Tag / fae

by booksoverlookedblog

Tithe 14 + 15

It’s the first post of 2019 and the last one for Tithe. 

In the penultimate chapter, we’re almost at the real climax of the book, with Kaye and Roiben leaving the Seelie Court to rescue Corny. I wouldn’t normally talk about the transition scene here, except for Kaye and Roiben’s conversation as they’re leaving the Seelie Court.

‘I’m here because you are kind and lovely and terribly, terribly brave,’ he said, his voice pitched low. ‘And because I want to be.’

She looked up at him through her lashes. He smiled and rested his chin on top of her head, sliding his hand over her back.

‘You want to be?’

He laughed. ‘Verily, I do. Do you doubt it?’

‘Oh,’ she said, mind unable to catch up with the stunning joy that she felt. Joy, that was, for the moment, enough to push the other sorrows aside. Because it was true, somehow, that he was here with her, and not with the Seelie Queen.

This is the first scene in the book that makes me think that their budding relationship is based on something more than lust, and the allure of the mysterious stranger you met on the side of the road.

When Roiben and Kaye get to the Unseelie Court, they learn that Spike is dead, and Nephamael has made himself king. I don’t think anyone feels bad about Spike getting killed. He never made himself likeable in the first place, and he wasn’t an important enough character to pay attention to.

They don’t really have much of a plan to get Corny back from Nephamael, but pretty soon Roiben’s opinion is moot. Nephamael learned Roiben’s name and uses it to take control of him. Kaye escapes, but Roiben remains in Nephamael’s command.

There’s a lot of situations in Tithe that are pretty intense. Maybe it’s because I’m older or because I’ve read the book a few times before, but very little in it scares me anymore. Except when Nephamael takes control of Roiben.

I’m not going to be ritually sacrificed by faeries, I think I’m smart enough now to avoid any teenage-like boyfriend shenanigans, and even driving isn’t that hard anymore. But Nephamael’s total control over Roiben is way more frightening than I remember it being. He’s ordered to humiliate himself and to “cut the pixie until she dies” when Kaye gets recaptured. The disturbing thing about this is that Roiben is totally conscious and aware of himself doing these things. He doesn’t want to do them, but has no choice. His body totally betrays his mind. The idea of not being in charge of my actions is scary, but that someone else could have absolute control over me is even worse. At some point, even I have to wonder, how much of me is really “in control”? How much of my life is actually dictated by me, and not, say, my boss, or my bank account?

But that line of thinking will probably lead me to some introspection and depression, and that’s not what we’re here for. What we are here for is to see Roiben and Corny get saved, right?

In discussing the last chapter, I talked about my disappointment in the shift from urban fantasy to just straight fantasy. I wanted to see Kaye’s world clash more with the fae world. I got a little bit more of that here. Kaye doesn’t know how to think like a pixie, and this works to her advantage. She poisons Nephamael with tiny iron nails from her boots, something she could have only gotten from the mortal realm. Nephamael dies, Corny and Roiben are free, and everyone’s a little closer to earning their happy endings.

I don’t think that this climax was bigger or more exciting than “escape from ritual sacrifice”, but I love that Kaye used her wits and resources to win the day. And, of course, that a girl saves the boys.

I’m combining my review for Chapter 15 as well, because I don’t think there’s enough in the final chapter to warrant a full post of its own. It’s basically a parlor scene wherein Kaye reveals the the Seelie Queen planned all this out, which should be intriguing, but is more confusing than anything. Roiben declares himself king of the Unseelie Court, and Kaye and Corny return to the mortal world.

The ending is bittersweet. Kaye and Corny are safe, but Janet is dead. Roiben and Kaye start a relationship, but it’s made clear throughout the book that kingship will not necessarily be kind to Roiben.

I like Tithe, but I don’t think it’s Holly Black’s best work. Reading it through again, it doesn’t feel as cohesive as it should. The charmed kissing scene was also pretty questionable for me. But it’s still and enjoyable book, and easy to get sucked into. I’ve read a few of Holly Black’s other books, including Ironside and The White Cat, and I think both are more polished than Tithe.

Tithe meant a lot to me as an adolescent. It introduced me to YA fiction and urban fantasy. I took a lot of inspiration from Holly Black and her stories. Even her webpage  had a lot of resources and inspiration for a teenage writer like me at the time. She helped me learn about the publishing industry and the writing process. But most important, she made me feel like I could be a writer, and that someone wanted to hear what I had to say.

That’s a wrap for Tithe! Next week I’ll be back with a final – yes, final – manga review, and then I’ll be moving on to a new project for the rest of the year. Thanks for sticking with me this far, may your new year be full of good books and free of human sacrifice.

by booksoverlookedblog

Tithe 12: Driving a Wedge

-This is why I wanted more details – what, exactly, did they hate about the swearing fealty to the Court when freedom has led to chaos
-Did she and Roiben make any plans to help Corny? Where is he now?
-Killing Janet: more about the divide between Kaye and the fae than anything

We’re coming to the end of Tithe, and now that the main event’s over, where to we go from here?

To a rave, apparently.

Kaye needs to find Nephamael to save Corny, assuming that the latter is still alive. But it seems like she’s not in any hurry to get back to the Unseelie Court. Considering the mess she and Roiben left it in, I can’t say I blame her. She finds her fae friends: Spike, Lutie-Loo, and the Thistlewitch, looking to them for some guidance. Rather than getting any kind of wisdom from them, she discovers them celebrating the uncompleted Tithe and their newfound freedom, and a surprising degree of callousness.

‘I have no desire to be welcome among you, old mother,’ Roiben said, kneeling down on one knee in the soft earth. ‘I only wanted to know whether you were aware of the price of your freedom. There are trolls and worse that are delighted to be without any master but their own desires.’

‘And if there are, what of it?’ Spike asked, coming up from behind them. ‘Let the mortals suffer as we have suffered.’ [. . .]

‘So it’s us against them now? I’m not talking about the Unseelie Court, here. Since when are mortals the enemies of the solitary fey?’ Kaye said, anger bleeding into her voice again, making it rough.

Kaye’s exchange with Spike sums up the main conflict of this chapter, and her new inner struggle. She’s not worried about enchanting Janet’s boyfriend or being “weird” anymore. She’s a faerie who spent her whole life believing that she was human, and has no idea how to live as part of the fae world. She thought that this was going to be simple, and is only now coming to realize the trouble she’s caused, and how deep in she really is.

This point is further driven home at the end of the chapter, but I’m getting ahead of myself now.

As I mentioned in another post, one of the things that bugged me was that the rules for why the Tithe happened and why the solitary fey would submit to the Unseelie Court was never really explained beyond obscure faerie rules.  I really wish there was more backstory again, because the faeries are all pretty happy about being free. So why would they ever submit to the Tithe in the first place? Was there every any kind of resistance in the past, or attempts to stop the ritual similar to this one? I know I won’t get answers to these questions, nor do they come up in either of Tithe‘s sequels. I just wish there was something more than “because plot demands it”.

The meeting with the other fae at least gives Kaye some direction of what to do next, when she learns that the Seelie Queen will be coming to the area. They’re most likely to find Nephamael – and, with him, Corny – in the Seelie Queen’s court. Kaye realizes that her friends have no interest in setting things right or finding Corny, and that the only person she has to rely on is Roiben.

 

 

by booksoverlookedblog

Tithe 11: Aftermath

The movie Far and Away is the story of two Irish immigrants making their way in America during the 1890s. Towards the end of Act 2, the main characters are freezing and living on the streets of New York City. They break into an empty home where they could finally eat, but declare their love for each other and make out instead.

That scene drives me crazy. The food is right there, you haven’t eaten in days, and you’re going to ignore it so you can play house?

I think this illustrates why romance really isn’t the genre for me. Characters swept away by love when the solution to so many of their problems is right in front of them. I feel like so many protagonists in romance novels are just stupid.

That’s what bugs me about Tithe, even as we creep towards the end of the book. Roiben and Kaye have escaped the Unseelie Court with their lives, but Kaye is hardly worried about the consequences of the uncompleted Tithe or the death of the Unseelie Queen. When Kaye and Roiben kiss again, the scene is meant to titillate, but doesn’t exactly move the story along.

Kaye’s more concerned with getting things settled with Roiben: explaining the plan, and how she wanted to tell him she was a pixie but never got the chance. They have some of their most “normal” conversations so far during this chapter. I’ll admit, the awkwardness between the two now that they’re no longer in danger is pretty cute.

All this to say, romance really isn’t the genre for me. I like Tithe for the fantasy, but I could take or leave the romantic subplot. Maybe I’m just too old. I’m closer to 30 than 20, and no longer the YA target demographic.

Roiben, presumably older and wiser, at least, calls Kaye out on her skewed priorities.

‘Kaye, Faery is a place governed by a set of customs both severe and binding. What you have done has consequences.’

‘Everything has consequences,’ she said, ‘and the consequence of this is that the solitary fey are free again, you’re free, and the bad Queen is dead. That seems pretty over to me.’

Kaye doesn’t really understand what these “consequences” are until she sees several news stories detailing the chaos the solitary fae created on their first night of freedom.

Roiben spoke as he began to pace the room. ‘Everything is always easier when considered black and white, isn’t it? Your friends, after all, are good and wise, so all solitary fey must be good and wise. Your friends must have some respect and fear and knowledge of humans, so all solitary fey will follow in that example.’

Kaye has a hard lesson to learn, but doesn’t get much time to dwell on it. Kaye soon learns that Corny is missing and is still in the Unseelie Court, most likely with Nephamael.

I didn’t really think about this too much when I was a kid, but we have a gender reversal here. Instead of Kaye needing to be saved, it’s the girl going back into danger to save the guy.

by booksoverlookedblog

Tithe 7: The Unseelie Court

At the end of the previous chapter, Kaye found her way into the Unseelie Court, and told Corny to stay behind because it wouldn’t be safe for him. She acknowledges, at least, that it’s probably also not safe for her, either. I’m really trying to find a way to justify Kaye’s impulse trip to the Unseelie Court, which is underneath a hill in a local cemetery. I can understand curiosity to a point, considering how much trouble it got her into when she removed her glamour. I’d like to say it’s some kind of fae instinct for her to seek out the dangerous unknown, rather than just checking it out to add plot points.

At first the Court is shown as something grand and wild, with strange beings and tantalizing foods. But Kaye soon learns that it’s dangerous as well, where “the worst of Faeryland came to drink themselves sick.” Kaye realizes that coming here was a bad idea when she sees a satyr pulling wings off a faerie. She also tries – and fails – to save a boy from being tortured. And Holly Black doesn’t skip on the gore. I thought I’d have hardened up a bit about this kind of thing lately, but I still flinched at the description of a nameless character getting stabbed in the eye, which then pops like a grape.

Kaye tries to retrace her steps and find her way out. Instead, she stumbles over a very drunk Corny, who’s followed her, against advisement. When he tells her that he’s seen Roiben, Kaye leaves Corny to spy on the faerie knight.

Kaye has every intention of going back to Corny when she’s done, but I’m not okay with her leaving him in the first place. If my friend is really drunk at a bar and a hot guy walks in, I do not go to the hot guy. I help my friend get home, and try to make eye contact with the hot guy on the way out. I don’t leave my drunk friend by herself, even if we’re regulars in the bar, even if we know the area well, even if she would probably be safe walking home.

Kaye knows the Unseelie Court is dangerous and has seen first-hand the viciousness of its inhabitants. It’s obvious that anything weak would be seen as a toy, something to destroy for amusement. A vulnerable, wasted human is a prime target. One of the complaints I’ve heard about Tithe is that the characters are too perfect, but Kaye is well and truly selfish for seeking out Roiben – who did not treat her well last time they met – over helping her friend.

Kaye finds a place to hide herself so she can overhear Roiben’s conversation with Nicnevin, the queen of the Unseelie Court. Here the point of view abruptly shifts from Kaye to Roiben. POV shifts can be really compelling, or become a crutch for the story. Since the story followed Kaye’s perspective so far, the change is rather jarring. Moreover, it’s unnecessary. Kaye overhears the conversation that Roiben has with the queen perfectly, so we’re not missing much by leaving out Roiben’s viewpoint. The main reason for the POV change was so the audience can see Roiben’s angsty inner thoughts. It shows us that even though he’s working for and evil faerie queen, he still has kindness left in him.

Except we don’t really need to get inside his head to know that. It doesn’t take a genius to see  that he loathes working for Nicnevin, judging by Kaye’s first two encounters with him. We can also see that Roiben’s retained some of his compassion when he helps Kaye sneak away before the queen sees her, when other fae would be more than happy to make an “example” of her.

The only new information we gain from the perspective change is the introduction of another character, Nephameal. Nephamael is Roiben’s counterpart in the Seelie Court. Originally Nicnevin’s knight, he and Roiben changed places as part of a truce between the two Courts. And Nephamael has “villain” written all over him. He wears a cape lined with thorns and an iron circlet, which has burned his skin around his forehead. What is that about? Is this fae self-harm? Is it for intimidation? What is Nephamael’s deal, exactly?

Spoiler: We never really learn, and I’m kind of bummed about it.

by booksoverlookedblog

Tithe 5: Roll Credits!

In this chapter of Tithe, we get some of the answers that both Kaye and the reader have been wondering about. For example, where have Kaye’s faerie friends been, and why did Roiben kill one of them? These are far from the only things Kaye has on her mind when she is awakened at night by Lutie-Loo and Spike, her childhood friends. They take her to see the Thistlewitch, thus far the closest thing Kaye has to a fae mentor.

I really like the variety of Fae in this book, of all different…races? Species? What exactly do you call the different categories of fae? Either way, Lutie is what most people would think when they hear the word “faerie”. She’s small and silly, and flies on iridescent wings. Spike is more feral and rugged, and the less kind of the two. The Thistlewitch has only a minor appearance in the book, but she also has a wild appearance, with reeds and briars covering her.

The Thistlewitch tells Kaye that she is a changeling, or a fae that was glamoured to look like a human, and left in place of a human child. Kaye takes the news surprisingly well at first, saying that it all makes sense, considering her unintentional magic. She gets over the shock pretty quickly, not even bothering to question her friends about her origins. For me, she just accepts it way too easily.

There’s a couple reasons that I’ll give this one a pass though, and the first is that faeries cannot tell lies.Having fae friends during her childhood, Kaye would have likely known about this rule, so she wouldn’t have any reason to disbelieve what they’re saying. The second is that curiosity gets the better of her later in the chapter, and she acts more like a teenager who’s just been told their entire life is a lie.

Later in the night, Kaye does remove her glamour, against the advisement of the Thistlewitch, and discovers what her “true self”, such as it is, looks like. Grass-green, with liquid black eyes and an extra knuckle on each of her fingers. Kaye doesn’t know how to put her glamour back on, and can’t find anyone to help. She winds up finding Corny to help her out. Their friendship might have seemed unlikely, but thinking about it, Corny is the perfect person to go to. He’s a well-established nerd, and if there was anyone I’d want on my side in a situation, it’d be a fantasy geek.

In other words, I may never be a fantasy heroine, but at the very least, I’d be a great genre-savvy sidekick.

The Thistlewitch explains exactly why they had to bring Kaye back to New Jersey and reveal her true nature: She is going to be selected for an Unseelie ritual known as the tithe, in which a mortal is sacrificed by the Unseelie Court of fae. When the ritual is complete, it will bind the fae without a court to the Unseelie Court for…reasons?

There’s a lot of lore in this chapter, and my background as a fantasy geek means that I can keep up with a lot of it. But I was never totally clear on why, exactly, the solitary fae are bound to the Unseelie Court. Even if the Thistlewitch tries to explain:

‘Why do the solitary fey trade their freedom for a human sacrifice?’

‘Some do it for the blood, others for protection. The human sacrifice is a show of power. Power that could force our obedience.’

‘But won’t they just take you back by force then?’

‘No. They must obey the agreement as we do. They are bounded by constraints. If the sacrifice is voided, then we are free for seven years.’

That’s one of the things about fae lore: a lot of it is just ‘because I said so’. It’s one of the things that make them so interesting to write and read about: there are a lot of rules they have to obey, and fae are clever tricksters who find ways to bend those rules without breaking them. This is exactly what’s happening here: the tithe will be performed, but voided once they discover that the sacrifice is a faery, not a mortal.

But I still wish there was a better explanation than that.

by booksoverlookedblog

Tithe 3: YA Parenting Tips

After a run-in with magic and a literal faerie knight, Kaye’s life returns to the mundane. For the most part, anyway. The majority of this chapter gives us a snapshot of what Kaye’s life looks like now that she’s in New Jersey. There’s only a few hints of otherworldly fae in this chapter at all. The first comes at the beginning of the chapter, when Kaye dreams of the old faerie friends that visited her as a child. It’s a weird and eerie scene, and I’m still not sure what some of the images in it are supposed to represent. But, it’s a dream, and doesn’t have to make sense.

The only other instance of magic is when Kaye receives a note from her old friends, delivered via acorn. The note informs her that one of her fae friends is “gone” and that “everything is danger”.

One thing I realized I liked about this book as that Kaye never really stopped believing in her so-called imaginary friends, Spike, Lutie, and Gristle. When she comes back to New Jersey, she still looks for them and wants them to come see her. Janet has accused Kaye of making up stories about them, saying they weren’t real, but Kaye never says they were fictional. This saves us a lot of time: she doesn’t need to be convinced they are real so that she can start the adventure. There’s no point in denying them, since the reader already knows that this is a fantasy story that will involve faeries at some point.

Throughout the day, Kaye contemplates the note, but mostly ends up daydreaming about Roiben. This is something I would normally give a female protagonist crap for, but I was a sixteen-year-old girl once, doing the same kind of thing. Coming home giddy after finding common ground with a boy and quickly developing crushes were just part of my repertoire of tricks. But I think Kaye is balanced out better than other lovestruck teenage girls in YA novels. Her romance with Roiben is the B-plot of the book, and there’s enough pushing her – finding out what happened to her friend Gristle, for instance – that her story’s interesting, and not all about the boy. So I’ll allow some daydreaming on her part.

And though Kaye acts like a teenager, so does her mother. This is a trend I’ve noticed in YA novels: the majority of the time, the protagonist’s parents are totally incompetent, out of the picture or distant, if they even bother appearing in the story at all.

I paused while writing this to take a look at the YA and middle-grade novels sitting on my bookshelves and think about the protagonists’ parents in each one. In several of them, the parents are dead or mysteriously absent throughout. In fact, the only novel I could find (though I’m sure there are others) which heavily featured parents was The Book Thief, where Liesel’s strong bond with Hans is one of the book’s main themes.

Kaye’s father is absent, but Kaye’s mom doesn’t really fit any of the aforementioned categories. She loves her daughter and stays in her life, but she’s also selfish and immature. She’s been drunk or drinking in all her appearances so far, and still dreams of the day she “makes it” as a musician. She even looks down on old friends who have gone “respectable” by starting a business of their own and leaving music. In some ways, she’s more childish than her teenage daughter. That said, I do like her relationship with Kaye. She obviously cares for her daughter, even if she doesn’t understand just how to take care of her.

I only noticed this trend after a friend (who is also a mom and a YA author) asked just why so many parents are so bad at taking care of the protagonists. That is, if they haven’t died horribly before story begins. The best answer I could come up with is that parents who are really paying attention to their kids lives are not going to let them go off to magical danger zones so they can save the world.

Dead parents are a catalyst for adventure, neglectful parents allow the adventure to happen, and dedicated parents are obstacles.

So if you discover that your child is part of some world-saving prophecy, just leave ’em alone. They’ll be fine.

by booksoverlookedblog

Tithe 2: Tall, Dark, and Brooding

I really expected that the magic of re-reading Tithe for the first time in years would be gone as soon as Kaye stumbled across her love interest, Roiben. I opened the book, armed with my incredible ability to nit-pick everything, and came away more or less satisfied with the second chapter.

No, let’s be honest, I got totally sucked in again.

It didn’t really start that way, though. Kaye flees the carousel and her own embarrassment, and starts on her way home. She’s more upset about how she made the broken carousel horse stand up on its own than about Kenny groping her, which makes sense, I guess, but in her situation, that’s not the thing I’d be hyper-focusing on. When she does think about Kenny, she’s more worried about what Janet will think, and what Kenny will tell people.

But the opening of the chapter is rendered less frustrating to me thanks to the lovely descriptions of Kaye’s walk home. I can vividly picture the wet woods at night, walking through the rain in the dark, cold and scared. I’m really envious of Holly Black’s descriptive abilities. She can make the scene come to life and paint a picture with her words, without making it drag on.

As Kaye makes her way home, she comes across a beautiful wounded man. She realizes that he is a faerie, but not like the faeries that were her childhood friends. The ones she had seen as a child were small and mischievous and playful, what most people would think of when they hear the word “faery”. Roiben, who Kaye finds here, is tall and handsome, more a warrior elf than a fun-loving sprite. The modern idea of fae is more like what we see in Disney movies: beautiful winged women granting wishes and turning you into a princess or a real boy. Tinkerbell may actually be closer to a traditional fae, with her jealousy nearly leading to the death of Wendy.

But for the most part, that Disney idea was what I grew up with. Charming creatures that would help you with your housework and friendly elves that made toys and shoes. A character like Roiben, in my book, was an entirely different species, like an elf from Lord of the Rings. Tithe was my first real introduction to the more traditional look at faeries, seeing their dark and dangerous side that went hand-in-hand with their beauty.

Roiben, by the way, was exactly what my fourteen-year-old self was looking for. Tall, handsome, dark and mysterious. He was in pain, he was broken, and I found that irresistible. Five years later, I found my own beautiful angsty man and knew that I could fix him, that I could be the light to his darkness.

If there are any teenage girls out there reading this now: I do not recommend attempting this. You cannot fix him, you will only get hurt in the process. Love your tall, dark, and brooding man in fiction, and leave him there.

Before I finish up this post, there is just one thing I need to point out.

She let out a breath she hadn’t known she was holding.

It’s not a bad line, and I can’t think of a better way to describe that sudden un-tightening of your chest after your see relief from a tense situation. But this line is used so much in fiction that it’s almost become another character. I know I’m guilty of using it way too much.

To be totally honest, this is probably something I would have never noticed, if not for one of my favorite tweets ever.

Someday I want to write a YA novel where the main character lets out a breath she knew damn well that she was holding.

P.S.: I’m on Twitter, like all the cool kids: https://twitter.com/nortonwriter14

by booksoverlookedblog

Tithe 4: Enchantment? Enchantment!

The fourth chapter of Tithe remains mostly in the mundane world, but here we get a second look at Janet’s older brother, Corny. The reader was introduced to him at the end of the first chapter, where he’s downright threatening.

Then he would drive around, cruise past all the local rutting joints, imagining he had a semi-automatic rifle in the car and counting how many he could have gotten. ‘Pow,’ he’d say, softly, to rolled-up windows as a brown-haired boy with broad shoulders and a backwards baseball cap ran up to the giggling girls behind the window of a red truck. ‘Pow. Pow.’

This reads very differently for me in 2018 than it did in 2004, years after Columbine but before Virginia Tech. Because in my life then, shootings happened, but they happened somewhere else. They weren’t at my school, and they weren’t at my doorstep.

But now it seems like we can’t turn on the news without hearing another story about gun violence, to the point where it’s almost become white noise. I was more innocent the first time I opened Tithe, and Corny’s introduction just seemed creepy to me. But now he’d be the “lone wolf”, the potential threat. I don’t find that to be true to his character at all, which makes his opening sequence all the more off-putting. Though it makes me wonder: if not for Kaye’s arrival, would he have eventually gone through with it? That idea alone is far scarier to me than any of the magical dangers Kaye faces.

Kaye doesn’t know about Corny’s inner life, though, and stops by his trailer to see him while Janet’s at school. Fourteen-year-old me immediately warmed up to him after he and Kaye discuss comics, especially because Corny references shonen-ai, gay romance manga. This is also how Kaye discovers that Corny is gay.

This is a trope I’ve seen a couple times, where a character is outed as gay because they have gay porn. And, because I saw this in fiction, I used to think that this was the main way people came out. I’d seen it done in Tithe, obviously, and the film Saved!, so I was curious if this trope had been used elsewhere. However, a poorly worded Google search left me with some…interesting results, and I decided not to delve in further.

Corny does have a spectacularly nerdy coming out story, though.

It’s no big deal. One night at dinner I said, ‘Mom, you know the forbidden love that Spock has for Kirk? Well, me too.’ It was easier for her to understand that way.

I want to point out here that until 2009, this was the only thing I knew about Star Trek.

Once Janet arrives home, she and Kaye go to a diner to meet some friends. There Kaye is peppered with questions about her mom being in a band, and one character asks if her mother sleeps with her boyfriends. I’m curious is if this was meant to be foreshadowing for Valiant, the second novel in the Tithe universe, in which the protagonist runs away after discovering her mom is doing just that.

Janet’s boyfriend, Kenny, leaves to use the bathroom and Kaye follows. Here it’s revealed that Kaye has done something to him, and that he can’t stop thinking about her. Kaye doesn’t know what she’s done, if anything, and soon Kenny starts kissing her. It gets sexual very quickly, and Kaye can’t decide if she wants to push him away or keep going. I’d forgotten all about this scene, and most of the Kenny subplot. Which is to say it took me by surprise, and was really uncomfortable to read through.

I’m not sure if it gets better or worse when Roiben comes into the diner, shortly after Janet catches Kenny and Kaye together. Kaye’s conversation with Roiben is one of the most important scenes in the book, as it sets up a major plot point not just for the end of Tithe, but its sequel, Ironside.

Kaye learns that Roiben did kill her faerie friend Gristle, because he was ordered to do so by his mistress. She doesn’t find out exactly why his mistress would order him to do that, but does wind up with a far more important piece of information: Roiben’s full name. She doesn’t know why faeries don’t like to give out their true names, only that it would piss him off. That is, until she tells him, “Kiss my ass, Rath Roiben Rye.”

After which he proceeds to throw her on the floor of the diner and literally kiss her ass.

It’s a little funny, and a little scary, and Kaye’s friends don’t know what’s going on. All they saw was Kaye kissing Kenny, then her getting thrown around by a stranger. Janet and her friend Fatima take the rather startled Kaye outside. Janet is furious at Kaye, and has every right to be. It’s such a change from her trying to protect Kaye at the beginning of the book. Granted, she just saw her best friend making out with her boyfriend. Most people wouldn’t react calmly and rationally to that. If I had been in Janet’s shoes, at age 16, I know I’d be calling her a slut and probably a lot more.

The thing that bothers me is that I’d probably react the same, even now. I’d like to think that once the initial shock is over, I’d be able to handle it with some nuance.

But I also know I wouldn’t take, “sorry, I accidentally enchanted your boyfriend” as an excuse.