Book Discussion: Holly Black's Tithe

[sirens_mods]

Hello!

Today, we begin our summer discussion of works by our Guests of Honor by jumping in with Holly Black’s Tithe. This month, we’ll spend three weeks on Tithe, and then two weeks on Kin and Kith (with the third book in that series, Kind, to be released on October 1, right before Sirens). July will bring Terri Windling’s work, and in August,

Comments

[anonymous]

I loved reading this for the first time because the characters seemed like real people, people who had lives outside of the times they were on the page. I think TITHE was one of the first books for teenagers that I actually liked.

--I

[anonymous]

If at all I have to read something in the Urban Fantasy genre, I would rather prefer the riveting story of Bree Tanner, grippingly told by Stephenie Meyer in The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner: An Eclipse Novella combines romance, mystery and danger extremely well. Was lucky to get the book at huge discount, don’t know if others are also equally lucky or not.

[luminousmarble]

Perhaps you got it at such a discount because it's not yet released?

[luminousmarble]

I looked back through many years of journaling to find my reaction when I first read Tithe, and it's kind of funny--I was really disconcerted with the story, at first, because it wasn't like other stories I was reading, or like other stories I'd read. After letting the story settle for a bit, I appreciated it a lot more, and I think I appreciated it especially because it was different. I was used to very shiny Disneyfied fairies (and similar; I don't want to say that it's only Disney that does that), and this was something new.

[thistleingrey]

Oh, interesting--I remember thinking that it was great to see this story with younger characters, for whom it wasn't startling when someone overlooked Potentially Important Consequences, but that the setting wasn't particularly different. Perhaps my prior reading overlapped Black's too nearly?

Re: original post: for de Lint I'd put something else alongside Tithe (before the Newford books): Moonheart has a little more rawness and discovery, from my vague memories of twenty years ago. And there are the four Bordertown anthologies, listed last here.

Anyway, influential? Yes, definitely, to my mind, precisely for that mix of YA and edgy urban fantasy.