Cover of Tithe: A Modern Faerie Tale

Tithe: A Modern Faerie Tale

core novel 2002 The Folk of the Air / The Modern Faerie Tales

Record

First published2002
Original language EN
Work typenovel
Canon statuscore
Reader rating3.68 (110,222 ratings, collected 2026-08-21)
Page count272
First-edition ISBN9780689849244
Internal chronology1

Synopsis

Tithe: A Modern Faerie Tale, published by Holly Black in 2002, opens the Modern Faerie Tales trilogy. Sixteen-year-old Kaye Fierch has spent her life drifting from city to city following her mother's failing rock band, never settling anywhere long enough to belong. After a violent incident on tour forces the two back to Kaye's grandmother's house in New Jersey, Kaye returns to childhood haunts and reconnects with faeries she played with as a girl, whom she always assumed were imaginary. In the nearby woods she finds an injured knight named Roiben, gravely wounded and hunted, and chooses to help him rather than walk away. That single decision draws her directly into a long-simmering, often violent power struggle between the Seelie and Unseelie faerie courts, forcing Kaye to reckon with a hidden side of herself and of the world she thought she knew.

Where it sits

Notes

  • From the series record (The Modern Faerie Tales): A complete trilogy of contemporary faerie novels set in and around New York City, sharing a fictional faerie court (the Unseelie Court/New York Seelie enclave) distinct from Elfhame in Holly Black's later Folk of the Air books.

Neighbouring works

Publication order and internal chronology are tracked as two separate orderings, but they resolve to the exact same sequence for this book, so one combined line is shown instead of two identical ones.

Sources

← The Folk of the Air / The Modern Faerie Tales dossier · All universes

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