The first thing I noticed with this book and its biggest flaw in my opinion is that scenes aren’t set properly and everything happens way too fast. Through circumstances, she and her mom return to their former home and move in with grandma for a while (just until they get back on their feet) which means a reunion with former friends – the human kind – for Kaye and of course an adventure for us to follow. Kaye is a super cool, weird teenager who lives with her musician mom, hasn’t been to highschool in years and used to have fairy friends when she was younger. And I didn’t dislike Tithe but I also couldn’t help but see how very, very clumsy a book it is and how the writing is so below the standards I was used to from Holly Black.

As her Modern Faerie Tales were Mythopoeic Award finalists, I thought I would definitely love them. My first read of hers was The Coldest Girl in Coldtown which I liked well enough, then I dove into the Folk of the Air trilogy and that one (the middle book, specifically) totally gripped me. In this case, I was both surprised and impressed with how much Holly Black’s writing has improved over the course of her career. It’s such an interesting experience to read an author’s work not as it is being published but in a mixed up order, starting with newer books and then going back through their backlist.

Once there, Kaye finds herself an unwilling pawn in an ancient power struggle between two rival faerie kingdoms – a struggle that could end in her death. and where beautiful faerie knights are driven to perform acts of brutal depravity for the love of their uncaring queens. where the sinister Thistlewitch divines dark futures. A realm where black horses dwell beneath the sea, desperate to drown you. But Kaye’s not a child anymore and this time she’s dragged into the thick of their dangerous, frightening world. To the place where she used to see Faeries. Fierce and independent, she travels from city to city with her mother’s rock band, until an ominous attack forces them back to her childhood home. Opening line: Kaye took another dragon her cigarette and dropped it into her mother’s beer bottle.

Holly black the modern faerie tales