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Tithe by Holly Black
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2,325851,309 (3.92)145

Member recommendations

  1. fayeflame recommends Wicked Lovely by Melissa Marr
  2. runningondreams recommends Fire and Hemlock by Diana Wynne Jones, "Both "Tithe" and "Fire and Hemlock" are modernized and somewhat modified forms of the Ballad of Tam Lin, and concern the dangerous and fantastic mixing (see more) of the mortal and faerie realms. If you enjoy both of these books I would also recommend "The Perilous Guard" by Elizabeth Marie Pope- the first I read of this story's re-tellings."
  3. Kerian recommends The Blue Girl by Charles De Lint
  4. wosret recommends Grimms Grimmest by Grimm/dockray
  5. wosret recommends Goblins! by Brian Froud
  6. wosret recommends Sabriel by Garth Nix
  7. TheDivineOomba recommends Twilight by Stephenie Meyer
  8. allisongryski recommends Wicked Lovely by Melissa Marr
  9. allisongryski recommends City of Ashes by Cassandra Clare
  10. allisongryski recommends Twilight by Stephenie Meyer

(see all 10 recommendations)

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Showing 1-5 of 85 (next | show all)
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 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. ( )
  WilowRaven | Nov 10, 2009 |
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 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. ( )
  heidialice | Oct 26, 2009 |
meh ( )
  rampaginglibrarian | Oct 10, 2009 |
Holly Black stabs at the dark heart of faerie and delivers a realm to readers that is both enticing, addictive, and macabre. "Tithe" is a black carnival of treats where the crimson candy apple you're sucking on has a razor sweet surprise hidden in its very core.

Black's unvarnished portrayal of misfit Kaye Fierch as today's disaffected youth is successful and realistic. Finding herself in the middle of a chaotic faerie turf war and questioning her own murky origins, she embarks on an otherworldly quest that straddles light and dark.

At her side, a bloodthirsty knight named Roiben sworn to serve the Unseelie, and Corny her best friend, must brave the obstacles that pit them against the dark Unseelie queen Nicnevin and the Seelie queen Silarial. Without the "Tithe" to keep the solitary fey in check, Kaye and her conspirators tip a ruthless power struggle into the real world.

This gloaming realm of viscous pixies, satyrs, dwarves and the like is compellingly tasty down to the very last red drop.Copyright(c)Nicola Mattos ( )
  nickeemattos | Oct 4, 2009 |
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 fairy bites the girl and says she thought they were supposed to be nice. GREAT BOOK! LOVED IT! ( )
  -AlyssaE- | Sep 21, 2009 |
Showing 1-5 of 85 (next | show all)
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Series (with order)
Canonical Title
Original publication date
People/Characters
Important places
Important events
Awards and honors
Epigraph
And pleasant is the faerie land
But an eerie tale to tell,
Ay at the end of seven years
We pay a tithe to Hell;
I am sae fair and fu o flesh,
I'm feard it be mysel.
— YOUNG TAM LIN
And malt does note than Milton can
To justify God's Ways to man.

— A. E. HOUSEMAN,
"Terence, This is Stupid Stuff"
Coercive as coma, frail as bloom
innuendoes of your inverse dawn
suffuse the self;
our every corpuscle becomes an elf.

— MINA LOY, "Moreover, the Moon,"
The Lost Lunar Baedeker
The stones were sharp,
The wind came at my back;
Walking along the highway,
Mincing like a cat.
— THEODORE ROETHKE, "Praise to the End!"
A cigarette is the perfect type of perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one want?"
— OSCAR WILDE, The Picture of Dorian Gray
Dedication
For my little sister Heidi
First words
Prologue: Kaye took another drag on her cigarette and dropped it into her mother's beer bottle.
Ch. 1: Kaye spun down the worn, gray planks of the boardwalk. The air was heavy and stank of drying mussels and the crust of salt on the jetties.
Quotations
She knew what her grandmother was going to say when she got back, stinking of liquor with a torn shirt. True things.
Last words
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)
Disambiguation notice
Publisher's editors
Blurbers
Canonical titleTithe
Original publication date2002-10-01
SeriesModern Tales of Faerie (1)
People/CharactersKaye, Rath Roiben Rye, Corny Stone, Janet Stone, Ellen, Spike (show all 14)
Important placesNew York, New York, USA, New Jersey, USA, Unseelie Court, Seelie Court
Awards and honorsNYPL Best Book for the Teen Age, Mythopoeic Fantasy Award Finalist (Children's Literature, 2003), Popular Paperbacks for Young Adults 2004, ALA Best Books for Young Adults (2003), ALA Popular Paperbacks for Young Adults (2005.03|Gateway to Faerie, 2005)
EpigraphAnd pleasant is the faerie land
But an eerie tale to tell,
Ay at the end of seven years
We pay a tithe to Hell;
I am sae fair and fu o flesh,
I'm feard it be mysel.
— YOUNG TAM LIN, And malt does note than Milton can
To justify God's Ways to man.

— A. E. HOUSEMAN,
"Terence, This is Stupid Stuff", Coercive as coma, frail as bloom
innuendoes of your inverse dawn
suffuse the self;
our every corpuscle becomes an elf.

— MINA LOY, "Moreover, the Moon,"
The Lost Lunar Baedeker, The stones were sharp,
The wind came at my back;
Walking along the highway,
Mincing like a cat.
— THEODORE ROETHKE, "Praise to the End!", A cigarette is the perfect type of perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one want?"
— OSCAR WILDE, The Picture of Dorian Gray, All day and all night
my desire for you
unwinds like a poisonous snake.
— SAMAR SEN, "Love" (show all 17)
DedicationFor my little sister Heidi
First wordsPrologue: Kaye took another drag on her cigarette and dropped it into her mother's beer bottle., Ch. 1: Kaye spun down the worn, gray planks of the boardwalk. The air was heavy and stank of drying mussels and the crust of salt on the jetties.
QuotationsShe knew what her grandmother was going to say when she got back, stinking of liquor with a torn shirt. True things.
Last words(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)
BlurbersKlause, Annette Curtis
Book description

Amazon.com (ISBN 0689867042, Paperback)

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. First-time author Holly Black explores Kaye's self-discovery and dual worlds in her riveting, suspenseful novel Tithe: A Modern Faerie Tale. The book has its faults: it slips into shock-value mode; the descriptions are often overwritten (sunset on the water looks like the sun slit his wrists in a bathtub); the language is overly, unnecessarily explicit; and the writing often unpolished. Still, the story's pull is undeniable, and readers under its spell will be hard-pressed to put the book down.

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. (Ages 13 and older) --Karin Snelson

(retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:57:52 -0400)

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