Book description
When seventeen-year-old Valerie Russell runs away to New York City,
she's trying to escape a life that has utterly betrayed her. Sporting a
new identity, she takes up with a gang of squatters who live in the
city's labyrinthine subway system.
But there's something eerily beguiling about Val's new friends.
Impulsive Lolli talks of monsters in the subway tunnels they call home
and shoots up a shimmery amber-colored powder that makes the shadows
around her dance. Severe Luis claims he can make deals with creatures
that no one else can see. And then there's Luis's brother, timid and
sensitive Dave, who makes the mistake of letting Val tag along as he
makes a delivery to a woman who turns out to have goat hooves instead
of feet.
When a bewildered Val allows Lolli to talk her into tracking down
the hidden lair of the creature for whom Luis and Dave have been
dealing, Val finds herself bound into service by a troll named Ravus.
He is as hideous as he is honorable. And as Val grows to know him, she
finds herself torn between her affection for an honorable monster and
her fear of what her new friends are becoming.
Bestselling author Holly Black follows her breakout debut,
Tithe, with a rich, harrowing, and compulsively readable
parable of betrayal, abuse, friendship, and love.
"This is a powerful book.... I love it when a
girl learns how to be Valiant."
-- Tamora Pierce, author of the Immortals and Song of the
Lioness quartets
Holly Black is the author of The Curse Workers
series: White Cat, Red Glove, and Black Heart;
The Poison Eaters: And Other Stories; and the Modern Faerie
Tales: Tithe, Valiant, and Ironside. She is an
editor of Zombies vs. Unicorns, and she collaborated with Tony
DiTerlizzi on the bestselling Spiderwick series. Holly lives in
Amherst, Massachusetts, and you can visit her at BlackHolly. com.
