on that one), who’s stuck in a crappy situation and just making of it what she can. And that’s funny because he blurbed the book too: “Some books steal your heart, but Black Dog will steal your soul. Caitlin Kittredge has given the urban fantasy genre a kick in the face – she gives the genre tropes a much-needed upgrade and slathers the whole thing in a heaping helping of horror, humor, and hard-hitting prose. I want more and I want it yesterday.” That pretty much sums it up.
Kittredge writes with this black humor that you can’t help but laugh at and yet feel like you probably shouldn’t. But you do anyway. She gives you this terrifying world where all Hell is literally on the verge of breaking loose, where angels aren’t what they seem, and not all necromancers are bad. There are zombies and vampires, werewolves and shifters, but it’s written in a way where these things are enmeshed in the world, not a different part of it. They just are; they’re nasty and hard to deal with but there is no ignoring them.
She gives you a character, Ava, who’s just following orders. Doing what she’s designed to do because she has no other purpose in her second life. The fact that she is still living is something she’s grateful for, but at the same time she’s consigned herself to the fact that she’s basically a soul garbage man and that’s it. Until she meets Leo.
Who I kind of love. He’s a dick and Ava and Leo didn’t start off on the best footing, but they found each others’ grooves and I found that how Leo came into the picture could be pretty well forgiven. That’s probably really bad of me considering his first appearance in the story is torturing Ava for information but he’s actually pretty tame compared to Ava herself. And he’s actually pretty loyal to her and comes to look out for her. It’s kind of sweet in a hellhound sort of way.
I loved the twist at the end, despite it kind of destroying Ava a little. I’m looking forward to reading GRIM TIDINGS to see where Kittredge will be taking that storyline.
The only think I didn’t like was Clint. By the end of the book he felt very much like an obvious throw-away plot device that was shoved into the story to tie it all together. I felt he was discarded at the end too easily for all that he’d done and I’m left wondering if he’ll be seen in the next book. If memory serves, it’s not clear what actually happened to him in the end. So we’ll see.
The best way I can think of to describe BLACK DOG is real. The characters are real, their relationships are real. To Chuck’s quote, it really does redefine urban fantasy and the paranormal genres. It’s fresh and exciting without an overly snarky MC humping the leg of the muscly were-panther or whatever. The emotions are real and relatable, the characters are immediately engaging, the story sucks you right in, and whatever sex is in there is raw and real and drills deeper than just porn-level fucking.
BLACK DOG, I feel, is one of those sleeper books that hasn’t gotten a lot of attention (same as the Miriam Black books), probably because it doesn’t conform to the paranormal genre. But that’s what makes it phenomenal. It makes me want to scream READ IT. READ IT NOW. No really. Read it. Read it now. You won’t be disappointed.
5
I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
It reminded me a lot of Chuck Wendig’s Miriam Black series, with the super gritty, foul-mouthed heroine that doesn’t take shit from anyone and makes her own way, with a little Black Knight syndrome going on (think Monty Python on that one), who’s stuck in a crappy situation and just making of it what she can. And that’s funny because he blurbed the book too: “Some books steal your heart, but Black Dog will steal your soul. Caitlin Kittredge has given the urban fantasy genre a kick in the face – she gives the genre tropes a much-needed upgrade and slathers the whole thing in a heaping helping of horror, humor, and hard-hitting prose. I want more and I want it yesterday.” That pretty much sums it up.
Kittredge writes with this black humor that you can’t help but laugh at and yet feel like you probably shouldn’t. But you do anyway. She gives you this terrifying world where all Hell is literally on the verge of breaking loose, where angels aren’t what they seem, and not all necromancers are bad. There are zombies and vampires, werewolves and shifters, but it’s written in a way where these things are enmeshed in the world, not a different part of it. They just are; they’re nasty and hard to deal with but there is no ignoring them.
She gives you a character, Ava, who’s just following orders. Doing what she’s designed to do because she has no other purpose in her second life. The fact that she is still living is something she’s grateful for, but at the same time she’s consigned herself to the fact that she’s basically a soul garbage man and that’s it. Until she meets Leo.
Who I kind of love. He’s a dick and Ava and Leo didn’t start off on the best footing, but they found each others’ grooves and I found that how Leo came into the picture could be pretty well forgiven. That’s probably really bad of me considering his first appearance in the story is torturing Ava for information but he’s actually pretty tame compared to Ava herself. And he’s actually pretty loyal to her and comes to look out for her. It’s kind of sweet in a hellhound sort of way.
I loved the twist at the end, despite it kind of destroying Ava a little. I’m looking forward to reading GRIM TIDINGS to see where Kittredge will be taking that storyline.
The only think I didn’t like was Clint. By the end of the book he felt very much like an obvious throw-away plot device that was shoved into the story to tie it all together. I felt he was discarded at the end too easily for all that he’d done and I’m left wondering if he’ll be seen in the next book. If memory serves, it’s not clear what actually happened to him in the end. So we’ll see.
The best way I can think of to describe BLACK DOG is real. The characters are real, their relationships are real. To Chuck’s quote, it really does redefine urban fantasy and the paranormal genres. It’s fresh and exciting without an overly snarky MC humping the leg of the muscly were-panther or whatever. The emotions are real and relatable, the characters are immediately engaging, the story sucks you right in, and whatever sex is in there is raw and real and drills deeper than just porn-level fucking.
BLACK DOG, I feel, is one of those sleeper books that hasn’t gotten a lot of attention (same as the Miriam Black books), probably because it doesn’t conform to the paranormal genre. But that’s what makes it phenomenal. It makes me want to scream READ IT. READ IT NOW. No really. Read it. Read it now. You won’t be disappointed.
5
I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.