By Holly Black
Paperbacks
Tithe
Published (first published October 1st 2002)
ISBN 0606300740 (ISBN13: 9780606300742)
Valiant
Published May 1st 2006 by Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing (first published May 31st 2005)
ISBN 0689868235 (ISBN13: 9780689868238)
Ironside
Published April 24th 2007 by Margaret K. McElderry
ISBN 0689868200 (ISBN13: 9780689868207)


The Good

  1. The darkness.  When I started these, I thought from reading Holly Black’s Vladimir Todd series that, although they claimed to be ‘scary faerie tales,’ they would be mostly YA fluff. I was wrong. Black isn’t afraid to kill off characters the readers become attached to in heartless, unforgivable ways. The mashups of traditional faerie tale characters are also fantastic—much truer to the darkness of the original tales than anything you’d see in a Disney movie, which I LOVED.

  2. The honesty.  Going along with the darkness part, there was a lot of action/drama in these books, but oddly enough I never felt like I was reading a soap opera. Everything the characters did felt genuine and realistic. In the real world, people die, and it isn’t usually romantic or pretty or noble. Often it’s for no damn good reason at all. Things don’t always work out all nice in the end. Many YA books I’ve read glorify death, which I think sends the wrong message to teens. These books were not like that, and I really appreciated and respected it.

  3. The pace.  Each book was almost identical in length—a little over 300 pages—so each one went pretty quickly. But even if the books themselves had contained more pages, it was the fast pace that made the stories so ‘compulsively readable’ (as the book jacket so nicely states). There wasn’t any down time. At no point did I want to shake the main characters and tell them to get their butts in gear and DO something. Everything flowed rather nicely together and the three books fit together rather well.


The Bad

  1. The writing.  These books are by far my favorite of all Black’s material I have read so far. That being said, I like my prose to be a little more poetic in nature. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with the way Black writes, just a personal preference on my part.


Favorite Quotes

Tithe
"Crippled things are always more beautiful. It’s the flaw that brings out beauty."


Valiant
"I like all the things that make you monstrous."


Ironside
"I thought you were her knight, but you have become only her woodsman—taking little girls into the forest to cut out their hearts."


Overall Series Rating


Side Note

My favorite in the series was by far the second book, Valiant. Troll love! :)