Peter is quick, daring, and full of mischief—and like all boys, he loves to play, though his games often end in blood. His eyes are sparkling gold, and when he graces you with his smile you are his friend for life. He appears to lonely, lost children—the broken, hopeless, and sexually abused—promising to take them to a secret place of great adventure, where magic is alive, and you never grow old. But his promised land is not Neverland. . . .With this haunting, provocative, relentlessly thrilling reconsideration of a timeless children's classic, the acclaimed artist Brom dramatically displays another side of his extraordinary talent. Exploring the stygian blackness that gathers at the root of the beloved Peter Pan legend, he carries readers into a faerieland at once magically wondrous and deeply disturbing.Fourteen-year-old Nick would be lying dead in a Brooklyn park—murdered by drug dealers—had Peter not sprung out of the …
Peter is quick, daring, and full of mischief—and like all boys, he loves to play, though his games often end in blood. His eyes are sparkling gold, and when he graces you with his smile you are his friend for life. He appears to lonely, lost children—the broken, hopeless, and sexually abused—promising to take them to a secret place of great adventure, where magic is alive, and you never grow old. But his promised land is not Neverland. . . .With this haunting, provocative, relentlessly thrilling reconsideration of a timeless children's classic, the acclaimed artist Brom dramatically displays another side of his extraordinary talent. Exploring the stygian blackness that gathers at the root of the beloved Peter Pan legend, he carries readers into a faerieland at once magically wondrous and deeply disturbing.Fourteen-year-old Nick would be lying dead in a Brooklyn park—murdered by drug dealers—had Peter not sprung out of the trees to save him. Now the irresistibly charismatic wild boy wants Nick to follow him into a strange and unsettling mist swirling around the bay. Even though he is wary of Peter's crazy talk of faeries and monsters, Nick agrees. After all, nowhere in New York City is safe for him now. And what more can he possibly lose?There is always more to lose.Accompanying Peter to a gray and ravished island that was once a lush, enchanted paradise, Nick finds himself unwittingly recruited for a war that has raged for centuries. He must learn to fight or die as he struggles to fit in with the "Devils"—Peter's savage tribe of lost and stolen children.Here, Peter's dark past is revealed: left to wolves as an infant, despised, tormented, and hunted, Peter moves between the worlds of faerie and man, struggling to understand what he is and where he belongs. The Child Thief is a leader of bloodthirsty children, a brave friend, and a creature driven to do whatever he must to kill the dreaded Captain and stop his murderous crew of "Flesh-eaters" before they blight every trace of magic left in this dying land.Beautifully illustrated by the author with haunting portraits and indelible images, Brom's The Child Thief is a daring novel of darkest contemporary fantasy that will, at once, haunt and exhilarate any reader who agrees to follow Peter on his desperate crusade.
Though gory and brutal, this was definitely written in a YA dialect, and at times comes across as a little too blunt and simplistic. Nevertheless, I ended up enjoying it, for its ruthless slaughtering of expectations as much as anything else. A friend's review on this book stated that it kept her guessing throughout, and I had the same experience. There are some plot points that become pretty obvious early on, while others surprised me because while they were possibilities from the start, you rarely expect an author to strike out to destroy everything they've asked the reader to love. Likewise, some of the imagery you end up with... Quite interesting.
I admit that I approached this book with trepidation. In the past, I have encountered a number of attempts to retell the Peter Pan story, most of them spectacularly bad. Add in the fact that the author only goes by a single name, and alarm bells begin to ring.
I was pleasantly surprised. What I found was a dark, tense and well written piece of fiction that successfully reinvents Peter Pan, while still holding true to the core elements of the original. Brom doesn't cheat. Peter is an unpredictable and violent figure, who is clearly borderline insane. However, Brom also demonstrates quite clearly that Peter is a pawn of greater forces, and the enemy that he is being pitted against is truly horrifying. With this in mind, you might almost forgive him for stealing the abused children of the world in order to serve as infantry in the battle, but …
I admit that I approached this book with trepidation. In the past, I have encountered a number of attempts to retell the Peter Pan story, most of them spectacularly bad. Add in the fact that the author only goes by a single name, and alarm bells begin to ring.
I was pleasantly surprised. What I found was a dark, tense and well written piece of fiction that successfully reinvents Peter Pan, while still holding true to the core elements of the original. Brom doesn't cheat. Peter is an unpredictable and violent figure, who is clearly borderline insane. However, Brom also demonstrates quite clearly that Peter is a pawn of greater forces, and the enemy that he is being pitted against is truly horrifying. With this in mind, you might almost forgive him for stealing the abused children of the world in order to serve as infantry in the battle, but the author rightly refuses to let Peter off that easy. You are confronted with the terror the children feel, and that is what makes this novel work.
And if that wasn't enough, it comes in a beautiful hardcover edition with artwork from the artist himself. It's definitely worth a read, so if you hear the same alarm bells I did, cover you ears. This book is worth it.
