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

Product Description
Welcome to the realm of very scary faeries!

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 Kaye 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.

Kaye is a tough, resourceful, street smart sixteen year old. As the daughter of a flighty, small-time rock singer who rarely stays in one place for more than six months at a time Kaye's life has been filled with chaos. When her mother is attacked after a performance she decides to temporarily move them back into her mother's home. As a child, Kaye loved living in her grandmother's old house and believed she had faery friends.

Kaye has always been able to see things other cannot but it's not until she returns to her grandmother's home that she begins to discover exactly how different she is. In the woods Kaye meets an injured young man with pewter hair and pointy ears named Roiben who requests her help, reluctantly promises her payment and then quickly disappears. Though Kaye refuses to be anything like her worthless mother and will never pine away after a man she can't seem to get thoughts of Roiben out of her head.

Soon after the weird encounter with Roiben, Kaye discovers her imaginary world is not quite so imaginary after all. After locating two of her old faery friends she discovers that she is fated to play an important (and possibly deadly) role in helping her friends remain free from the warring faery kingdoms (the Seelie and the Unseelie) who want to enslave them. Kaye's somewhat unstable world becomes even more-so when she enters into a fantasy world filled with magic and dark beauty and the irresistible but terribly confusing dark knight named Roiben who may or may have not killed one of her friends.

Tithe is a real page-turner. I especially enjoyed its bleak, but never overwhelmingly depressing, look at life from a jaded sixteen year old point of view. Even before Kaye discovers the world of faery her world isn't that of your typical teenager. Because of her upbringing and lack of parental support she's got an edge about her that makes her refreshingly interesting. She smokes, talks tough, and holds her own against the flakey, ineffective adults and self-absorbed teens that inhabit her world. Though she's self-reliant and insightful she's still a teenager prone to emotion, moments of selfishness and wicked thoughts of revenge. Her faults, as well as her strengths, are the reason I enjoyed her character so much. Her conflicted feelings for Roiben -- is he tortured hero or cold-hearted fiend? -- are also another fascinating aspect of the story. Their emerging romance manages to be sensual, touching and anything but the same-old, same-old. If you're tired of angelic, nauseatingly good heroes and heroines don't worry because you won't find any here!

Though I enjoyed this book thoroughly I did spot a few minor problems (sorry, I can't shut off the nitpicker inside me). With the exception of Kaye, nearly all of the secondary characters aren't given enough space to become very well defined. This is one case where I think a longer book may have made for a near perfect book (and I almost never say such things). Kaye's troubled friend Corny and especially Roiben would've benefited from more space to become fully fleshed out characters. I guess we can hold out hope for a prequel all about Roiben. There is also some troublesome dialogue here and there that needed a little tweaking. At times I felt like I'd walked in on the middle of a conversation and missed a sentence or two somewhere along the way. Other times I felt like the characters must be reading each others minds because their dialogue made little sense to me. Despite this the story moves very quickly, is imaginative, entertaining and I wish it hadn't had to end quite so soon. I cannot wait to see what author Holly Black comes up with next.

With its adult language, sexuality, violence and alcohol consumption "Tithe" reads more like an adult novel featuring young protagonists and because of this I'd recommend it for the "older" young adult ... 4 stars


Teen Drama? Emo grunge/angst? *gags*   February 2, 2008
 25 out of 26 found this review helpful

I have read through many of the other reviews on this book and I am unsatisfied with the reasons points given in the low reviews. I agree with them that this is not a good book, but for different reasons.

Most of those reviewers sighted things like "bad language", "adult themes", etc. These elements are certainly present in the book, but the reviewers must be years out of high school if they think teens aren't inundated with them already.

The "F" word; chain smoking; trailer-park living; yaoi porn manga; alcoholic, irresponsible parents; abusive boyfriends; teen dropouts; teen pregnancies; teen gossip: I kid you not. These are things I overhear girls talking about every day at my high school. If anything, this book was more realistic in its portrayal of teens than anything I have read thus far. From what I have observed, my fellow teens drink this kind of ugly mellow drama right up: that is why we have shows like Jerry Springer and all its spin offs.

The flat-charactered teens in Tithe were much like the ones in my high school. Glorifying the petty rebellions of shoplifting and cigarette smoking? Check. Drooling lack of back-bone around a "hot" guy? Check. Petty jealous fights when one girl gets "friendly" with another's boyfriend? Check.

It is enough that I have to listen to such things at school, I don't want to read them in my escapist, fantasy books too.

In conclusion, this is not a book about fairies. It is a book about teen drama in which fairies are added as an appeal to the "Goth" culture that shops (or shop-lifts) at Hot Topic.

(I apologize that this is more of a rant than a review. Feel free to tack on as many "unhelpful" ratings as you want. I feel a certain amount of irony that no matter how many bad reviews this book gets, it will never dip below four stars. After all, Amazon knows: low ratings don't sell books.)



Edgy, gritty--faeries who don't pull punches   December 16, 2002
 18 out of 21 found this review helpful

One of the worst things about growing up under the steel clutch of the Disney fist was having to endure saccharine, sweet, cute, anemic faeries. Holly Black gives us true faeries as they were shown in myth and legend: scary, nasty, bloody-minded, inhuman (with their own agendas), sometimes cute, more often great and awe-inspiring, and by now means *safe.* Her protagonist is Kaye, who returns to her childhood home only to discover she is a pawn and intended sacrifice (the Tithe) between the Unseelie (dark faery) and Seelie (bright faery, but that doesn't mean nice!) courts. Kaye has been living on the fringes for some time now, dragged here and there by her loving but dysfunctional mother, hanging with the crowd that has nowhere to go, when she can find a crowd to hang with. It's life as it's lived in trailer parks and on boardwalks, life as seen by teen auto mechanics and young people in search of the next rave while looking for some kind of meaning to their lives. Through Kaye's encounters with faery knights, queens, and the unbound faeries who were her childhood friends, she learns of her own faery side and, most wonderfully, of her deeply human heart. Certainly this is not a book for adults who believe they can keep children safe by wrapping them in cotton wool. It is a story for those adults and teens who prefer life with grit, terror, and splendor. If you want legends with real blood in their veins, this is the book to read.


discussing, disturbing, dreadful trash   October 3, 2005
 17 out of 49 found this review helpful

My daughter thought this book was about fairies. Page 1, Kaye took another drag on her cigarette and dropped it into her mother's beer bottle. She figured that would be a good test for how drunk Ellen was-see if she would swallow a butt whole. Page 9, "You know what the sun looks like?" Kaye asked. There was only a little more than a slice of red where the sea met the sky. "No, what?" Janet said, holding the lipgloss out to Kaye. "Like he slit his wrists in a bathtub and the blood is all over the water." My 13 year stopped reading this trash at this point and apologized for having wasted my money.


A fabulous book for adult and young adult readers alike.   January 27, 2003
 16 out of 23 found this review helpful

Tithe is an exciting book, particularly from a new author, and I was so absorbed in the plot I finished it in under a day. Black has a highly detailed touch when it comes to description, particularly when describing the differences in human and faery senses. Her dialogue sounds real, and the actions and reactions of her characters ring true. I eagerly await her next book.