A Modern Tale of Faerie

## Genre Information

Young Adult
Fantasy

Dark Fantasy
Urban Fantasy

 (Series Content Ratings Click on Explicit Ratings for details.)

## About the Series

* **Genres:** Young Adult, Urban Fantasy
* **Theme:**
* **Narrative style**:

## Series Description

Groups of angst-filled teens get mixed up with faeries and their politics—and all the dangers and wonders that come with faeries.

Dark and gritty faerie story for teens, young adults, adults of all ages. Faeries are scary!

NOTE: This series is centered around teens and targetd for teens to read. However, this is a series that transcends that boundary to be readable and highly enjoyed by all ages.

## Books in Series

1. Tithe (A Modern Faerie Tale Book 1) (2002)
2. Valiant (A Modern Faerie Tale Book 2) (2005)
3. Ironside (A Modern Faerie Tale Book 3) (2007) ~ Final

## World Building

### Setting

* New Jersey
* New York City

### Fantasy Elements

Faeries, kelpies, changelings,

* **Kelpie**: dangerous water horse and one of the Solitary Fey
* **Solitary Fey**:

### World

In this world, Faeries are real but hidden from humans.

### Protagonist

Kaye
(books one and three) Kaye is tough and street-smart. As a child, she had three faerie friends-Spike, Lutie, and Gristle, and was also acquainted with the Thistlewitch. Since then she moved to a more urban part of the state with her mother, a musician, traveling from city to city with the rock band.
Val
(book two) runs away from home to New York City and falls in with some homeless teens and gets entangled with dangerous faeries;
## Book Descriptions

1. Tithe (2002)
Sixteen-year-old Kaye is a modern nomad. Fierce and independent, she travels from city to city with her mother's rock band until an ominous attack forces Kaye back to her childhood home. There, amid the industrial, blue-collar New Jersey backdrop, Kaye soon finds herself an unwilling pawn in an ancient power struggle between two rival faerie kingdoms - a struggle that could very well mean her death.
2. Valiant (2005)
When seventeen-year-old Valerie runs away to New York City, she's trying to escape a life that has utterly betrayed her. Sporting a new identity, she takes up with a gang of squatters who live in the city's labyrinthine subway system. But there's something eerily beguiling about Val's new friends.
And when one talks Val into tracking down the lair of a mysterious creature with whom they are all involved, Val finds herself torn between her newfound affection for an honorable monster and her fear of what her new friends are becoming.
3. Ironside
In the realm of Faerie, the time has come for Roiben's coronation. Uneasy in the midst of the malevolent Unseelie Court, pixie Kaye is sure of only one thing—her love for Roiben. But when Kaye, drunk on faerie wine, declares herself to Roiben, he sends her on a seemingly impossible quest. Now Kaye can't see or speak to Roiben unless she can find the one thing she knows doesn't exist: a faerie who can tell a lie.
Miserable and convinced she belongs nowhere, Kaye decides to tell her mother the truth -- that she is a changeling left in place of the human daughter stolen long ago. Her mother's shock and horror sends Kaye back to the world of Faerie to find her human counterpart and return her to Ironside. But once back in the faerie courts, Kaye finds herself a pawn in the games of Silarial, queen of the Seelie Court. Silarial wants Roiben's throne, and she will use Kaye, and any means necessary, to get it. In this game of wits and weapons, can a pixie outplay a queen?
Holly Black spins a seductive tale at once achingly real and chillingly enchanted, set in a dangerous world where pleasure mingles with pain and nothing is exactly as it appears.
## Awards

**Tithe**:

* 2003 Mythopoeic Award - Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Children's Literature (Nomination)
* 2008 Mythopoeic Award - Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Children's Literature (Nomination)

**Valliant**:

* 2006 Andre Norton Award - Andre Norton Award (Win)
* 2006 Mythopoeic Award - Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Children's Literature (Nomination)
* 2006 Locus Poll Award - Best Young Adult Book (Place: 4)
* 2008 Mythopoeic Award - Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Children's Literature (Nomination)

**Ironside**:

* 2008 Mythopoeic Award - Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Children's Literature (Nomination)
* 2008 Locus Poll Award - Best Young Adult Book (Place: 6)

## References

1. ↑ Goodreads | Tithe (Modern Faerie Tales, #1) by Holly Black
2. ↑ Goodreads | Valiant (Modern Faerie Tales, #2) by Holly Black