Of Swords and Parasols

This is the third of Black’s faerie books, and combines parts of the casts of the first two. Specifically Kaye, Roiben and Corny from Tithe, and Dave and Luis from Valiant. The Tithe characters were the main characters, but the Valiant characters…well, one was a rapist, murderer, druggie and dealer, and the other I barely remembered.

Note: The rest of this has spoilers for Tithe and Valiant.

Kaye’s boyfriend, Roiben, is being crowned king of the Unseelie Court, and his court isn’t exactly thrilled that he’s dating a Seelie pixie, so they play a trick on her to get her to make a special form of declaration that, if accepted, would permanently bind her to the Unseelie Court. Roiben, not wanting that, tasks her to find a fae who lies, an impossibility, and the fae cannot lie. Not realizing he’s trying to save her (not that he bothers to try to explain) Kaye takes off, and when her friend Corny is cursed by a member of the Seelie court and the Seelie queen asks to meet her, they head for New York and the Seelie Court. Their guide is Luis, who became the Seelie queen’s servant to save his brother’s life. Luis attempts to endear himself to the reader by saying that everything bad that happened to them is all the fault of the girl his brother was obsessed with, turned into a drug addict, and raped. Apparently, she made his brother an evil, raping murderer by not loving him back. (While I do not think Holly Black thinks this, she does think I’ll like and sympathize with a character who does.)

Add that to Black reminding us every chance she got that no bad thing he ever did was Roiben’s fault and everything was the fault of the mean faerie queens and Roiben’s just a poor, faultless woobie, and I think I’m through with Black’s books, as much as her world interests me. That said, most of the drug use and creepier elements of the first two books are gone, I found Kaye more likable than I did in Tithe, and Black actually addresses the subject of the human child Kaye replaced, something that was brushed aside in Tithe.  All of which makes me sad that other things annoyed me too much to have an interest in reading more.

Sixteen-year-old Kaye has been dragged all around the U.S. by her rocker mother, until her mother’s latest boyfriend tries to kill her, and they go to stay with Kaye’s grandmother for a while. As a child, Kaye had faerie friends, and she meets them again, getting caught up in a plot of the Seelie Court’s against the Unseelie Court. As the title would indicate, the plot involves using Kaye as the seven years tithe-human sacrifice- that will keep the fae from running loose on the human world. There’s also Roiben, a Seelie knight now bound in service to the Unseelie Queen, and Janet and Corny, Kaye’s childhood human friends.

Like Melissa Marr, Holly Black is pretty determined to strip away the whole faerie-is-shiny-and-romantic-and-glamorous thing and go back to the darker roots. Unlike Marr, however, Black doesn’t seem to have much of a goal in mind with that or anywhere she’s going with it, just exposing it as dark and unpretty. (As Tithe predates Wicked Lovely by several years, I suspect it was a strong influence.) There’s also a variety of tropes I don’t like. Like how Kenny, Janet’s boyfriend, all but sexually assaults Kaye, but it’s not really his fault, because Kaye didn’t know that her fae appeal was developing, and couldn’t control it. And Roiben can’t be held responsible for all the bad things he does, including to Kaye, because the mean evil fae (mostly the Unseelie Queen) forced him to. Except for the times that Kaye controls him and doesn’t realize what she orders. And, of course, Janet, the female childhood friend, is ultimately jealous and suspicious of Kaye over a boy, but Corny, the outcast gay boy, totally has her back. Of course, Corny gets the Creepy Bad Wrong Probably Abusive fae boyfriend, and Kaye gets the Mysterious Angsty Secretly Good fae boyfriend.

And yet, despite spending a chunk of the book wanting to yell at it for annoying tropes, I liked it, and want to read more! I like how Kaye’s relationships with her mother and grandmother are normally antagonistic but still essentially “good” relationships, instead of needlessly antagonistic or negative just to make Kaye’s homelife more difficult. But mostly, I think that, while I can’t stand the more popular romanticization of the Other because of how it so often ends up justifying the worst stereotypes when it comes to gender and relationships between the genders (not to mention Really Awkward Allegories), I just really like fiction that explores the concept of Other as strange and unpretty even when it’s appealing, and how romantic ideas of Other really aren’t romantic.