Tithe: A Modern Faeire Tale

This book has been out for a while but for some reason I avoided it. When I first discovered it (years after it was written) I'm pretty sure I had had my fill of fairies at the time - having read Wicked Lovely by Melissa Marr. I had also heard people say how if you read Wicked Lovely first - you

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wouldn't like Tithe and vice-versa. So! I figured it would be a dud for me and I forgot about it for a while. And then! Well...I don't know why I thought about it again but the point is I did! And I'm glad I did. This book was amazing for me! I really really enjoyed it. It was edgy and witty and portrays faeries in a no nonsense way. They are what they are and Kaye is a part of that life whether she likes it or not.
I really enjoyed the variety of characters - Kaye's crazy mother and overbearing grandmother - Cory, her best friend's gay brother who turns out to be a unlikely friend, of course there is beautiful and dangerous Roiben and The Thiselwitch who I found fascinating.
The first in a series, I'm curious to see where it goes. I have to say, I think I liked Tithe just a bit more then Wicked Lovely. The world of faerie that Black created just appeals to me more. Theirs is a world that exists besides ours but could exist on it's own. I always felt like Marr's fairy world was too dependent on reality - if that makes any sense at all :)
I would recommend this one to anyone who likes a good fairy fantasy story.

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Kaye, is an aimless high school dropout whose possibly alcoholic mother moves from place to place with whatever band she happens to be in at the moment. When her mom's boyfriend attacks her mom, they move back to New Jersey to live with her grandmother, where she grew up. While reconnecting with

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grade school friends, she misses her other friends, the faeries who were her playmates as a little girl. It isn't long before strange things start to happen to her, and she begins to find out the strange history of the world of Faerie and her own story.

Kaye is a likeable enough heroine, and there were aspects of this story that were interesting. It didn't have a lot of substance to it, and was not especially ground-breaking or well-written. After being underwhelmed by the Spiderwick Chronicles, I probably should not have expected more from this, but I did hope, after all the rave reviews, that it would be something special. Finally, as something of a side note, I am not someone who believes YA should be totally sanitized, and everybody likes a bad girl, right? However, I thought this novel unnecessarily glamorized smoking/excessive drinking/blase attitude to sex/dropping out of school. I'm not moralistically uncomfortable with it, it just seemed to be trying a little too hard to be edgy, without the realism that would have made everything a bit more compelling.

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When Kaye was little she had friends that only see could see, everyone knew her as the girl who believed in faeries. Now, Kaye is sixteen and people still remember her as the girl who believed in faeries.

One night while walking home Kaye hears a noise and goes to investigate, and there she finds an

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injured boy. But he is no ordinary boy, he is a faery; a faery knight. Not long after this her old childhood faery friends, who she had long assumed make-believe, return to her asking for help.

Kaye didn't really want to get involved in faery affairs but she agrees to do all she can to help her past faery friends, even when they ask her to trust them with her life, literally. Kaye is warned also to stay away from the very dangerous faery knight, but she can't seem to keep from thinking about him, and running into him. Things are changing for Kaye, and so is she...

Tithe is a book of faery Queens, and magic, and sacrifice. But it is also a book of smoking and alcohol, and lust, and teen angst. Although there are some good ideas in this book, there is also a lot that seems stale and monotonous. I think my expectations were a little to high.

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Tithe was certainly not your typical sweet YA. It was more realistic with an edgier and darker tone. I really liked that, it was certainly a refreshing read. These teens were foul mouthed, chain smokers, with real life problems who just happen to be living in the midst of a world with dangerous

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Faeries.

I've always like the undisneyfied lore of faeries, these tricksters aren't going to help you make a dress unless it's your sacrificial gown. Really appreciated how the author went for it with how not right the Fae can be.

Strong heroine who seems unfocused at first but as the story unravels you start to see the reasons for Kaye's actions and behaviors in a different light; or maybe they have more to do with Kaye's mother's laid-back parenting style.

Add some very flawed characters, intense adventures and just creepy faeries and you get an incredible story. I really liked this one and it will be among my favorite faerie story to recommend to others.

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So, currently I am playing a DnD game that is focused on changelings/The Gentry. I also picked this book up for the first time years ago, as a kid, thinking it was an entirely different book than it was. That was perhaps the main reason I didn't finish reading it back then. I confused the author

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for the character and thought it was an Artemis Fowl book spinoff or something similar to that, and when I was wrong I stopped reading.

I wish I hadn't. Holly Black is just amazing. The details are killer, and the setting is perfect, and the Fae are as beautiful and cruel as one would expect them to be. And Kaye, the main character, is great too. As impatient and demanding as any teenager, she discovers a world beyond hers and...doesn't panic like most would, or succumb to the traditional Fae pleasures like humans might (for Reasons). Kaye is special and I love her.
I can't wait to finish the rest of the series.

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Holly Black spins readers an enchanting world in her brilliant debut dark fantasy novel, TITHE. Kaye Fierch and her musician mother Ellen move back in with her grandmother in New Jersey after Ellen’s boyfriend mysteriously tried to attack her. Now Kaye is back amongst the friends she had to leave

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six years ago—both the human and the faerie ones.

In the middle of the rainstorm, Kaye stops to help a wounded faerie knight named Roiben and attracts the attention of two warring faerie kingdoms, the Seelie and Unseelie Courts. The Unseelie Court has recently brought back the Tithe, a human sacrifice for the obedience of the solitary fey, among which are Kaye’s childhood faerie friends.

An even more shocking secret is revealed to Kaye—she is actually a faerie herself, disguised with some very strong glamour! Her fey friends want her to go along with her selection for the Tithe and then reveal her true faerie identity at the last minute, thus making it seem like the Unseelie Queen was trying to kill her own kind.

The trouble is that things don’t go exactly the way they planned. Kaye’s involvement in the faerie war means endangering her human friends, not to mention falling for Roiben, whom her friends warn her to stay away from. It’s hard to distinguish between friend and foe in this exciting world of faerie.

Holly Black is not one to waste words, and so TITHE is written succinctly but beautifully. The plot is sometimes hard to follow, and even after my tenth or so reading this time everything’s still not all clear, but I think that’s part of what makes this book so exciting for me!

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Have you ever read a novel and wished you'd found it sooner? It might seem strange, but even though I'm a frequent consumer of YA, I rarely find myself wishing I'd read a book when I was a teenager. Usually, I'm just glad for the experience; many YA writers craft immersive worlds and likable

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characters so skillfully that their works feel relevant despite the fact that I'm 26 years old. And it's not quite that I felt I was too old for Holly Black's Tithe, the story of a New Jersey teenager who learns of her faery nature when she's used as a pawn in the war between the Seelie and Unseelie Courts.No, instead I simply felt that Tithe would have struck a chord with me as a teenager, that it would have been incredibly relevant had I read it upon its release in 2002, when I was eighteen, rather than eight years later. Reading it now, as a grown-up, I mostly just felt nostalgic.Black describes the world of sixteen-year-old Kaye with surprising honesty and grit. Kaye lives in a magical land that I haven't often seen described in books, and certainly not with such accuracy: it's the world of my youth, New Jersey at the start of the twenty-first century. There are ravers and punk boys and long, emotionally complicated nights in diners. There are gay boys who love anime. There's the boardwalk of what I was sure must have been Asbury Park, abandoned and creepy and vivid. And, true-to-form, there's Kaye, an honestly written heroine if I've ever seen one. Kaye's a bit weird--she had fairies as imaginary friends since she was a kid--and definitely imperfect. She can't help but seduce her best friend's boyfriend. She gets her other friends into trouble. She's flawed, but, dammit, she's honest. As I read Tithe I couldn't help but feel that I knew Kaye--she's just about every teenage girl, complicated and conflicted. In short, she was terrific.As were most of the supporting characters here: Corny, Kaye's companion, one of the most realistically rendered gay friends I've ever seen in fiction. Corny isn't a magical and perfect gay boy a la Mercedes Lackey, but instead a complex and complete person in his own right. Likewise, Roiben, Kaye's otherworldly love interest, a sexy stoic with problems and a life beyond Kaye's.Unfortunately, the plotting of the novel doesn't quite live up to the promise of the characters. Black takes us a long time to get us to the central conflict, and Kaye's episodic explorations through the faery world just weren't as interesting to me as her adventures in the in the real world. Still, there's a lot worth exploring here--particularly if you've ever found magic in the magical kingdom known as New Jersey.

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a dark, modern faerie tale that has some strong sexual images...too much for the 14+ yr rating that it has been given...I'd say it's more like 17+ if you are watching what your kids read. A quick, entertaining story that gets a little confusing at the end with N-names and a suddenly thickening

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plot...but worth the time.

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Tithe is not your typical YA fairytale book. It's rather dark; the characters are quite imperfect perhaps that's why it works. It was one of the first Urban Fantasy books which I read, which was about 5 or 6 years ago, so it's been awhile. The faeries are not tiny and cute and sprinkle you with

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pixie dust, they're dangerous and less than appealing, but perhaps that's what grabbed me as a reader. Kaye is a foulmouthed teenager who finds out that she's actually a green pixie with wings and to top it all off, her mother isn't really her mother. She’s a challenging character, but sympathetic in the same breath. The world of Tithe is imperfect but intriguing at once, and that's why urban fantasy readers, who enjoy a darker tale, should try Tithe.

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Very Angst-y, Emo. Very Teen. It was a good story and I enjoyed it, but I'm the mother of a Teen, so I know that the Teen would enjoy it more than their mothers.

I loved the premise of this book and really tried to keep reading, but I finally just had to stop. I found the excessive use of cursing too much. I was really surprised that this book is written for young adults - I wouldn't really care for my teens to be reading content like this - heck, I don't

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like reading content like this. Add into it all the drinking and smoking and I'm just not sure. I know there are lots of teens just like the characters in this book. I have to question whether that is really what we are hoping for as parents. I'm sure I'm in the minority, but I can't recommend this book.

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A modern faerie tale marketed at young adults but just as riveting for adults. Enter the dangerous world of the faerie courts and experience a world of magic, power and strange desires. Tithe takes the traditional faerie tale plot (involving evil queens, reluctant heroes and an unlikely love) and

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twists it into a thrilling story I simply couldn't put down. This book is an easy read, but the characters are well written, reacting in believable ways to unbelievable situations. Definitely worth the read!

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Kaye is an unusual 16 year old girl. Her mother is in a rock band and Kaye works full time instead of going to school. But that is not what makes Kaye different, what makes her different is that she sees faeries. After her mother’s current boyfriend tries to kill her they move from the big smoke

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back to Kaye’s grandmother’s place. Kaye thought she had finally put the fairy nonsense behind her, but it turns out they had not put it behind them. Her life gets very interesting very fast. Soon she is caught in the middle of a power struggle, fighting for her life and her friends. Most of all what is the biggest secret Kaye has to learn in order to survive?

However from page one I was hooked and could not put this book down. The writing flowed easily and there was an interesting dark humor that permeated the prose. I was surprised after reading this that it is considered young adult. At its lowest level it should be teen. There is swearing, drug abuse, drinking, and smoking which is all just in the first chapter. This book is quite edgy and dark.
I really enjoyed this book and am looking forward to reading the next book in the series.

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This was an okay book. I liked the story and the interesting descriptions of the places, people, and magic... but there was just something missing as I was reading this. I think that the story went along at a good pace, but I never got attached or cared to much about any of the characters,

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including Kaye. I felt that the writing just hit the surface of what could have been a better story. I kept wanting more... more of something I couldn't quite put my finger on... like there was always something missing in the writing. Maybe it was the chance to go just a little deeper into the characters and their motiviations. It also seemed to jump around alot and the chapters did not flow. But, I do have to say that I did keep turning the pages and reading, but I'm not so sure if I liked it enough to pick up the next one in the series.

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synopsis

Sixteen-year-old Kaye Fierch is not human, but she doesn't know it. Sure, she knows she's interacted with faeries since she was little--but she never imagined she was one of them, her blond Asian human appearance only a magically crafted cover-up for her true, green-skinned pixie self.

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First-time author Holly Black explores Kaye's self-discovery and dual worlds in her riveting, suspenseful novel Tithe: A Modern Faerie Tale.
The novel begins in a bar in Philly, where Kaye's alcoholic rock-singer mother's boyfriend tries to kill her. For their own safety, mother and daughter quickly move back to grandma's on the New Jersey shore where Kaye grew up. This ugly turn of events was all rigged by the Faerie world, as it turns out, a world Black describes in deliciously vivid, if rather overblown, detail. Kaye, a drinking, smoking, foul-mouthed high school dropout in the land of mortals, soon finds herself embroiled--as a human sacrifice, no less--in a battle between Faerieland's Seelie and more malevolent Unseelie courts. The beautiful, mysterious knight Roiben, torn between worlds himself, falls in love with Kaye--the brave, clever changeling--against his better judgment. Throughout the electrifying journey to the horrific underworld of this modern faerie fantasy, teen readers will relate to a hard-luck tough girl who feels alienated, discovers her best qualities in the worst of circumstances, and finally finds a place between worlds where she can feel at home.

There's been mixed reviews on Tithe, but i have to say I LOVED IT. Holly black is a great writer. Tithe is just so interesting and exciting i just couldn't put it down. I loved everything about it. I'm always looking for more fairies books, Tithe is defiantly my favorite.

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Although I cannot say I loved this book, I did find it enjoyable and thoughtful. The biggest strength here is Black's skillful writing. Her imagery is both fabulous and original; creating scenes that are hauntingly beautiful or starkly poignant. Unfortunately, the weakness lies in characterization.

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At times, one must wonder if Black overextends the degenerate or dysfunctional aspects of her characters -- moving from edgy to contrived. Also, interactions between characters trend towards awkward and irrational. The romance between Kaye and Roiben fails to ring true for most of the book. There's chemistry there, to be sure, it just feels as if there's missing scenes that would have created a more comprehensive picture. Nevertheless, I do think this is a book worth reading, and I will be looking into the following books, "Valiant" and "Ironside".

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Although this is considered a young adult or teen read, I would argue it's for a more mature audience and I found I really enjoyed this book. The modern tale of faeries was quickly paced and full of great characters. Kaye is a bit of an outcast but a wonderfully strong female character. She gets

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entangles in the dispute between the Seelie and Unseelie faerie courts and along the way falls for Roiben, a dark knight in the Unseelie court. The scenes that take place there are debauchery at their best and the entire story was a great ride. I wouldn't recommend it to younger readers but can't wait to read more!

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This was a very interesting book. After seeing Pan's Labyrinth this book totally fave me a new thought of fairies. AIa had read blurbs from books with evil fairies, but this is really cool. Then this had also made me think of a part in The Labyrinth that had David Bowie in it, the part where the

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fairy bites the girl and says she thought they were supposed to be nice. GREAT BOOK! LOVED IT!

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Kaye has had a rough life. But when she moves back to her Grandmother's house and rescues a fairy about to die her world competely turns upside down. This book had an interesting premise but nothing really new and the story line often seemed disjointed and rushed. The whole 'tithe' portion of the

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book seemed to be only glossed over and besides Roiben and Kaye's relationship (which in itself was a little odd) I couldn't really get into the story. Overall, pretty dark in parts and not my favorite.

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I started to read this book on recommendation, but never got into it. I know "you can't judge a book by it's cover" but I did. I couldn't get into the writing style and it seemed like she was just trying to make everything too cool. Trying too hard.

This one was a fairly quick read.

Not your usual story it started out all teen angsty and ended up twisting itself into interesting knots.

Not thrilled with this one. It seemed very cliche to me - the beautiful fey, the good and evil courts, the power of names, and so on and so forth. The writing was fine, but there was very little original in the story.

Kaye Fierch has always been an outsider. She's 16 and lives on the road taking care of her out of control rock and roll mom. When a roadie tries to kill her mom, they end up back at grandmas house. The last time she was there she was a child,playing with make believe fairy friends.

Now she finds she

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is the ultimate outsider--she isn't even human. She's a pixie who becomes involved in the life and death politics of the Seelie and more malevolent Unseelie court. And she meets a beautiful fairy knight, who is torn between Seelie and Unseelie and winds up falling for Kaye.

As Kaye disrupts the balance of power, evil visits her human friends. Themes include being an outsider, love awakening, and the consequences of actions.

The book also has homosexual roles and rather rough sexual overtones.

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first line: "Kaye spun down the worn, gray planks of the boardwalk."

Tithe has some beautiful passages, engaging scenes, and grittily real characters. Its darkness and sappiness are well-balanced, such that it is neither depressing nor saccharine. I thought it could have been a little bit longer,

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though; a couple times Black jumps to a new scene when the current one doesn't feel quite finished.

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