31. Valiant by Holly Black (Young Adult Fantasy) 313 p.

Set in the same universe as Tithe, although it isn’t a sequel (that place is reserved for Ironside.) Instead, it introduces a new heroine. When Valerie is betrayed by the people she trusts, she runs away to New York City and falls in with a group of teens who live an abandoned part of the subway system. Through them, she meets and becomes indebted to a troll; one who is luckily as honourable as he is ugly.

This book is, if anything, even darker than Tithe. Val’s new friends are very screwed up, as is Val herself. You watch her digging herself deeper, consoling herself that at least she’s making her own choices, even if they’re bad ones, and just want to shake her.

As well as Val’s personal problems, there are also a series of murders for her to contend with. The troll, and by extension Val and her friends, who have acted as his couriers, are suspected of poisoning some of the medicine he makes for fellow faeries.

I liked this book, but not as much as Tithe. I’m not a fan of drugs, alcohol, or smoking, and I don’t really like reading stories that talk about people using or abusing them. Just a personal thing—her writing about addiction was totally appropriate for the story she was telling, and she did it with tremendous skill. I still enjoyed the book, because she’s a very good storyteller.

Valiant truly felt like an urban fairy tale to me. Val and her friends lead a strange, half-magical, half-terrible existence on the margins of life in New York, and there a few things near the end of the book that cemented the impression for me (namely, the harp strung with hair and the business of the heart.) The atmosphere was perfect, recalling the original reputation of fairies as malicious creatures who often tormented humans for revenge or for sport.

Pages read: 9,141

Tags: 50 Book Challenge 2008, 888 Challenge, A ~ Z Reading Challenge, Holly Black, Modern Faerie Tale