Review: Tithe by Holly Black

Tithe by Holly Black
A Modern Faerie tale

Group: YA
Genre: Urban fantasy
Pages: 336
Published: 2004

Sixteen-year-old Kaye is a modern nomad. Fierce and independent, she travels from city to city with her mother's rock band until an ominous attack forces the sixteen-year-old back to her childhood home. There, amid the industrial, blue-collar New Jersey backdrop, Kaye soon finds herself an unwilling pawn in an ancient power struggle between two rival faerie kingdoms -- a struggle that could very well mean her death.

(Author's site)

It seems I have had a YA week of the futuristic and paranormal kind. I heard about Tithe long ago from a friend but back then I didn't read YA and didn't see the point. But now I know that they have changed from the few I read some years ago. Not that I will read many now because I have more or less gone through those that looks nice. Those that seems to be books I want to read.

Tithe was a good book, and I truly enjoyed it. I can't belive I hadn't read it before. It's a very dark book and it takes up the normal things a teen goes through, sex, violence, alcohol, and feeling different from others. In that aspect I liked it, it was not a rosy sweet world, but a dark one where she didn't attend school anymore, and everyhting was just dirty and bleak.

If you thought the faerie world was better then you are mistaken. This is how the seelie and unseelie world should look like. They are not a bunch of happy cute faries that Disney made them out to be. In the old stories they are a dark, blood thirsty, baby stealing and people drowning folk. You thread lighly when thinking you are near them and you are careful and use charms to ward them off. I like that Holly Black uses this in her book, and the fairy world is just as dark as ours.

I liked Kaye, she was a good heroine of this book. She is a bit different and she can see things that others can't. Soon enough when back in her hometown she is thrown into a dark world and she will become a pawn in a bigger game. Then there is the dark knight Roiben, well I had to like him too. What was there not to like. Was there even ne charcater that was actually nice and sweet in this book, in a way the answer is no. For some reason I liked that because it was more real. They were nice in their own ways, like her friend Cory. Such a nice guy actually. Good truthful portraits.

I was sucked into this grim world, and I came back up wanting more. There are two more books, the second I can skip but I am curious about book 3 because there we meet Kaye and Roiben again. And I want to know how things turns out.

I would have liked to known why it was called Tithe, I just googled it and still don't know why. Otherwise this was a great book that I do recommened. It was a bit like Wicked Lovely in the faerie aspect but much darker and more true I thought, and better. I really enjoyed this book.