The House of Diamond

Black Dogs #1

by Ursula Vernon

Black Dogs: The House of Diamond is the first of two volumes chronicling the adventures of young Lyra, sole survivor of the massacre of her family's estate. Along with a wandering dog-soldier, she is swept up on a mission for the elven nation of Anu'tintavel in its war against a powerful sorcerer. With the help of a pair of female elves, a scout and a warrior, the frightened, bookish girl discovers new talents and confidence that make her a key player in the elves conflict.

Genres: Fantasy, Fiction, Young Adult, Romance, Science Fiction Fantasy, Magic, Speculative Fiction

224 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2007

About the author

Ursula Vernon, aka T. Kingfisher, is an author and illustrator. She has written over fifteen books for children, at least a dozen novels for adults, an epic webcomic called “Digger” and various short stories and other odds and ends.

Ursula grew up in Oregon and Arizona, studied anthropology at Macalester College in Minnesota, and stayed there for ten years, until she finally learned to drive in deep snow and was obligated to leave the state.

Having moved across the country several times, she eventually settled in Pittsboro, North Carolina, where she works full-time as an artist and creator of oddities. She lives with her husband and his chickens.

Her work has been nominated for the Eisner, World Fantasy, and longlisted for the British Science Fiction Awards. It has garnered a number of Webcomics Choice Awards, the Hugo Award for Best Graphic Story, the Mythopoeic Award for Children’s Literature, the Nebula for Best Short Story, the Sequoyah Award, and many others.

Reviews

[Mikhail · Rating 3 out of 5]

So this is a book with a story behind it. It's the very first novel Ursula Vernon ever wrote, and it's been generally hard to find -- no ebooks were ever published, few libraries had it, and buying a set on print-on-demand was something like $40. Then, miraculously, they got released as ebooks as part of the Summer in Orcus kickstarter, which is how I got them.

And... well... they're not very good.

It's not a terrible book, by any stretch of the imagination. But it's very clearly Vernon's first work, and as the author herself admits, she started writing it when she was sixteen. Compared to Vernon's later work, the characters and the story are much more 'standard-issue fantasy', though every so often you see elements that would become iconic for Vernon-as-we-know-her-now (Sadrao the Dog-Soldier most notably -- really, this book needed more Sadrao and fewer elves).

Ultimately, I can't really recommend this book unless you're an absolute Vernon completionist, and I'm not sure I'll read the sequel either. If you want a good introduction, go read Digger instead.

[Anne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Even her early books are 100% better than most.

The author caveats a lot before the book starts. It's my first book, it has problems, it's embarrassing, etc, etc.

It's *still* 200% better written and more interesting than most of the stuff being published today. I love her writing so much!

[Janice · Rating 4 out of 5]

I also got this book for being a backer of Summer in Orcus.

I'm an Ursula Vernon fangirl. And yes, this is a first novel. And no, it's not perfect. But Ursula writes smoothly and interestingly.

Animals that are really humans in animal garb aren't always my thing. I understand the impulse to build a character that's DIFFERENT, that takes good (or bad) human traits and recasts them in a different form to explore them in different ways. I just don't know how it would all work IRL. For instance, when the travelers are riding on horseback, every now there's a reference to Sadrao (the dog soldier -- DOG soldier, heh) wagging his tail, and it brings me up short every time.

I'm on record as disliking most fantasy elves that aren't written by Tolkien, but that's me. Ursula's elves are not too bad.

I closed volume one and immediately opened volume two. So I like it reasonably well. :)

[Amanda · Rating 1 out of 5]

This review stand for both books. There are SPOILERS.

I want to get this out of the way. I love Ursula Vernon's stuff. I've come late to the party but I have fallen hard and I am working my way through her catalog (except the horror, it's 2022 as I write this and I don't need more horror, y'all.) I started with Paladin's Grace and have proceeded apace. I was about to get to the Hamster Princess stuff when I realized I'd missed this duology! I read the summary and couldn't click buy fast enough. It sounded wondrous.

Reader, it was not wondrous. This is a bad book (duology).

I mean, you can see the glimmers of the greatness that was to become The Great Ursula Vernon -- the extraordinary world building, her compassion, her talent for nature writing, all those glorious things. But this read like a 15 year old's D&D campaign (a very gifted 15 year old! which I'm sure she was) who was gaming in the 90s with her edgelord goth boyfriend who wanted to 'really explore darkness.'

I mean, it opens well enough. The sole survivor from a massacre is a dark but traditional start for this sort of series. The Dog Soldiers were brilliant -- original, compelling, authentically written. The Xena-Gabrielle elves were a nice rendition of a classic trope. The intuitive magic that she's very good at and does whatever the plot needs was a bit Mary Sue-ish, but that's fine. It adds a fairy tale gloss to the story that I like.

But the romantic interest is a broody half-elf son of a Dark Sorcerer who was forced to rape and torture women. I mean... Okay?

At first, I assumed this was going to be a Buffy-style subversion. No way will be he redeemed by the pure love of our heroine. But no, it was just a whole romance based around this adolescent character concept, with each twist getting darker and darker until the finale where she gets raped by the romantic lead and gives herself an abortion that sterilizes her for the rest of her life and gives him back himself by suffering his torture....

No. This was bad. I would love if she would return to this very compelling world as a more mature writer. The world was great. I want more on the dog soldiers and the rabbit people and the librarians. But this was not good.

[Irene · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book very slowly because I only have an epub of it, so I had to read it on my phone and my laptop, and I despise the whole experience. So you can be sure that if I managed to finish it and I've already started the next one, is because I am heavily invested in the story. You could call this book YA (the protagonist is 17, after all) and also fantasy with a touch of romance, but I don't think it would necessarily suit the current expectations of people who read YA romantasy novels. That said, I enjoyed it tremendously and I am reassured, once again, that Vernon can do no wrong.

[William Leight · Rating 3 out of 5]

On the one hand, considering that Vernon was still a teenager when she wrote it, "The House of Diamond" is impressively good. On the other hand, Vernon was still a teenager when she wrote the book, and it shows. The seams connecting the bits and pieces of Vernon's characteristic style with the various high-fantasy tropes that she is using are all too visible, even when she is trying to subvert them (the lesbian elves are nice, but they're still quite recognizably elves in a long, Tolkienesque tradition). Still, the bits of her style are there, and the "shy and bookish teen turns into badass" story has a certain appeal to readers who are (or were) themselves shy and bookish teens. And there are some fairly good parts, in particular Trent, whose anguished, half-love and half-hate relationship with his father, the Dark Lord of the book, is well done, if not quite as well as Barbara Hambly did it with Antryg in the Windrose Chronicles. On the other hand, Sadrao, the dog-soldier who takes Lyra under his wing, is a little too convenient to be really believable, and Lyra herself is a bit too obviously a stand-in for the author. Hardcore Vernon fans will find enough enjoyable material here to make it worthwhile, but others can probably skip it without worrying that they're missing anything.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't have a first novel, but if I did, I would SO want it to be as entertaining as Black Dogs. It's got flaws, yeah, but Ursula's trademark humor and wit more than make up for it. Give it a go if you read her journal!

[Xander · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this back when it was published in three parts on Elfwood. I'm sure the new version is even better. Great tale of damaged people who band together and face great evil.

[Kenya Starflight · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading the first novel of a favorite author is always an interesting experience. First novels are rarely as excellent as a writer's later work, but you can still see glimmers of what you loved so much in a writer's work when you read their earlier writing. Black Dogs was the first novel of Ursula Vernon (also known by her alias T. Kingfisher), and in a lot of ways it reads like a first novel -- relying heavily on tropes and falling into some of the common pitfalls of first novels, especially first novels written by teenagers. But some of Vernon's trademark humor, genre awareness, and knack for creating unique fantasy races still shines through in the first volume of of the Black Dogs saga, The House of Diamond.

Lyra is the sole survivor of an attack on her merchant father's estate, and as she flees for her life she ends up under the care of the dog-soldier Sadrao. At first her only goal is to survive long enough to take back her father's estate... but soon she finds herself accompanying Sadrao and a pair of elven spies on a mission to escort a sorcerer-in-training to the mysterious House of Diamond. Along the way Lyra will learn how to fight, pick locks, use the mysterious power known as Kytha, and uncover a plot by a wicked sorcerer that could destroy a country...

This is Vernon's first novel, and it shows. It's pretty formulaic, with the heroine's dead family and the typical "our elves are better" tropes that are common in a lot of generic fantasy. The magic system is pretty bland, with even the Kytha feeling more like Star Wars' Force than anything original. There are some glimmers of originality, mostly in the dog soldiers and the ferret and sloth people that also inhabit this world, and honestly we could have used more of these and less focus on the elves and sorcerers. There's also a romance, which... isn't as well-executed as the excellent romances found in the Saint of Steel series.

Vernon is aware enough of the tropes of fantasy fiction to occasionally poke fun at herself along the way, at least. Her sense of humor livens up an otherwise generic fantasy story, and it's nice to read witty and natural dialogue in a fantasy story. And while this book is only half the story, at least it doesn't end on too bad of a cliffhanger. Too many beginning authors leave their first novel on a complete cliffhanger, offering no resolution whatsoever in a blatant attempt to force the reader to buy the next book. I want this trait to die out already...

This is a first novel, and as such it's fairly rough. But it does show the beginnings of Vernon/Kingfisher's writing trademarks, and has some good concepts in it. Maybe someday the author will choose to revisit and rewrite this, or at least bring the dog soldiers into another novel.

[JULIA · Rating 4 out of 5]

From the author’s prologue: “I’m sorry, god, I’m sorry, are you sure you wouldn’t like to put this down and read something else? (Preferably from the same publisher, so they won’t lose money on the deal.)”

I read it anyway and I will read book two as soon as I can get around to it. This book has so much I love about fantasy stories, and most especially fantasy stories by this author (no matter which pen name she chooses at the moment.) There are the delights of humor, found family, suspense, engaging characters, magical creativity, and even a few mysteries to solve. There’s a light touch of teen romance here as well. It makes me wish more teen romance books were more realistic about teen love. This was sweet and awkward. Popular romantasy authors could learn about what real first love looks like from this book.

Yes, the prose is a bit long winded. Yes, the story digressions make the book overlong. This woman was 16 when she started writing this though! We should all be so lucky to have something this good we feel the need to apologize for.

I’m working my way through the Kingfisher books. Then I will go back and read every middle grade sentence Vernon has published. The second dog soldier will be somewhere high in that TBR stack.

[Jacey · Rating 3 out of 5]

In The House of Diamond Lyra is orphaned in one violent incursion into her previously peaceful home led by her bastard half-brother. The House of Volfrieds was one of the most important houses on the River Tanglelore, but now it's destroyed. She escapes by hiding in a cupboard and runs off ill prepared for survival. She's found by Sadrao, a dog soldier, literally a sentient upright dog-person with warrior skills and an inbuilt need to protect. She goes from a sheltered comfortable life to a tough life on the road while Sadrao tries to teach her to fight. They meet up with Sadrao's old friend Sinai and her lover Jacyl, elves of Anu'tintavel who have been charged with transporting the half-elf Trent to the mind wizards of the House of Diamond. Trent is the son of dark wizard Vade, got by rape on Sinai's cousin, the elf Lythara. The mind wizards should be able to ascertain whether he's genuinely escaped from his father or whether he's a plant, not to be trusted. They meet dangers on the road and Lyra gradually falls for Trent, so when the House of Diamond turns out to be not what they all expected, she has to carry out a daring rescue.

[Becket Warren · Rating 4 out of 5]

Entertaining and Suspenseful Fun

This is a first novel. The author’s forward warns and apologizes winningly and amusingly for this fact. Begun when she was a teenager, Ursula Vernon’s first-ever book has been heavily edited and revised—and split into two—by herself in adulthood, giving in, I imagine, to her fans clamoring for more of her stories.
The writing in Black Dogs Part One: The House of Diamond may not be quite as polished as it is in Vernon’s later works, and there are a couple of times where the tenses falter a bit (leading me to believe that one early iteration of the story was written in present tense). However, the interesting characters, the epic, multi-legged journey they undertake, and the audacious, always personable, and frequently humorous quality of the narrative are all comparable to Vernon’s more recent work, published under her own name and under the pen name T. Kingfisher.
As I am currently engaged in a quest/journey myself (that is, reading everything I can get my hands on written by this author), I’ll leave my review here and launch into part two of The House of Diamond story.

[Tasha · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read these out of order because I finally gave up on waiting for book 1 to come back into print, so I broke down and read book 2… and only then thought to re-check whether book 1 was finally available again. And it was. So I had a weird narrative experience, first reading how all these characters end their stories, then reading how they're first introduced and defined. That said, if I'd read them in order, I'm not sure it would have stood out to me how different book 1 is from book 2 — how much the first book is focused on filtering everything through the protagonist's viewpoint, while book 2 departs from it more, and how much bigger and wilder and scarier the world gets in book 2. I ended up liking them both pretty much equally, but for very different reasons — the first book for its efficiency in world building and character setup, the second more for its wild elaborations on the world, and its epic scale.

[Andy Coleman · Rating 4 out of 5]

A SIMPLE MAN'S REVIEW:

I knew it was just half the story going in, but it was still quite enjoyable. How can you not be enamored with a human-sized dog soldier?!

The story follows Lyra, a young human girl, as she runs from danger into more danger. But thankfully she meets a dog-soldier and other helpful characters along the way. The world, in which all this happens, is fantastic and is a great backdrop for a fun story.

There's not much peril in this book, although the potential for treachery is still high, and sometimes that can take away from the narrative, but in this case, it makes it a relaxing read. Yes, bad things happen, but they're so quickly resolved or inconsequential that you won't have to worry long.

I'm off to download the second half, but you should definitely check this one out.

Read it!

[Anna Katharine · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love Ursula Vernon/T. Kingfisher's writing style, but her plots are often hit-or-miss for me. This one was pretty good- the characters were sketched in with a wide-tipped marker, and included extraneous details that neither enhanced my understanding of them nor moved the action forward. The plot itself is sound, if fairly standard thus far (it's definitely not a stand-alone book). There's a bit more gore than I like, but that's a known risk with Vernon's work. Written by an established author, I would have rated this somewhat lower- but when I learned that the author wrote it IN HER TEENS, I was very impressed. Worth a read if you can't get enough of her work and enjoy her characters.

[Nancy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lovely fantasy adventure story. Lyra is a wonderful hero. She starts out very damaged and naive, and she has to learn to survive very quickly. Her journey through grief feels authentic and she earns her skills gradually. Her solo mission through the vents was a wonderful illustration of her growth.

The prose is a lot more purple than is usual for Vernon's later work, and the plot sprawls a bit. Certain parts in the middle move slowly, bogged down by exposition, but I really enjoy the characters and look forward to the conclusion of their story.

[Carro · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a good adventure and coming of age story, with interesting non-human characters who do have an alien element to them.
The main character's weapon training is entirely plausible.
Vernon has kind of thrown nearly everything at this one - evil sorcerer, elves, bandits (no dwarves or orcs) helpful mentor (one of the non-human characters) - but it all comes together and I enjoyed it. On an absolute scale of books, maybe it should be a 3 star - but I really enjoyed it and that was on a recent re-read so it gets 4. Sequel is to the same standard.

[PF · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved it!!

Extraordinary world building and characters, not to even mention the character development! As a martial arts student, I was entertained by the realism and humor built into the sword and staff lessons. I burst out laughing the first time the main character, a small young woman, is attacked on the street, some one grabs her staff, and she responds, "Hey, I know this one!" OMG! Priceless.

[Miriam]

I love this author's writing under the penname T Kingfisher, and when I saw this I decided I'd give it a go.

It is, apparently, her earliest work and in some ways that shows. But many of the things I appreciate in her later work - for example the progressive ideology underpinning the worldbuilding, showcasing different types of strength and strong platonic relationships - are present here too, even if some aspects are perhaps more buds than full bloom.

[Stacey McLarty · Rating 5 out of 5]

I cannot wait to start the next one.

Such a deeply detailed world has been constructed by Ursula Vernon in this story. Every character is noble and flawed in their own ways and likable and frustrating to the reader. I want to binge this extended story and then come back and read it again.

[Claire · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s always interesting to see where an author starts. While a lot of the book was Traveling, something I don’t love typically, Vernon’s character work and voice are present and giving us descriptions that still sing beautifully. And of course the most interesting part of this book for me was the dog soldiers.

[Kristin · Rating 3 out of 5]

A really interesting story, it's definitely clear in some places that this was an early Ursula Vernon book. There are tropes that are leaned on a little heavily, but overall the world is interesting and I'm looking forward to reading the second book. Also I'd like a dog soldier friend of my own.

[Virginia Peters-Schultz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fun action fantasy read

Wonderful for an early book (she started this in her teen). Not her best but even Ursula's less-than-best is wonderful. As always, a terrific female protagonist and flawed but likeable characters.

[C and C Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Much more than I expected

I thought I was getting a graphic David with all may be a hero is a dog soldier and a bunch of other people, but it turned out to be a fully develop set of characters a lot of text and not very many pictures and very enjoyable!

[Noh · Rating 3 out of 5]

I usually read Vernon's books in one night. That's how good they are. This one took awhile. Not that it was bad. It was good. It was just.. put-downable. I might pick up the sequel and I might not. Maybe if I run out of books on my Kindle.

[SR · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is FUN. A bit conventional in terms of plot but not in characters or worldbuilding or culture. The writing is a little shaky but still solid for action scenes, which is most of the book. Good, original quest fantasy. With giant dogs, sloths, and mustelids running around. And lesbian elves.

[Julie James · Rating 5 out of 5]

excellent read!

The first I’ve read of Vernon under her given name, and as soon as I finish this review I’m going in for the next. I will read anything she writes, and I’m excited about this series. I want much more about Lyra, Trent and, especially, Sadao.

[Retrogirl20 · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love reading first novels after reading a majority of an author’s works! You can see where a lot of the building blocks for future stories come from. Was this the best? Obviously not, but it’s a very solid story.

[Rae Williams · Rating 5 out of 5]

no apologies necessary

The author apologizes for this book and it is not needed. It’s fast paced, funny and the characters are interesting and likable. So what if it’s an early effort. It’s a good story.

[doowopapocalypse · Rating 3 out of 5]

The story is fine, if unoriginal, but the writing is bad. Lyra is so super special to the point where there is really nothing she can't do in the space of a couple chapters. There are too many asides that seem like the writer wants to point out how clever that bit of writing was.