Valiant: A Modern Tale of Faerie

Location: Home » body art - tattoo » Drugs » Valiant: A Modern Tale of Faerie

Similar Items:

•	Tithe: A Modern Faerie Tale
•	Ironside: A Modern Faery's Tale
•	Wicked Lovely
•	Marked (House of Night, Book 1)
•	Betrayed (House of Night, Book 2)

Editorial Reviews:

Product Description
When seventeen-year-old Valerie runs away to New York City, she's trying to escape a life that has utterly betrayed her. Sporting a new identity, she takes up with a gang of squatters who live in the city's labyrinthine subway system.

But there's something eerily beguiling about Val's new friends. And when one talks Val into tracking down the lair of a mysterious creature with whom they are all involved, Val finds herself torn between her newfound affection for an honorable monster and her fear of what her new friends are becoming.

Customer Reviews: Read 64 more reviews...

5 out of 5 stars

Welcome back to Teenlit, Holly Black! August 26, 2005
74 out of 79 found this review helpful

While I enjoyed the Spiderwick books, I was dying for Holly Black to return to writing for teens as she did in TITHE. I'm not a faery fan, but I loved what she did with TITHE, and I wanted to see if she would create more edgy, dark faery characters and settings. She is still Queen of the Shocker Opening: Val catches her boyfriend making it with her mom. Val's flight to New York after this results in her meeting with street teens who live in the tunnels under Grand Central. With them she comes to see the faerie world, not the Disney sugar-coated one, but the perilous one where humans can be used up and spat out, where the inhabitants are beautiful and deadly. Her new friends introduce her to Ravus, the troll pharmacist who brews potions, including the drug Never. It makes it possible for the faery people to live in our world without slow poisoning from exposure to iron, but it makes humans feel, and act, like the faeries. They can even do magic.

But there are problems. Never is addictive. Val, who earns Ravus's trust as they talk and she serves as a runner for his drugs to his faerie customers, becomes addicted and steals from him. And his customers are getting murdered. Ravus, with whom Val is falling in love, is the prime suspect, and the faerie court that exiled him and his customers to our world is coming to deal with the murders and with him.

This is a powerful book. It's about betrayal, homelessness, addiction and its poisonous effects on relationships and lifestyles, love, appearances, and hate. It's about making decisions and living with them. It's about choices. It's pure Holly Black, dark and wonderful and beautiful. No, it's not TITHE, and that's good. If I want to read TITHE, I have it on my shelf. And while I didn't set out to read about addicted kids, she says a lot of powerful things about how people get addicted to something, anything, without realizing that they're getting addicted. It doesn't have to be a substance--it can be a person, or a way of life. I'd like to know that, so when I feel like Val does in VALIANT, I'll know I'm drifting into an addictive mindset.

As always, I love it when a girl learns how to *be* Valiant.

4 out of 5 stars

Recommended, but with Reservations March 7, 2006
13 out of 17 found this review helpful

I teach high school English, and when I started the novel, I expected to recommend it to my library. Unfortunately, the language in the book was so realistic, and our school board policy to regressive, that this is not a possibility. This also prevent my directly recommending it to students, which I WOULD do. I certainly see the point in the profanity in the book; I am not creticizing the book for it. If, however, as a parent you think you are shielding your children from profanity by censoring what thy read, this book is not the ideal selection. It does an excellent job of dealing with the themes of isolation, coming of age, and loyalty, though, so I do recommend the book. My only real personal reservation is that the book is so "dark." And I like faeries, and with a book titled "A Modern Tale of Faerie," I expected more supernatural occurences. Faeries actually play a very small role. This is a novel about society's mistifts, drug abuse, etc; basically it is a tale of teen angst, dressed up a bit. I hope this does't sound like I did not like the novel; I did. It was very well written, and since I deal with teenagers every day, the portrayal of teens was quite accurate. I'd recommend this more to adults than teens, in fact.

1 out of 5 stars

ZERO STARS for a perfectly odious book September 19, 2006
12 out of 31 found this review helpful

A real eye-opener: with all sincerity, I cannot believe Simon and Schuster has published this under the aegis of "Simon and Schuster Children Publishing." The language is execrable, the text jammed with f--- and sh-- and d---. In the early pages the seventeen-year-old protagonist walks in on her boyfriend's amorous dealings with the girl's own mother. And after she hooks up with street youth we are treated to a thorough detailing of the materials and the methods of intravenous drug use (only this girl isn't really sure exactly what she's cheerily pumping into her veins), dumpster diving, vandalism, breaking and entering, theft, the tale of a man trying to blind a boy by crushing his eyeball with his thumb, scavenging leftovers from deserted restaurant tables and other like diversions.
According to the publisher's website, Ms. Black is a favorite among kids. What I hate most is that these demeaning elements in the story are gratuitous: without them, the book might just be a worthwhile read because of its ingenious world of trolls, tree women, and "faeries." I can see how teenagers would agree that the "world would be cooler with something so unreal in it." As it is, I cannot imagine recommending it to a teen--or anyone else-- to read.

5 out of 5 stars

Dark and gorgeous June 2, 2005
11 out of 12 found this review helpful

This isn't the kind of book that a synopsis suits -- if I'd come to it with no knowledge of Black's skill and had read that the book was about a runaway human girl who takes fairy drugs, I'd have assumed the worst and moved on. But Valiant isn't really about those things.

It's about obeying the insane suggestion to go go go that your lizard brain whispers when you're standing at a train station or an airport. It's about the rusty, dirty magic of New York wrapped around a girl with a broken heart. It's about following those beautiful people down the alley at 4am instead of finishing your watery coffee and catching the morning train home.

So I suppose she had me at St. Mark's Place, but there's more here than the trimmings; the story's bones are strong and important. This is the way a schoolgirl becomes troll defender, knight and protector, Valiant -- so hide your daughters, Missouri. This is a story that bangs out space for the girls who can't help standing up to bullies, and does so without even a whiff of the after-school special.

The same feel for the surreal within the ordinary that made Tithe, which is set in the same world, so successful is even more apparent in Valiant. The exiled fairies scattered across Manhattan are no stranger than the perceptual disconnect between the normal adults strolling through Greenwich Village and the homeless kids they step around without seeing. Black's monsters can be brutal and deadly, but no more than the heroine's own friends and family.

Well done.

1 out of 5 stars

oh its so not for kids or even (teen agers) dont buy this its just a dump crap December 10, 2005
11 out of 68 found this review helpful

oh my god this books is so digusting i mean its not suitable for kids or even teen agers you parents should know that before buying this for your kids if you wanna know why here you go :

1- you feel like if there well be " sex " in every corner of the book and its really anoying because sex is the word you well read in every page of the book

2-drugs oh my god there is so many drugs issues in this books its not for teen agers

3- children abuse ....

4- cruel and the using of bad language...

its just not suitable for young readers and its not so good foe adults ..

Powered by Associate-O-Matic

T-shirts, Posters

Pentagram T-shirts, bags, etc...

Gothic Posters