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quippeThe Blurb On The Back:
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 them back to her childhood home.
To the place where she used to see Faeries.
They're still there. But Kaye's not a child any more. This time she's dragged into the thick of their dangerous, frightening world. A realm where black horses dwell beneath the sea, desperate to drown you ... where the sinister Thistlewitch divines dark futures ... and where dashing Faerie knights are driven to perform acts of brutal depravity for the love of their uncaring queens.
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 ...
I'm going to start by making a positive comment because it deserves to be said and remembered: Holly Black has a wonderful way of conjuring images. Her writing is particularly strong when she's trying to get you to picture what Kaye is seeing and experiencing. Her descriptions are tight and believable and they take you right into the action.
I want to say that from the off because the unfortunate thing about this book is that the story sucks.
The Queen of the Seelie Court is seeking to take over the Unseelie Court by setting up the Queen of the Unseelie Court to kill Kaye as fulfilment of the tithe of the title - a form of blood contract where the death of a willing mortal seels the solitary faeries (i.e. faeries who do not belong to either cour) to the rule of the Unseelie court. The Seelie Queen has had this fixed up for years though because Kaye is in fact a pixie changeling - swapped for the real Kaye and glamoured to look human whilst being denied any knowledge of who she really is. The idea is that when it's revealed that the Unseelie Queen has whacked a faerie, then she'll somehow lose power (never explained how) and the Seelie Queen can merge the courts. Spike, Lutie and Gristle (who we never see on the basis that he's been killed off-page by Roiben) keep tabs on her as she's growing up to make sure it's all going okay and to convince her to be part of the plan when the time's right. The obvious question is why they wait until Kaye is 16 before carrying out the plan, and don't just do it when she's 9. The second question is why Spike et al bother telling her at all that she's really a pixie. They're shown as being self-interested and uncaring of humans, in which case the obvious thing to do would have been to let Kaye go to her fate and then see whether or not Nephamel lives up to his promise of rescuing her before she'll be killed.
Much turns on the power of knowing someone's name - in this case Roiben's. The idea is that anyone who knows his name can command him and he has to do it. The problem is that almost everyone seems to know his name and there's no exploration of what happens when two people with that knowledge give him conflicting orders. There's also a ridiculous scene where Kaye, knowing how important his name is, yells it out across the Unseelie Court and yet no one seems to hear it.
It doesn't help that Black uses a very disjointed style to recount the story - if you watching this as a movie, it would be a series of cut-aways - first we're here, then we're here and there's little or no explanation of how or why you've gone from one place to another. It's the why that bothers me most because Kaye is never more contrived than when she does something in spite of being told not to.
The best example I can give of this is a scene where Kaye is trying to find a four-leaf clover to lift a glamour and ends up rolling in the clover that covers her grandmother's front garden. She does this despite being told in the previous chapter that it's very important that she doesn't lift the glamour on the basis that it's such powerful magic that it can't be replaced by ordinary means and that it's very important to her friends that everyone believe she looks like a human. And of course, once the glamour comes off, she can't put it back on again. What's makes the scene doubly annoying is the fact that the Thistlewitch who gives her the warning about why the glamour shouldn't be removed, in almost the next sentence tells her how to do it. It doesn't make sense, it's there to move the plot from scene to scene and it really, really annoyed me.
A second big issue for me is the lack of credible characters and also (more importantly) a lack of a credible relationship between the characters. Take Kaye's mum Ellen for example. This is a woman whose whole being is devoted to being a successful rock star. She's whiny, irresponsible, shows no love at all for her daughter and is totally juvenile. I can believe that women like that exist, what I can't believe is why the supposedly independent Kaye stays with her. The situation is made more unsatisfying by the presence of Kaye's grandmother - a supposed tough old broad who is into discipline and trying to get Ellen to do the right thing. Except that we have very little interaction between her and Kaye or her and Ellen beyond somewhat trite conversations and for a woman who's so tough and uncompromising, I found it difficult to believe she'd have rats in her house. At some point, I wanted to see a conversation dealing with why Kaye wasn't living with the grandmother - why the grandmother wasn't insisting on it.
Roiben, the too-beautiful-and-noble-to-be-true Faerie knight with angst issues and self-loathing is such a stock fantasy cliche that I never engaged with him. He's pretty - yawn. He hates being made to do bad things for the Queen of the Unseelie Court - yawn. He falls in love with Kaye for no other reason than that it makes it a romance - yawn. The Queens of the Unseelie and Seelie Court are basically the same cruel, uncaring character with different hair colour. I'd like to have seen a little more development beyond boring ambition and inner cruelty. Nephamel is the standard bad-but-pretty Faerie Knight who does bad things because he's bad.
Black's biggest mistake is to waste the characters of Spike, Lutie, Janet and Corny. They are never more than ciphers and whilst we're told that Janet, Spike and Lutie are Kaye's friends, we're never shown it in practice. Corny is little more than an angsty, self-loathing gay sidekick with nothing to do. There are hints at his sado-masochistic relationshipship with Nephamel but no details and you never understand the connection between them or what he thinks he's getting out of it. The central emotional shock of the book should be Janet's death but it doesn't work - firstly because you can't buy into Kaye's feelings of guilt (which in turn is part of the contrived story problem - she leaves to speak to Janet's boyfriend and remove an enchantment, therefore leaving Janet vulnerable to a kelpie) and secondly because there should be some impact on Janet's brother Corny but it just doesn't come.
There is also a peculiar lack of emotional heart to this book. One of the most powerful scenes should have been where Kaye encounters the child she's been changed for. The real Kaye is trapped forever as a young child in the Seelie Court and yet there's never more than a cursory acknowledgement of how awful this must be for her (and for the other children), being denied a chance to grow and develop and at no point does Kaye think about returning her to her mother or otherwise trying to deal with the situation. It's almost an "oh, look at that. Now I'll move on" moment and it just doesn't feel real.
Tithe has an Advisory Adult Content label on the back and there is much use of the word fuck in this book. Personally, I didn't find it gratuitous and it did at least help give some credibility to the dialogue of the teenage characters. Whilst there is some hint at both straight and gay sex in the book, it's not explored beyond some snogging between characters and I certainly don't think it's going to shock the target audience.
The Verdict:
Wonderful writing and imagery cannot make up for the gossamer thin plot and poor characterisation. Disappointing.
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 them back to her childhood home.
To the place where she used to see Faeries.
They're still there. But Kaye's not a child any more. This time she's dragged into the thick of their dangerous, frightening world. A realm where black horses dwell beneath the sea, desperate to drown you ... where the sinister Thistlewitch divines dark futures ... and where dashing Faerie knights are driven to perform acts of brutal depravity for the love of their uncaring queens.
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 ...
I'm going to start by making a positive comment because it deserves to be said and remembered: Holly Black has a wonderful way of conjuring images. Her writing is particularly strong when she's trying to get you to picture what Kaye is seeing and experiencing. Her descriptions are tight and believable and they take you right into the action.
I want to say that from the off because the unfortunate thing about this book is that the story sucks.
The Queen of the Seelie Court is seeking to take over the Unseelie Court by setting up the Queen of the Unseelie Court to kill Kaye as fulfilment of the tithe of the title - a form of blood contract where the death of a willing mortal seels the solitary faeries (i.e. faeries who do not belong to either cour) to the rule of the Unseelie court. The Seelie Queen has had this fixed up for years though because Kaye is in fact a pixie changeling - swapped for the real Kaye and glamoured to look human whilst being denied any knowledge of who she really is. The idea is that when it's revealed that the Unseelie Queen has whacked a faerie, then she'll somehow lose power (never explained how) and the Seelie Queen can merge the courts. Spike, Lutie and Gristle (who we never see on the basis that he's been killed off-page by Roiben) keep tabs on her as she's growing up to make sure it's all going okay and to convince her to be part of the plan when the time's right. The obvious question is why they wait until Kaye is 16 before carrying out the plan, and don't just do it when she's 9. The second question is why Spike et al bother telling her at all that she's really a pixie. They're shown as being self-interested and uncaring of humans, in which case the obvious thing to do would have been to let Kaye go to her fate and then see whether or not Nephamel lives up to his promise of rescuing her before she'll be killed.
Much turns on the power of knowing someone's name - in this case Roiben's. The idea is that anyone who knows his name can command him and he has to do it. The problem is that almost everyone seems to know his name and there's no exploration of what happens when two people with that knowledge give him conflicting orders. There's also a ridiculous scene where Kaye, knowing how important his name is, yells it out across the Unseelie Court and yet no one seems to hear it.
It doesn't help that Black uses a very disjointed style to recount the story - if you watching this as a movie, it would be a series of cut-aways - first we're here, then we're here and there's little or no explanation of how or why you've gone from one place to another. It's the why that bothers me most because Kaye is never more contrived than when she does something in spite of being told not to.
The best example I can give of this is a scene where Kaye is trying to find a four-leaf clover to lift a glamour and ends up rolling in the clover that covers her grandmother's front garden. She does this despite being told in the previous chapter that it's very important that she doesn't lift the glamour on the basis that it's such powerful magic that it can't be replaced by ordinary means and that it's very important to her friends that everyone believe she looks like a human. And of course, once the glamour comes off, she can't put it back on again. What's makes the scene doubly annoying is the fact that the Thistlewitch who gives her the warning about why the glamour shouldn't be removed, in almost the next sentence tells her how to do it. It doesn't make sense, it's there to move the plot from scene to scene and it really, really annoyed me.
A second big issue for me is the lack of credible characters and also (more importantly) a lack of a credible relationship between the characters. Take Kaye's mum Ellen for example. This is a woman whose whole being is devoted to being a successful rock star. She's whiny, irresponsible, shows no love at all for her daughter and is totally juvenile. I can believe that women like that exist, what I can't believe is why the supposedly independent Kaye stays with her. The situation is made more unsatisfying by the presence of Kaye's grandmother - a supposed tough old broad who is into discipline and trying to get Ellen to do the right thing. Except that we have very little interaction between her and Kaye or her and Ellen beyond somewhat trite conversations and for a woman who's so tough and uncompromising, I found it difficult to believe she'd have rats in her house. At some point, I wanted to see a conversation dealing with why Kaye wasn't living with the grandmother - why the grandmother wasn't insisting on it.
Roiben, the too-beautiful-and-noble-to-be-true Faerie knight with angst issues and self-loathing is such a stock fantasy cliche that I never engaged with him. He's pretty - yawn. He hates being made to do bad things for the Queen of the Unseelie Court - yawn. He falls in love with Kaye for no other reason than that it makes it a romance - yawn. The Queens of the Unseelie and Seelie Court are basically the same cruel, uncaring character with different hair colour. I'd like to have seen a little more development beyond boring ambition and inner cruelty. Nephamel is the standard bad-but-pretty Faerie Knight who does bad things because he's bad.
Black's biggest mistake is to waste the characters of Spike, Lutie, Janet and Corny. They are never more than ciphers and whilst we're told that Janet, Spike and Lutie are Kaye's friends, we're never shown it in practice. Corny is little more than an angsty, self-loathing gay sidekick with nothing to do. There are hints at his sado-masochistic relationshipship with Nephamel but no details and you never understand the connection between them or what he thinks he's getting out of it. The central emotional shock of the book should be Janet's death but it doesn't work - firstly because you can't buy into Kaye's feelings of guilt (which in turn is part of the contrived story problem - she leaves to speak to Janet's boyfriend and remove an enchantment, therefore leaving Janet vulnerable to a kelpie) and secondly because there should be some impact on Janet's brother Corny but it just doesn't come.
There is also a peculiar lack of emotional heart to this book. One of the most powerful scenes should have been where Kaye encounters the child she's been changed for. The real Kaye is trapped forever as a young child in the Seelie Court and yet there's never more than a cursory acknowledgement of how awful this must be for her (and for the other children), being denied a chance to grow and develop and at no point does Kaye think about returning her to her mother or otherwise trying to deal with the situation. It's almost an "oh, look at that. Now I'll move on" moment and it just doesn't feel real.
Tithe has an Advisory Adult Content label on the back and there is much use of the word fuck in this book. Personally, I didn't find it gratuitous and it did at least help give some credibility to the dialogue of the teenage characters. Whilst there is some hint at both straight and gay sex in the book, it's not explored beyond some snogging between characters and I certainly don't think it's going to shock the target audience.
The Verdict:
Wonderful writing and imagery cannot make up for the gossamer thin plot and poor characterisation. Disappointing.
