Product Description

Do you believe in faeries? Not the soft, gentle kind, but the sinister, feral kind - the ones that wreak havoc on everything in their path...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 them back to her childhood home. To the place where she used to see Faeries. They're still there. But Kaye's not a child anymore. This time she's dragged into the thick of their dangerous, frightening world. A realm where black horses dwell beneath the sea, desperate to drown you...where the sinister Thistlewitch divines dark futures...and where beautiful faerie knights are driven to perform acts of brutal depravity for the love of their uncaring queens. Once there, Kaye finds herself an unwilling pawn in an ancient power struggle between two rival faerie kingdoms - a struggle that could end in her death...

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #21112 in Books
• Published on: 2004-02-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

About the Author
Holly Black spent her early years in a decaying Victorian mansion where her mother fed her a steady diet of ghost stories and faerie tales. An avid collector of rare folklore volumes, spooky dolls, and crazy hats, she lives in West Long Branch, New Jersey, with her husband, Theo. Together with illustrator Tony DiTerlizzi, she is the creator of the bestselling Spiderwick Chronicles series of children's books. For more information, visit www.blackholly.com.

Customer Reviews

Beautiful Imagery, Beautiful in General
I think the most wonderful thing about this book is the picture that Holly Black paints in your mind's eye. It's so easy to see the faries and their queens, their courts and the magic that Kaye comes into contact with, but it is also easy to see the rotting seaside town, the old house of Kaye's grandmother, and everything about the teenagers that make up this novel. The teens are perfectly portrayed; their speech, their mannerisms, their dress sense, references to sex and eating disorders, and girly fall-outs over guys. There are raves and parties, not least at the beginning with Kaye's rockstar mother. And then, through all the beauty and realism of the decaying world around Kaye, we are dragged into the world of the faries...but, again, for all it's beauty, it's just another grim world.

It's a fantastic read that works so well, and is a marvellous read.

One of the Best Faerie Tales I've Read
I discovered this book when I was a freshman in high school. I checked it out at the same time as I checked out Francesca Lia Block's I Was A Teenage Fairy, also a book and author I would recommend highly.

Not only did I love the seamless flow of the story and the author's easy diction, I adored the similes that run rampant in this book. My personal favorite is when Kaye says, at sunset, that the sun looks like it slit its wrists and is bleeding orange all over the ocean. I mean, wow. A writer myself, I have a healthy respect for good description.

Though Black uses the same simile format throughout the novel, the images she draws have stuck with me. As a senior, after checking out the book numerous times over the years, I finally bought it and reread it (again), not putting it down until it was complete... at 4 o'clock in the morning. :-P

I have long been a fan of urban fantasy, but this is the best example I have come across. It has drugs, rock and roll, a pleasantly evil Faerie Queen, and a tall, handsome, mysterious stranger (Roiben of the White Hair... just read the book, you'll understand and be as jealous of Kaye as I am)... all in all, an amazing read that will grab you when you're not expecting it and leave you hungry for more at the end. (Don't worry, a sequal comes out this summer and I can't wait!)

I would highly recommend this novel to anyone who likes quality writing and an interesting twist on an antient tradition amongst the fey. The only way to truly appreciate the magic and beauty of this amazing book is to read it for yourself, so go to a library and check it out, you silly, silly mortals!

Dark and gripping and lots of fun.
If you want a fluffy faerie romance where everyone is sugary-nice and from a respectable background, where the goodies are good and the baddies are evil, and teens never ever say the f-word - this book won't be for you. Kaye's a messed-up kid who's had a tough life and often does stupid things, and the faerie world she stumbles into is harsh and cruel and violently capricious. But it's also weirdly beautiful and compelling, and so is Roiben, the faerie knight who Kaye gets tangled up with.

Holly has a fabulous sense of language, and there's some really interesting imagery in the book. The plot skips around some and it's a bit sloppy in parts, but this is her first YA novel, and if she's this good now, she can only get better. Looking forward to the sequel.