Friday, February 09, 2007

Tithe: A Modern Faerie Tale by Holly Black

Here is my humble review of the book:

Kaye is a 16 year old just learning to be. Her mother leaves her band and they have to move back to New Jersey with her grandmother. She keeps looking for her faerie friends but doesn’t seem them. She is coming home from a rave when she runs into Roibin who is a faerie. Not long after that, her faerie friends not only find her but tell her they need her help. She is not sure what she is getting herself into but agrees. Yet lurking in the back of the mind, Kaye wonders if she has made the right decision and if this choice will not only take her life but also show her who she really is.

Holly Black has a wonderful way with words. I was thoroughly impressed since I love Faerie stories and have read a lot of them. She shows how faeries, in my opinion, really are like. They can be both cruel and kind as well as manipulative or a servant to others. It just all depends on which side they are on and they often reveal they cater to both sides. I also appreciated how much more in detail she went with the Seelie and Unseelie courts. I got so much more of an understanding of it. I also enjoyed the vivid descriptions that she was able to give me. It completely blew my mind away.

Kaye was a young girl who just needed to be able to survive. She was living a life that pleased her and she was only barely making it. She did the best she could in supporting her mom but she always seemed to attract attention wherever she went. The problem with that was most people found her freaky. If they only knew what she truly was and I am going to leave that up to you. My favorite faerie was Roibin. He is the one you get to see the most of even more so then Kaye’s other faerie friends. He takes you on the journey and tries to protect Kaye as well. That is not always an easy thing to accomplish. Kaye is finding out how tough the world is and she keeps on going. She is scared often which things she is able to do without trying.

The use of the word Tithe is not what you think of and the story can explain it better than I can. The Fair Folk have a world of their own where they seek all kind of pleasures and that is show in this book. I enjoyed it immensely and not only recommend this book but others as well. I found out there is a sequel to the book titled Ironside, which I plan on reading hopefully soon. I found myself pulled into the world of the Faeries and didn’t quite want to leave. This book gets a rating of 5/5 because it is so overwhelming. I didn’t care for much of what the teens or the faeries did in the book but that is true enough to life. I recommend this book very highly!


Other books I liked about faeries or the fair folk are:
The Artemis Fowl series by Eoin Colfer
A Midsummer's Nightmare by Gary Kilworth (good luck finding a copy in the US and no I'm not sharing mine.)

Those are the only ones I can think of at this moment but I am sure there are others. :)