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Daughter Of Hounds

3.77 of 5 stars 3.77 · rating details · 479 ratings · 62 reviews

They are the Children of the Cuckoo. Stolen from their cribs and concealed in shadows to be raised by ghouls, they are now changelings in service to the creatures who rule the world Below and despise the world Above. Any human contact is strictly forbidden and punishment is swift and severe for those who disobey.

Raised by her widower father, Emmie Silvey has a precocious...more

Paperback, 448 pages

Published January 2nd 2007 by Roc Trade

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Apr 09, 2009 Annie rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2009

LOVED it! This is my favorite of hers I've read so far. It has a depth that I don't think any of her previous books quite reached - there's more explanation of what's going on as it happens. Because of this, it didn't have as much of the looming creepy feeling to it that I loved in Threshold and Low Red Moon, but it's SUCH a satisfying read. And mad props for having an awesome little-kid main character. Emmie is awesomely smart and sarcastic, and just fun to read about. Caitlin R. Kiernan rocks,...more

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Mar 10, 2013 E. Kimble rated it 2 of 5 stars

I wanted to like this so much more than I did. The atmosphere's delicious. The brutality can be fantastically matter-of-fact and at its best hits just as hard as it should. Kiernan's prose occasionally veers toward the overdramatic but for the most part fits around her story as snugly as it ought, which is why I was somewhat surprised to find how little I cared about what happened next. :(

Mild curiosity powered me through to the end, but the fate of the characters never concerned me. Can't deci...more

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Feb 15, 2010 Juushika added it

Shelves: status-borrowed

Soldier is a Child of the Cuckoo, stolen from the crib to be raised as a human servant to the ghouls; Emmie Silvey is a strange, yellow-eyed girl plagued by visions. The ghouls are threatened by an outside force, and now Solider and Emmie will come together in a looping road of intrigue and secrets. Ultimately this book has a simple premise, but its winding, looping storytelling complicates both the plot and the writing. Sometimes this style can be frustrating (many scenes end just on the brink...more

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Nov 14, 2011 Doris rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I am halfway through and still trying to figure out the point...

Eventually I find that Soldier, a Child of the Cuckoo, is the true focus of the story, even though it loops around and never focuses on her except at certain points. It was a good story, and had a really good ending, but the looping tale made it difficult to comprehend and tie all the tale's pieces together.

We do learn that Soldier is one of the stolen children, although we never quite learn why children are stolen from the crib. I...more

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Feb 17, 2010 Jason rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-2010, e-books

God I loved this book. This is the 3rd Kiernan book that I have read, Silk and The Red Tree being the first two. I have really enjoyed Kiernan's prose and her character development, no cardboard cutouts here. In this book Kiernan has created a wonderful dark fairytale, filled with ghouls, witches, demons, and elementals, yet it is done in a world that is not far off from being our own. Urban fantasy at it's finest. A wonderful little girl is the protagonist and her wit and maturity are the heart...more

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Apr 10, 2010 Gori Suture rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Recommended for dark fantasy enthusiasts

From the moment I started reading, I was spellbound. The colorful characters -- Emmie Silvey, Saben White, Soldier, Deacon, Pearl, and Odd Willie -- stepped right off the page, handed me a cup of sludgy tea, and dragged me off to a dark world where monsters from the Irish mythos ruled my every thought for days. Kiernan creates a dark fantasy world were little girls might just be what goes bump in the night, and reality isn’t what it always seems. The story paints a grim picture of an ongoing bat...more

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Mar 16, 2011 Deviant Divas rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: fantasy

The Daughters of Hounds was the first book I have ever read by author Caitlin R. Kiernan. I was pretty excited to read this book. It came highly recommend to me by a friend of mine. The Prologue started off ok then as it progressed it just confused me.

The characters made no sense to me (Soldier, and Emmie Silvey) I tried to make the connection. I could not(maybe I am just stupid).

During the rest of the book it was hard to stay interest. The plot had no appeal to me and the characters were just...more

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Mar 09, 2011 Carien rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fantasy

A weird, but utterly awesome book. This story reads like a dream or hallucination from time to time, but the writing, characters and world building are so cool it sucked me right into it's madness (which still makes a lot of sense though). And I fell completely in love with Soldier and with the ghouls, which are Lovecraftian ghouls btw. The story is multi-layered and complex, but all layers fit perfectly together in the end. There seem to be two books that precede this one, but I didn't feel lik...more

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May 13, 2012 Janice rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012

I'm really of two minds about this book. I liked the writing quite a bit. It's a Lovecraftian homage of sorts, but a deftly done one. I don't think you need to know the references to enjoy the story. Well done there.

OTOH, I'm not sure I really followed what was happening that well. That's probably due more to how I read a book in little dribs & drabs instead of in long, concentrated reading sessions. It didn't help that one of the main characters was pretty unlikable. We do see a bit how sh...more

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Apr 10, 2013 Robin Edman rated it 5 of 5 stars

Wow. Just wow. A story about ghouls told from within the society is woven with the story of a changeling girl, born of ghouls but raised by humans. Ms. Kiernan is really, really weird, but she's really making it work for her. The writing is all hazy and dreamy, even when she writes of horrors, and it gives everything a lack of edge, which is surprisingly effective. She pulls you right in, and there you stand, blinking, caught in the lights like a deer, and you just know the horrible thing is com...more

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Oct 20, 2012 Amanda rated it 4 of 5 stars

I loved this book. The cover's kind of goofy, but don't let it fool you, this is no trashy paperback (which don't get me wrong, i also like on occasion). The writing was beautiful, I was completely lost in the alternately gritty and gorgeous worlds of the story. The scenes with Soldier, both present and flashback were my favorites. The sections with the little girl, Emmie, I liked less, but still liked. Even though I had a pretty good idea what the ending twist was, I was still excited to see ho...more

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Jan 04, 2009 Shelley rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fantasy, september

This is the second book I've read by this author and I broke a hard and fast rule when I read this. About halfway through, I realized it was part of a series and I HAVE to read a series in order. I didn't want to put this book down to get the others in front of it!

This book is part horror and part fantasy and all good! Don't expect fluff and definitely don't expect to put it down until you're done! But do read the books in front of it. It'll help you understand the world Caitlin R. Kiernan has c...more

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Nov 28, 2012 Xach rated it 1 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. I haven’t been as thoroughly disappointed by a novel in a long time as I was with Daughter of Hounds by Caitlin Kiernan. Although it did have some redeeming aspects, overall the narrative was sunk by a variety of narrative flaws, structural failures, and nauseating gimmickry. By the time I thankfully reached the novel’s conclusion, I was left wondering what the point of the story was. More than that, I had to wonder why it took me such a long time to get through a book that shouldn’t have occup...more I haven’t been as thoroughly disappointed by a novel in a long time as I was with Daughter of Hounds by Caitlin Kiernan. Although it did have some redeeming aspects, overall the narrative was sunk by a variety of narrative flaws, structural failures, and nauseating gimmickry. By the time I thankfully reached the novel’s conclusion, I was left wondering what the point of the story was. More than that, I had to wonder why it took me such a long time to get through a book that shouldn’t have occupied my mind for more than two days at the most.
I had problems with the novel from the very beginning. The narrative is framed in a prologue and epilogue, with the bulk of the narrative taking place between the two. The problem is, however, that the prologue didn’t end until page 45 of a 315-page book. Forty-five pages of prologue! Even allowing for the legal text pages and title and dedication and whatnot, having the prologue end on page 45 is absolutely unacceptable. I found myself angry just at having to slog through more than ten percent of the book, in narrative steeped in worldbuilding and infodumps, just to get to the story I was supposedly reading the book for. This smacked of poor control over the narrative, and I was distrustful of whatever would come after. If a narrative needs that many pages just to set the stage, it should be included as the first chapter, or a separate book, or included piecemeal throughout the novel in a scattering of vignettes shown to the reader through any number of methods. But taking such an incredibly long time to draw up the curtains and turn on the stage lights on a story—any story—shows a critical reader that the authorial control over the narrative is more than somewhat lacking. Especially since, in this case, it was a myth-legend retelling through a minor character who almost never comes back into the story after her prologue focus. She’s an entirely forgettable, throw-away character used solely as a vehicle to present the reader with the mythological backdrop against which the main thrust of the narrative is placed. By making the prologue so lengthy, it more or less forces the reader to pay attention to it. Forty-five pages is too long to suggest that it can be skimmed or skipped over, when in fact the guts of what it offered could have been told in as little as five or seven pages, or present in so many different ways I’d be wasting space to list them all. Suffice it to say, my distrust and distaste towards the novel was already in full swing by the time I got to Chapter One.
Equally disengaging to the forty-five page prologue was the two-page epilogue. When I reached that part of the novel and discovered how extraordinarily brief it was, I felt cheated. On a purely structural level, I felt that the contents of the pro- and epilogue weren’t as significant as the huge disparity in how much space each was allotted. To me, a story framed in a prologue and epilogue ought to afford nearly equal amounts of space and importance to each, such that the reader benefits from a richer, fuller understanding of the narrative from reading both. And if the prologue is going to deal with a side character offering a birds-eye view of the main narrative, the epilogue should follow that same character to provide a closing bracket for that narrative arc. By providing the reader with a short epilogue that instead focused on one of the main characters, the narrative betrayed the trust that it asked for fro m the reader in the prologue. The narrative asked of the reader, “please bear with me, I’m going to show you this person’s point of view to start things off, and we’ll see how her world has changed as a result of the actions the main characters have taken afterwards, in the epilogue.” While I had long since stopped trusting the novel to deliver on any of its promises, seeing that was the final nail in the coffin. Mostly because it was at the end of the book, I’m sure if it had gone on there would have been more things wrong with it.
Moving on to the bulk of the narrative now, I have to admit that I have a bias. The reality in which the novel is set uses “magick.” With a K. I know that this spelling of the word dates back to the 17th Century and is as steeped in tradition as the spelling with no K, but beginning with the rise of neo-Pagan “witches” in the 1990s, the “magick” spelling has resulted in my brain hearing it pronounced differently, with particular emphasis on the hard ending, and a self-important pretentiousness inherent in the word. I associate it with the goth kids who wore pentagram rings and talked of invoking gods they didn’t believe in just because it was the cool thing to do. So when the narrative introduced the elements of “magick” I instantly and instinctively cringed and retreated back into my chair. Already soured by the lengthy prologue, this single word forced me to fight every instinct I had to put the book down and move on to something less deleterious to my sense of well-being and blood pressure. But, in it for the long haul, I soldiered on. Which is when I discovered the problems with internal consistency.
There’s a funny thing about writing anything with an element of fantasy. Whether it be science fiction, horror, high or low fantasy, or anything else in the genre, playing with elements of the fantastic only works if the narrative treats the unbelievable as if it was science. This is to say that, if a character is capable of magic(k), that character should be bound by rules governing the invocation, use, powers, and limitations of that magic(k). This is what gives fantasy its believability; the reader needs to be able to believe in the rules surrounding the intangible, unrealistic elements to give them a sense of gravity and realism. This novel doesn’t bother with anything remotely close to that.
One of the main characters, a woman named Soldier, can turn back time. Or see the future. Or explore possible futures. Or blur the lines between dimensions. Or…well..it’s never really explained what she can do. Nor is it explained how she does it. In fact, the first time it happens in the story, her character reacts as if it’s never happened before and she has no idea what it was. But later on in the story, she simply accesses her ability without a second thought, including bringing another character along with her. She never had to struggle to control it, or learn about it, or lose something because of it. She never earned her power, she was simply given it, and like so many things it simply obeyed the needs of the plot. Additionally, there was another character, a little girl named Hester, who possessed the magical ability to transport herself—or her consciousness?—to other places. Except that the reader learns later on that she’s only able to get out when the door to her time-locked prison is opened. Except the door is closed almost every time she manifests. And she knows things that she couldn’t possibly know unless she was out, or somebody told her (which nobody did). And sometimes she’s ethereal, while at other times she’s fully physically present. But she can teleport. Or is she astrally projecting? Or is she appearing as a specter? Simply put, there doesn’t seem to be any kind of rubric or set of rules that govern her. But she’s the weaver of threads that pulls the novel along, the Deus Ex Machina that controls every element of the story to bring about her ultimate goal—which is so deceptively simple that the story could have been solved much sooner had she done things more straightforwardly.
Lastly, on the topic of magic, is Emmie Silver. She’s the closes thing to a protagonist that the novel offers, and she has this weird ability to “build bridges.” Though bridges between what, or where, or when, is never firmly established, nor is how she does it or what exactly she does. By treating the magic(k) as smoke and mirrors, the novel seeks deliberately to obfuscate and shroud the story in mystery. Had the magic(k) been treated like science, with rules and facts and observable, repeatable results governing it, things might have been more concretely defined and elucidated. Instead we get bullshit hand waving and prestidigitation with a “voila!” to show the final result.
The other major problem with all of the characters, magical abilities aside, is that none of them ever grow or change. Soldier is just as much of a crass, cantankerous, violent pain in the ass when she enters the final sequence in the novel as she is at the beginning. Hester is just as mysterious, vaguely defined, manipulative, and otherworldly as she is at the outset. And Emmie, holy shit Emmie is possibly the most obnoxious eight-year-old I’ve ever encountered. She never listens, never learns, never grasps her own circumstances or tries to think like a grown-up. I’ve read child characters before that are devoid of the childlike wonder that is so often present and necessary in other children. Never have I read a character where the wonder and awe was replaced by sheer stupidity. I hated her character so much I didn’t want her to reach the end of the novel. I wanted one of the other characters to shoot her in the head and leave the world in whatever state it was in. But by far—BY FAR—the biggest oversight with any character was the narrative completely glossing over Soldier and Willie (another supporting character) being raped. Yes. Raped. The narrative offers only one sentence fragment to deal with this. “They were beaten and raped.” THAT’S IT. There was zero time spent dealing with the emotional, psychological, or physical trauma that the characters would have experienced. Nothing at all done to explore or explain their recovery, either. They were simply beaten, raped, and left to die, and suddenly once they escape everything’s fine. This, again, made me so absolutely furious with the novel that I wanted to scream and throttle somebody and never read the book again. In this magic(k)al world of all these odd things and creatures and monsters and whatnot, apparently emotion and psychology are also gone. It’s like the book just completely ignored it. Not only that, but it was entirely negated by the book’s ending—or lack thereof.
When Daughter of Hounds reaches its climactic moments, it does so twice. The first time, Soldier, Willie, and Emmie go through a magic mirror and into the lair belonging to The Bailiff—yet another character who seems to serve no ultimate purpose aside from being a vehicle for the plot. The three of them confront The Bailiff, which turns out to be a false climax since, once the plot turns away from the ending the characters want, Soldier simply “undoes” it, bringing her and Emmy back to before they entered but with both of them having memory of the other timeline. So they go to another location and into the time-locked attic prison where Hester is. This climax is equally rushed, revealing that Hester all along just wanted to be reunited with her daddy, and would move worlds to make it happen. It’s also revealed that Soldier had her childhood stolen from her, except not in any way that makes sense. Even assuming that somebody could steal years from your life, if you went from age six to age twenty, and then aged two years on top of that, you’d be aged twenty-two years. Magically speaking, if it was undone, one of two things should happen: the entire timeline resets and you’re age six again back in the year you were six to begin with, or you’re age eight in the present timeline, having lived those two years. In the movie “Big,” when Tom Hanks becomes a kid again, it doesn’t wipe out or erase his memory of his time being big, nor is he exactly the age he was; he’s older by however long he was a fake grown-up for. Here? Here is just more hand waving and bullshit and suddenly Soldier is six again. And with no memory of what happened when she was a grown-up, effectively negating the entire rape thing all over again. Which begs the purpose, why have such a huge thing happen, only to ignore it and then negate it? Wasn’t there another way for the narrative to address that scene without including rape? If the mark of a good action is that it seems inevitable in retrospect, as Robert Louis Stevenson stated, then Soldier being raped was bad action. And the entire ending is, as well. Not only was the ending a far cry from inevitable, it had virtually nothing to do with every moment of the story leading up to that point. Emmie’s sudden power to make a bridge—whatever that means—was the focal point of the narrative at exactly one point in the story, and like Soldier’s time bendy thing, she never had to fight to control it, or earn it in any way. Suddenly she just knows things and can do things, and achieves the end of the story where the little girl trapped in the attic vanishes, the grown woman becomes a six-year-old girl, and for some unexplained reason that makes the world change so dramatically that the other characters who are referenced and sometimes seen but never explored go away.
Another huge flaw with the ending is how many loose ends it leaves untied. Beginning an arc can happen at any point in the narrative, but generally a well written novel will only leave one major arc unclosed at the conclusion of the novel. The master villain, the Moriarty, the Emperor and Darth Vader, Dr. Claw, these characters are left unresolved but their machinations are dealt with. In Daughter of Hounds, The Bailiff is unresolved, the Cuckoo is never even explored, the vampires are hardly touched on, the half-ghouls are never dealt with, the ghouls are just kind of left unexplained, and the two main characters are just left to their own devices. Emmie even gets a fake happy ending that she never earned and sure as hell never deserved. Each one of these narrative arcs that was unfinished left me more and more frustrated, more and more dissatisfied with the novel’s construction and execution, and more and more desirous of never reading another book by this author again.
Normally, when I encounter a piece of writing I don’t enjoy, I try to find a window into it so I can enjoy it on some level. This wasn’t something that had a window through which I could see good writing. While there were a few things that were done well, they were the things that any decent reader should expect to be handled well by any halfway-decent writer. Aside from the very basic things that would fit under that heading, this novel resisted me at every turn. It offered no believable characters, no sustainable narrative arc, no thematic resolution, no symbolism that pointed to any particular lesson or point, no internal consistency, no life-altering revelation, I couldn’t find any reason to recommend this book to anybody. About the only positive thing I can say is that I’m very glad it wasn’t longer.(less)

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Mar 07, 2013 Patrick rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: reviewed

Had it gone through a rewrite or two, this would have been an excellent book. As it stands, however, this book is not particularly good. It is a pity; there is reasonable indication that the author understood how to write well, and there are a number of truly interesting ideas present within this book. However, it is possible for a good writer to produce a work of inferior quality. I just wish they held on to it for later revision instead of seeking publication.

However, allow me to begin with wh...more Had it gone through a rewrite or two, this would have been an excellent book. As it stands, however, this book is not particularly good. It is a pity; there is reasonable indication that the author understood how to write well, and there are a number of truly interesting ideas present within this book. However, it is possible for a good writer to produce a work of inferior quality. I just wish they held on to it for later revision instead of seeking publication.

However, allow me to begin with what is good about this book, as I do not want its merits forgotten. One would be the characters. They are all solidly crafted, and while they may not have opportunity to display all their facets they are still noticeably complex. The prose is also pleasant, and more refined than the standard fantasy fare I have grown to dread. The mythos of this book was intriguing, though I can say little more than that regarding it. The magic, particularly that of Soldier, had several interesting features and while not unique (I feel obligated to state I ascribe to the philosophy that nothing is original, though I think am safe in saying a feature remarkably similar to one found in the video game Prince of Persia is neither original nor unique) was still well intriguing.

Thus, my main concerns with the book were not regarding the basic content which compose the structural points of the book, but the manner in which they were played throughout the story. This is not to say that I did not have other concerns. One of the main characters, despite being nine, has the mental maturity and dialogue of someone in their mid-teens. I can accept that this nine year old is unusually smart and mature for their age, but not that their parents treat them like an adult or that they have anything resembling the mindset of someone bordering adulthood. Admittedly, this story draws heavily from fantasy and as such realism plays secondary role to utility, but defending a book by saying it shares the flaws of a genre does a disservice to both the genre and the book, and while the book established the presence of its magic in order to make it real within the context of the book, it played the maturity of the child in a manner which indicated it was not intended as a fantastical element. Also, the cursing irritated me. Normally, I would write this off as a personal taste and not mention it, but in this case it struck me as a misguided and unsuccessful attempt to make the book “dark” by having the characters (the nine year old and her parents included) swearing every third sentence. I understand there is a certain realism to having characters swear profusely, but this happens to be a work of fiction, and thus the realism should give way to utility—namely that these curses should be used in a manner which aids the story like a pinch of spice to add an extra kick to a dish as opposed to a handful which overwhelms the food’s original taste.

While those issues do irritate me, they are not enough to kill a story. However, what does kill the story is a lack of focus. This is not a surprising issue, as the book has two viewpoint characters in different story lines which run simultaneously. Ideally, these story lines should converge at some point and give the characters opportunity to apply dual analysis to each other and the world around them for the sake of depth and complexity, or they should in some way mirror each other so that, despite there being two distinct stories being told, there is a harmony unifying them towards some end point (whether it be action or ideal). The two character do not meet until late in the third act—thus eliminating the first option—and their story lines until that point do not have any sort of harmony as they bounce around set pieces without direction. The characters are clearly going to encounter each other in the book (otherwise there would be no point), but there is no reason why the book would be better off requiring both of them to exist in order to fulfill the plot rather than rearranging the world so that one of them could resolve the plot. It wouldn’t even be particularly hard to revise the book along those lines: until they meet, they may as well live in two separate worlds.

Also, this book does not seem to have much of a point. This, frankly, is a shame as the book tries to have many points, but because of this doesn’t focus on any of them enough to build a foundation which might produce some sort of impact. I give the author credit for trying, but I’d prefer to watch someone juggle two balls well than five poorly. Even the climax felt weak, because there were at least three or four of them in rapid succession, and the build for them was so scattered that none of them possessed a bite. Good characters and an interesting world are all well and good, but there needs to be a solid story for them to live in.(less)

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Oct 16, 2012 Dan Henk rated it 4 of 5 stars

As a huge Lovecraft fan, I had this book recommended to me. I was a few pages into it, when I left it in a plane. While I waited for a new copy, I read her novel Silk.
Her writing style is a bit surreal and florid. She loves to go off on tangents, with a vague, unsettling evil skulking somewhere about the corners. It's a Lovecraft trick, but he does it a bit better. When I read her book Silk, she was so loose with her story and wordplay (sometimes involving words she makes up for the occasion) th...more

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Mar 13, 2013 Erin rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I loved this book for its atmosphere, its characters (Soldier is such a badass), and its sense of impending doom. I love the way Kiernan plays with the concepts of time and space. Each one is pliable in this novel, and people on all sides of the conflict use them for their own ends. I love that Emmie is smart and sarcastic, and that Pearl is a bratty little jerk (also the shout-out to The Scarlet Letter, with some people calling her Pearl and some calling her Hester).

But....after being glued to...more

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Jul 10, 2010 Logan England rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: ebook, favorites

This book is a sequel to Threshold and Low Red Moon, but largely stands on its own without reading the first two books. It's atmospheric and evocative and genuinely quite scary in places. As someone who read that first two books, I was hoping for a sense of closure that I did not get, but that's not a fault of the book or the author. I think as a parent, I had a desire to see each child safely tucked into their bed at the end of the story, and that's not quite how things happen.

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Jun 23, 2012 Carl rated it 4 of 5 stars

I should have read Low Red Moon after Alabaster and before Daughter of Hounds, since there's a major spoiler for LRM in this book. But given how the author plays with time, it seems almost right to read the books out of order.

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Jun 11, 2012 David rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites

An excellent bit of mythos fiction. True fans of Lovecraft will want to read Low Red Moon first, but it is not strictly necessary. She does an excellent job of capturing the original feel of lovecraftian ghouls while expanding on their mythology in an innovative way. The main female character is strong and dangerous and virtually asexual, there are no romance subplots to distract from the more important traits of the character. Parts of the ending felt like they could have had a more satisfying...more

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Jan 09, 2011 Bianca rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: i-own

It wasn't a bad read, but for me it just didn't flow. A bit disappointed and it is probably not something that I would read again. There was just too much going backwards and forwards and there are no explanations until the very end, and even then things were just glazed over. I have a couple of her other books so I'll still give them a try but hopefully they will be a bit more riveting and forthcoming!

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Jun 22, 2011 Moose rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: horror, fantasy, lgbt, 2011, fiction

I picked this up at Half Price without realizing that it was #3 in a series that Threshold was #1 of. Oops. But it completely stands on its own. I liked this a lot more than Threshold. The characters aren't as full of despair and it has some GREAT worldbuilding and it feels like there's just more going on. Will definitely reread.

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Jan 05, 2013 Eva Rieder rated it 4 of 5 stars

Ms. Kiernan's dark writing is exceptional. The time structure in this book was a little too shifty at times (I suspect this could be due more to my reading-while-sleepy than the actual writing, I'm not sure), but the concept is unbelievably clever and rich. Great plot, strong writing, and intriguing characters. I kept it in hand as often as I could, because Kiernan's voice is addictive. 4.5 stars (even though Goodreads only allows full stars).

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Jul 20, 2011 Paula rated it 5 of 5 stars

I am not overfond of precocious child protagonists, but Emmie Silvey ranks right up there with Pullman's Lyra Belacqua in this horror-tinged (very dark)fantasy. Kiernan switches skillfully back and forth between the two main plot threads, and the characters are so compelling I never thought, "Wait, I wanted to see what happens with X character!" for more than a paragraph after the shift. The prose has a lovely rhythm too.

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Mar 26, 2010 Christine Hayes rated it 2 of 5 stars

The way this book is written,drove me crazy .It was all over the place. Soldier ,then ,when she first met The Bailiff.Then somebody elses flashback. Very choppy writing.WAsted three days trying to get through this book. I can't see wasting anymore time on it,.

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Feb 15, 2011 Ralph McEwen rated it 3 of 5 stars

This book was difficult at first with all the jumping forward and backward and changing character perspective from one paragraph to the next. Once I became familiar with the characters and the style after about 70 pages. I was able to get into it and enjoyed the rest of the story. I think it should be noted that this is a very ADULT book with a lot of strong language. I think much of it was character appropriate but a little over done in some places. I see from other reviews that this maybe the...more

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Jul 02, 2010 Lyn rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Not much on the fluffy bunnies, nevertheless several Questions are Answered and More is Revealed in this entry to Kiernan's smart, brilliant horror series.

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Jan 18, 2009 Ashley rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: horror, not-my-copy, urban-fantasy-paranormal-romance, 2009

I gave this book four stars, but I still can't quite decide if I really liked it or just simply liked it. The four-star rating is on account of the fact that it was very well put-together and planned-out, and there were some nice themes. I found out halfway through the book that this is the third novel in a quasi-series (the first two being Threshold and Low Red Moon, I believe), but things are well-explained, so I didn't feel too lost.

Anyways. I'm definitely open to reading more from this autho...more

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Dec 10, 2010 Lisa rated it 3 of 5 stars

Different! I was concerned it would dissolve into blabbering crap as the last couple books I've read had, but was pleasantly suprised, LOL. I'll be looking for more by this author.

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Mar 31, 2007 Clarice rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: at-home

The third in the series by Caitlin R. Kiernan, this book is one that surprised me. I've enjoyed many of her other books, but this had a bit of a story and a couple main characters that were even more sympathetic to me than I've noticed before. There's a lot of hope in this book in odd places, and also a lot of interlocking stories that relate to the other two books, Threshold and Low Red Moon of this trilogy. The story also strangely refers to happenings in the other two books (Silk and Murder o...more

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Jan 25, 2010 Michael Dunford rated it 4 of 5 stars

The Hounds in this novel are about the creepiest creatures in any piece of fiction ever constructed.

From the opening scene on, you're hooked into this book. You want to leave but you can't. Caitlín is the best!

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Quotes from Daughter Of Hounds

“You know, it's a sad and unfortunate state of affairs that you have to live in a world where eight-year-olds refuse to believe in anything that they cannot touch or measure, and anyone who happens to see a thing that is invisible to most people is immediately branded a lunatic.” — 9 people liked it

“The horse is dead," she says and squeezes Soldier's hand. "From here we walk."
"Anyone ever told you you're sort of a creepy kid?" Odd Willie asks.
"All the damn time," Emmie tells him. "I don't bother keeping count anymore.” — 1 person liked it

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