Oh, brother. Hated hated HATED this book. This guy "re-imagined" Peter Pan? More like barely got away with plagiarizing it and then completely destroyed the spirit of the story. He just re-named the characters and places with extremely obvious parallel names. Captain Hack? Gwenny? The Bully Boys? Pixies? He just opened his thesaurus and went from there. That's why I have a hard time calling this a "re-imagination." Call it what it is: theft.That wasn't the only issue I had with this one. Here's a list of some of the others:- He glossed over some of the most interesting characters in the whole piece (like the Irishman and shopowner in the beginning).- He implied Peter Pan and Tigerlily were having sex, a rather grown-up thing to do for someone who refuses to grow up.- Author intrusion can be welcome in small doses to make you feel like the author is sitting there telling you the story, but for the first half of the book, at least, it was on practically every page, and it just induced more eye-rolls from me than delighted smiles.- The second half of the book wasn't exempt from author intrusion, either, except in this case, it was thrown in hastily in large portions. It's as if the author was like, "Oh, right, I'm writing author intrusion stylistically, and I haven't done that in a while, so DUMP DUMP DUMP." If you're going to try a specific style, you have to keep it consistent.- He slaps you across the face with the moral of the story without letting you figure it out for yourself. I hate it when authors shout, "THIS IS WHAT I WANT YOU TO LEARN FROM THIS." Absolutely hate it.- Some of the writing was so poorly constructed from a technical aspect, I don't know how it got past the editors. Yet some of it was beautifully written. Again, be consistent with your style. Or get better editors.A few positive things, though. I enjoyed Paul's character development. Most people think of going to Neverland (or "Anyplace" *rolls eyes*) to escape growing up, but in Paul's case, he grew from a childish boy into a mature young man. And as clunky as SOME of the writing was, there was some beautiful passages, too.But the instances in which the writing was beautiful won't save this book from getting chucked into the Goodwill donation basket. I really couldn’t shake the feeling that the book was like a cheap imitation of Peter Pan. You know those knock off movies you can buy for $5 at Walmart? ['The Lion Prince' instead of "The Lion King"] That’s what this feels like. The names of things have been changed but it’s still pretty much Peter Pan. You could easily pick out the Peter Pan elements. Tinker Bell becomes Fiddlefix, Wendy becomes Gwenny, Hook becomes Hack, and so on. I think the author is trying to imitate Barrie’s voice. From what I remember Barrie spoke to the reader and tried to involve them. This author is not doing it well. But then again I really get annoyed when narrators try to have “conversations” with the readers. I don’t need side stories or the narrator’s thoughts on issues. JUST TELL THE STORY. The narrator felt even odder because this is marketed/labeled as an adult book. I could kind of understand this type of narrator in a children’s book. [Side note: from what I could tell this book would be appropriate for kids. Nothing too bad, just a bit long] I do have to say that I thought it was pretty cool that The Boy (Peter Pan) isn’t who we think he is. He’s not caring, he’s quite selfish, he’s not concerned about anyone else’s well-being, he forgets about anything to do with others quickly. He’s really not the hero that we’ve seen before. I don’t know if this would make him a “typical” boy but it’s really not what you’d expect. Paul ends up being more of a hero. He’s much more like the Peter we think of. I found the action and the story to be pretty dull. The story should be fun and exciting! What’s not to like about adventures and Pirates? Unfortunately it didn’t work out because I found myself skimming over quite a bit of the action because I didn’t like it and couldn’t force myself to care. The bottom line? Interesting idea but it didn’t work out for me at all.
What do You think about Tigerheart (2008)?
Sweet, charming, treads as close as possible to the overly precious line without going over.
—rhobaugh
Very sweet and whimsical! Felt like a little kid again
—asd05593
