Daughter of Hounds

infobox Book |
name = Daughter of Hounds
title_orig =
translator =


image_caption = First Edition Cover
author = Caitlín R. Kiernan
illustrator =
cover_artist = Cliff Nielsen
country = United States
language = English
series =
genre = Dark fantasy, Horror novel
publisher = New American Library Penguin Group (USA)
release_date = 2007
media_type = Print (Paperback)
pages = 431 pp
isbn = ISBN 978-0-451-46125-4
preceded_by =
followed_by =

"Daughter of Hounds" is a 2007 dark fantasy novel by Caitlín R. Kiernan about the existence of a secret subterranean race of ghouls, set in New England. Though a stand-alone novel, it does feature characters from some of Kiernan's earlier novels and some events follow from the events of earlier books, most notably "Threshold" (2001) and "Low Red Moon" (2003).

Plot summary

The complex narrative of this novel unfolds as two parallel storylines which eventually come together later in the novel.

Emmie Silvey is an eight-year-old girl living with her loving but alcoholic father, Deacon Silvey, on Angell Street in Providence, Rhode Island. Emmie is a precociously bright child with startling yellow eyes, plagued by nightmares. As the novel opens in February 2010, Emmie is boarding a train to visit her stepmother in Manhattan. During the trip, she is approached by a strange woman named Saben White, who bears the Seal of Solomon tattooed on one hand. Saben asks Emmie many questions, making her very uncomfortable, and finally warning her to stay away from horses while in New York City. The strange woman gets off the train at a station in Connecticut, and Emmie continues on her way. In New York, she is met by her stepmother, Sadie Jasper, a novelist and witch (Wiccan). Following a trip to the American Museum of Natural History, where Sadie and Emmie witness and are almost involved in a horrific auto accident involving a horse-drawn Hansom Cab, Sadie takes Emmie back home to Providence, at her request (and to the consternation of her father). Soon, Emmie begins experiencing particularly strange dreams, where she encounters a young girl who calls herself Pearl, who warns of impending danger. Pearl tells Emmie that she must flee her home to save her father's life, revealing to her that she is a Child of the Cuckoo, a changeling placed with Deacon by the Hounds of Cain, a race of ghouls (or "ghul") who live beneath the streets of Providence and other New England cities and cemeteries. After being shown evidence that she may not be Deacon's daughter, Emmie follows Pearl out into a heavy snowstorm, across College Hill to an abandoned train tunnel, where Pearl believes they will be safe.

Meanwhile, the other half of the narrative has concerned the misadventures of a young woman named Soldier, also a Child of the Cuckoo. She works with other adult changelings, managing the aboveground affairs of the ghouls, and this work is often violent and even deadly. In the novel's prologue (set three months earlier), Soldier was almost murdered during a raid on a roadhouse in Ipswich, Massachusetts, when she was betrayed by a partner, Sheldon Vale, whom she was forced to kill. In the wake of the mess in Ipswich, Soldier has fallen out of favor with her ghoul masters and with the Bailiff, a mysterious man who also works for the ghouls, coordinating the actions of the changelings. Finally, Soldier is sent to Woonsocket to make a delivery for the Bailiff, accompanied by two other changelings, "Odd Willie" Lothrop and Saben White (the same woman Emmie encountered on the train to New York). However, the trip to Woonsocket soon proves to be a trap, and Soldier and Odd Willie find themselves imprisoned in a necropolis beneath the town by George Ballou, a half-ghoul leader of a rogue warren.

Back in the railroad tunnel, Emmie and Pearl are almost captured by ghouls, but Emmie manages to escape into an alternate reality or dreamworld, an endless desert where she meeets a peculiar black-skinned woman. Emmie carries with her a glowing orb containing a star captured by Pearl's father, whom she claims was a powerful wizard, the Four of Pentacles. Emmie has met the woman in her dreams before, and this time the woman confirms many of the things Pearl has already told Emmie — that she is a changeling, that her mother was "also" a changeling, that Deacon is "not" her true father, and that Saben White is, in fact, her true mother. She then helps Emmie find her way back to Rhode Island, where she emerges in a cavern beneath Woonsocket, just as Soldier has managed to slay George Ballou. However, the Woonsocket ghouls have unleashed a fiery demon, which Soldier is able to banish by shattering the orb given to Emmie by the Daughter of the Four of Pentacles. The experience leaves Soldier comatose, and Odd Willie and Emmie escape the tunnels, carrying the unconscious Soldier with them, and hide out in a motel in Uxbridge, Massachusetts.