Book three: Tithe

Tithe (2002)
Holly Black

Rating: 4.5/5

There is no other way of describing it: I want to eat this book.

It was so good.

So, so good that I am almost scared to read the next one. I know that the next book does not follow on from this one, but while Kaye’s story was exciting and suspense filled and all those good things, the writing was the best thing about it.

All books should be this well written. It really should be a rule.

You know when you are reading something, and you can just, I don’t know, feel the words in your head or something? On your tongue, like they should be read out loud? Like the words are in the exact right order, and you don’t even have to concentrate to see the whole thing playing out in your head? It just flows.

I don’t know how to explain it, but this book has it.

I also loved it because it was a YA book, without the YA sugar coating. I hate that. I don’t want the world to be covered with a sickly sweetness, with characters that deal with problems that aren’t really problems and have resolutions that aren’t really interesting. I want it to be realistic.

For example, approximately 97.8 percent of teenagers swear… but not in books. I knew I was going to love this book the moment Corny thought, “She couldn’t understand that the age of guerrilla engineering was at a close, that being a motherfucking genius wasn’t enough. You needed to be a rich motherfucking genius.” (p.16).

Finally, a teenage boy, who sounded like a teenage boy. Gasp!

I did find it funny when I bought it that it had “Advisory Adult Content” on the back. I do remember when I was at school, that a friend of mine’s mother used to read any book she was given as a present and then decide whether or not it was suitable for her to read. Hmmm, ye-as, that was worthwhile, because a fifteen year old girl wouldn’t have known about sex, smoking, drinking, or swearing unless she read about them. No siree!

I do wonder though if this wasn’t a fantasy novel if they could get away with that sort of thing? I mean, how tight are the censorship guidelines on what can and can’t be printed in a YA novel? Or is it just the publishers not wanting to risk scandal?

Either way, I don’t care. This book was brilliant and there should be more like it.

In fact, I may overcome my trepidation and read Valiant tomorrow. Thankfully my sister already read both last year, so it is in the bookshelf waiting.

The next book in the A Modern Tale of Faerie series, Ironside, is to be released in the U.S. in May of this year.

...and it is about Kaye. Okay. I admit it, I lied, I want to know more about her… I was just willing to let go of the hope, if there wasn’t going to be anymore.

Because, the only thing I didn’t like about this book was that it was too short. I just wanted it to go on a little longer… to see a little more of the outcome of what happened. And now I can… only I can’t. I have to wait.

Damn it all. I just read the excerpt on the author's website. Now I really, really, really want to read it.

Impatient, much?