This was very very creepy
Just finished Holly Black's Tithe, a ya fantasy novel set in the faerie realm, and it was very much not a book for me.
1. Concept of changelings is creepy as hell - all I could think through the entire book was children whose lives were stolen and hate Kaye for not trying to do anything once she found out.
2. A blonde Asian heroine. WTF? Biologically impossible.
3. Kaye, our heroine, is a smoking high-school dropout. I wanted to tell her to do something with her life - she is the kind of kid I would tell Baby Mousie stay away from - talk about wasting your life and living uselessly. I really disliked her. Smoking + dropout does not make you cool.
4. This had enough plot for a much longer book - it felt sudden and crammed in with some unrealistic reactions.
5. Roiben. I don't care if he is not human but a faerie - what he needs isn't a kingdom and a pixie girlfriend. What he needs is decades of therapy. Possibly millenia. Even if I liked Kaye more than I do, a few kisses ain't going to fix THAT mess.
6. The idea of compunction through magic and/or name power is creepy as hell. It was largely not sexually used, at least explicitly, but it is still sick in the head whichever way it is used. It does not make it any better the the characters we explicitly see in thrall (Roiben, Corny) are male - it's creepy regardless.
7. I want to take a flamethrower to the faerie world so none of those sick sick bastards will exist.
All in all, despite liking some of it, this book was not for me.
1. Concept of changelings is creepy as hell - all I could think through the entire book was children whose lives were stolen and hate Kaye for not trying to do anything once she found out.
2. A blonde Asian heroine. WTF? Biologically impossible.
3. Kaye, our heroine, is a smoking high-school dropout. I wanted to tell her to do something with her life - she is the kind of kid I would tell Baby Mousie stay away from - talk about wasting your life and living uselessly. I really disliked her. Smoking + dropout does not make you cool.
4. This had enough plot for a much longer book - it felt sudden and crammed in with some unrealistic reactions.
5. Roiben. I don't care if he is not human but a faerie - what he needs isn't a kingdom and a pixie girlfriend. What he needs is decades of therapy. Possibly millenia. Even if I liked Kaye more than I do, a few kisses ain't going to fix THAT mess.
6. The idea of compunction through magic and/or name power is creepy as hell. It was largely not sexually used, at least explicitly, but it is still sick in the head whichever way it is used. It does not make it any better the the characters we explicitly see in thrall (Roiben, Corny) are male - it's creepy regardless.
7. I want to take a flamethrower to the faerie world so none of those sick sick bastards will exist.
All in all, despite liking some of it, this book was not for me.