Tithe: A Modern Faerie Tale

Kaye has been playing with faeries ever since she was a young girl, but she doesn’t expect that when she returns to her childhood home that her childhood friends will turn out to be darker and more dangerous than her memories. Moving from city to city while her mother pursues an unsuccessful music career, an ominous and nearly fatal incident sends them back to Kaye’s grandmother’s New Jersey home. There Kaye discovers she is a changeling and a faerie, and becomes slowly drawn into a vicious rivalry between the two Faerie courts.

Kaye is gritty and angst-ridden to the extreme, but still ultimately likable as she falls harder and harder for Roiben, an exiled knight of the Bright Court. While occasionally Kaye is self-absorbed and selfish, it adds to her believability.

Holly Black’s faeries are capricious, feral, and through all their wild barbarism, haughty and courtly at the same time. Despite the liberal use of strong language, so much it actually distracted from the story, Tithe is an extremely well written modern day fantasy. I’m a sucker for urban faeries, and Holly Black certainly delivered a complex and suspenseful ride. Definitely on the darker side of things, it was a wild ride of suspense, angst, and betrayal. With twists and turns, Tithe was an adventure as unpredictable as the faeries mood swings, and a thoroughly enjoyable read.

Request Tithe from Howard County Library.

Posted by Iris.