Tithe
May 13th, 2005
This review was written in 2005 for an older incarnation of Blissbat.net.
by Holly Black
My problem with much urban fantasy is this: no matter how many fantastic characters come and go, if Detroit still feels like a cardboard cut-out of Detroit plus a colony of fairies, I’m going to throw the book against the wall. Without getting shirty, I theorize that this has something to do with the difficulty of balancing the emotional weight of magical and non-magical realities, and of pinning down and opening out the sparking, shifting moments that can bind the two worlds together. Terri Windling pulls it off, as do many horror writers, but it’s rarely done as well in YA.
Holly Black clearly remembers the viciously high resolution of childhood, and Tithe, therefore, completely succeeds. The “urban” part of the fantasy is handled with as much attention to the darkly weird as the scenes that take place in more traditional settings, so when a fairy knight shows up in a New Jersey diner, neither he nor it feels tacked-on—and his scary, magic-bound behavior makes him more real and more terrifying than the airbrushed vampire/werewolf/magicky boyfriend companions of so many urban fantasy heroines.
Black also allows her teenage characters an ambiguous, often electric sexuality and complicated motivation as well as absurdity. This is precisely the stuff, so dangerously close to the id, that much YA fiction either shies away from or overplays. Tithe handles tricky sexual interactions with style, whether Black is dealing with drunken teenagers or jealous pixies. (A casual coming-out conversation between two friends delighted me so thoroughly I had to go find someone to read it to.)
The book isn’t perfect. When the protagonist, Kaye, undergoes a kind of transformation, we don’t get to see enough of the impact it has on her psyche. And when something un-fantastically bad befalls one of her friends, we don’t get to see it soak in: the plot drags us on before we’re ready, robbing us again of needed weight. When, having loosed such vibrant and interesting characters on us, Black steps away so quickly from the emotional repercussions, it feels like a dodge. Tithe is sharp and sleek and utterly engaging, but I wanted more of Kaye’s pain and curiosity and desire.
Black does a magnificent job, though, of making the Unseelie court and the Jersey shore flicker convincingly past and through each other. In this, Tithe reminds me of a Weetzie Bat wiped clean of cloying whimsy or a flash-flood version of Elizabeth Hand’s crossed-over realities—and that’s high praise, from me.
