Bookalicious

Holly Black from Spiderwick Chronicles fame, had quite a break out novel with Tithe. I read the book over a couple of days and while I wasn’t immensely immersed in the novel, it wasn’t so bad that I threw it down in disgust either. It was a simple read, with an easy plot line to follow, no graphic sexual texts, although the book does reference the subject with innuendo.

The story follows a changeling named Kaye who has no idea that she is a Faerie herself, finally finds out the truth about her origins and why she felt like she just didn’t fit in. Kaye had always seen the ‘folk’ as they were called, she just didn’t know she was about to be a lot more linked to Faerie’s than she had been as a small child.

Kaye’s Mom was a rock and roll chick who fronts a band, she couldn’t tell Kaye much about her dad except that it was a drunken night on tour that created her. I really liked Black’s vision of Kaye as a naturally blond, Asian chick. The description kind of stays with you throughout the novel, when so many times the description of a character is lost or just doesn’t stay in your brain for the whole reading of the book. A night gone wrong at her Mom’s gig, sends them home to Grandma’s in Jersey. Kaye was excited to get back to her Faerie friends from her childhood.

Immediately Kaye begins trying to entice her Faerie friends back to her with milk and bread, while getting back in touch with her human childhood friends like Janet who lives in the trailer park behind a gas station. Janet invites Kaye out for a teenage party of booze and boys, this is where Kaye’s life starts to get a bit hairy. While Janet is all over her boyfriend Kenny, Kaye goes exploring the surroundings of the abandoned building. She finds a broken carousel horse and sits on it. She imagines its long flowing mane and the horse throwing her back, apparently her imaginary scenario came true and Janet’s boyfriend just happens to be there to see it. He tries to kiss her and she runs out of the party crying. She is on her way home drunk in the rain when she hears a mans voice. She steps off the road into the woods and sees a very handsome man with white hair and an arrow sticking out of his armor. She realizes he is a Faerie and helps him get the arrow out and call a Kelpie from the river to take him home to his people.

Black does tend to give you a lot of information on the Faerie superstitions. The Seelie and Unseelie courts and solitary fey. You can get a really good picture of the world she is trying to create. The handsome fey with the white hair visits Kaye while she is eating out with Janet and friends, she asks his name which is something the fey do not like to reveal and he gives her his full name, because he owes her for all the help she gave him previously.

Finally Kaye gets visited by her solitary fey friends from childhood, they send her a message to meet them the next night. She is happy to see her childhood friends but for some reason they seem a bit shy or nervous around her. They take her to a character called the Thistle Witch, who I thought was a bit under developed by Black. The witch tells her she is really a pixie, and that doesn’t mean the Disney meaning. Sharp teeth, jet black eyes with no whites, green skin and sharp teeth. Even an extra joint in the knuckle and wings. Kaye finds out there is a girl somewhere in Faerie Land who really is her and she is just a changeling. She has no idea what to do with the information, but agrees to take on a quest for the witch.

The two courts are dueling over land and all the stuff that normally gets fought over by rival Kings and Queens, and Kaye is to play a major part in Roiben’s life just by knowing his name. He saves her and by doing that he finds his humanity again. Also though the solitary fey are having a hay day in modern day Jersey and a few of Kaye’s human friends are the casualties of the assualt.

3 stars for the simple plot and the total lack of depth and description. I thought things could have been a bit more explained, but the story itself is unique and doesn’t glam up the fey as most Faerie stories do. I recommend reading if you enjoy fantasy and don’t want gore or graphic sex.