Tithe - Holly Black - A Modern Faerie Tale

Tithe: A Modern Faerie Tale
Holly Black
Margaret K. McElderry Books
an imprint of
Simon and Schuster
ISBN 9780689867040

For a few years now I have been meaning to go back and read some of Holly Black's earlier works. Both her Spiderwick books and her Modern Faerie Tales were on my TBR (To Be Read) pile, but because they were older books, they kept getting pushed down on my reading list as new titles came across my desk and new authors were discovered. I have no one to blame but myself; I should have known better and read these works much, much earlier. Black shows amazing diversity in her writings and this trilogy is no exception.

Kaye Fierch is an 'Asian Blond' sixteen year old, who spends most of her time in bars with her rocker mom. She doesn't know it yet, but she is not who she thinks she is. She is not even human. She has interacted with faeries since she was young, and even though she was bugged at school and by others, she has always believed in them. Then after returning to her grandmother's home, she rediscovers the other world, and they have a plan to achieve freedom with Kaye's help.

In a world where the faerie and ours overlap much closer than anyone thinks, Black weaves a tale of mystery, deceit, danger and destruction. C.S. Lewis is quoted as stating: "Some say you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again." He also states "At all ages, if [fantasy and myth] is used well by the author and meets the right reader, it has the same power: to generalize while remaining concrete, to present in palpable form not concepts or even experiences, but whole classes of experience, and to throw off irrelevancies. But at its best it can do more; it can give us experiences we have never had and thus, instead of 'commenting on life', can add to it." Black definitely achieves that in most of her writings and especially in this book. Every time I read something else by Black I am blown away by her skill with the pen.

Other Books by Holly Black:

The Poison Eaters and Other Stories 
The Coldest Girl in Coldtown
Doll Bones

The Modern Faerie Tales
Tithe (2002)
Valiant (2005)
Ironside (2007)

The Spiderwick Chronicles
The Field Guide (2003)
The Seeing Stone (2003)
Lucinda's Secret (2003)
The Ironwood Tree (2004)
The Wrath of Mulgarath (2004)
Arthur Spiderwick's Notebook of Fantastical Observations (2005)
Arthur Spiderwick's Field Guide to the Fantastical World Around You (2005)
Care and Feeding of Sprites (2006)

Beyond Spiderwick
The Nixie's Song (2007)
A Giant Problem (2008)
The Wyrm King (2009)

The Good Neighbors
Kin (2008)
Kith (2009)
Kind (2010)

The Curse Workers
White Cat (2010)
Red Glove (2011)
Black Heart (2012)

Anthologies
Geektastic: Stories from the Nerd Herd (2009)
Zombies vs. Unicorns (2010)
Welcome to Bordertown (2011)