The Child Thief: A Novel

There are a whole host of mythologies and faerie tales at play here. My first thought was that this was a dark retelling of Peter Pan, which is not all that far off the mark. This is a twisted gory ode to Peter Pan and Avalon and other faerie stories. If you really think about Peter Pan, even the Disney version, he's basically I child predator--a kidnapper. Then if you think on the original, non-watered down version, Peter is pretty cruel, he kidnaps children and sends them to war against his enemies. His lost boys are frequently killed in battle, or put out to pasture if they begin to "grow up". That's really messed up!

All that being said, Peter, is a child thief who tricks runaways, or kids from bad situations into following him into show more the mists of Avalon. And if they manage to make it through the mist, they're trained as soldiers in his personal army. Everything Peter does is for the Lady Modron and to protect Avalon, but it all comes at a cost. The child thief has lead countless children to the deaths.

This story had loads of deaths, battles, magic and just general craziness. All-in-all I really enjoyed it. show less

Amazing retelling of Peter Pan. All the classic elements of the story of Peter Pan and the Lost Boys are there and yet... there is so much more. Peter is a very complete and complex character. If you looked at the story objectively, you would say Peter is a sociopath but that would be too easy. The story and the character are too rich and complex. Not only Peter, but also the lost boys and all the other characters in this story. Even the bad ones...
I loved it, and you will too.

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: 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, but his promised land is not Neverland.

Fourteen-year-old Nick would have been murdered by the drug dealers preying on his family had Peter not saved him. Now the irresistibly charismatic wild boy wants Nick to follow him to a secret place of great adventure, where magic is alive and you never grow old. Even though he is wary of Peter's crazy talk of faeries and monsters, Nick agrees. After all, New York City is no longer safe for him, and what more could he possibly lose?

There is always show more 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—one where he must learn to fight or die among the "Devils," Peter's savage tribe of lost and stolen children.

There, Peter's dark past is revealed: left to wolves as an infant, despised and hunted, Peter moves restlessly between the worlds of faerie and man. The Child Thief is a leader of bloodthirsty children, a brave friend, and a creature driven to do whatever he must to stop the "Flesh-eaters" and save the last, wild magic in this dying land.

My Review: Retelling the Peter Pan legend with heaping helpings of Celtic myth, genuine teenage angst, and surprisingly scary-to-me horror. I think the huge majority of people remember the basics of the story, Peter enticing kids off to Neverland to fight Captain Hook and never, ever grow up, right? Well, same here, only Neverland is one emm-effin' SCARY-ASS place, the kids are society's fallen-through-the-cracks abusees, runaways, and misfits, and the reason they never grow up is they mostly die in their first few minutes there.

Peter himself, the Happy Sociopath, well, his backstory is one of the revelations of the book...he's a changeling child, an apparently immortal and certainly immoral survivor of pagan Ireland. The author delved deeply into the Celtic myths, and has gifted us with a reconstruction of the actual, underlying story, trimmed of repetition, variations among the versions smoothed out, selectively applied, and a new, vibrant, and compelling tale made from the old, raggedy myths.

It's superb. It's 480pp long. It's *beautifully* illustrated. It's enormous, at 7 x 10. I adore it, book and content both. No one may borrow my copy, a gift from a ridiculously generous friend, because if a corner gets bent or a page gets food-baptized, There Will Be Blood.

I wasn't much of a child. I thought about stuff kids just don't, like why it was okay for girls to have different names after they got married, but not boys; why the Bible said it was okay to fuck your daughters like Lot did, but not other boys; and that all those yahoos clappin' for Tinkerbelle, clearly the *lamest* fairy ever in the history of fairies, should oughta just go straight to the milk and cookies and leave me alone with the gin. Disney shit made me gaseous, as I said to my mother, who paused, laughed, and never inflicted anything Disney on me again. So it was with great and well-founded trepidation that, after reading a gushsome review of this book, I decided to move out of my comfort zone and give it a whirl.

Oh my heck.

I had to put it down every so often because the pain in my gouty wrists and fingers got so nasty, and no book-holding device I possess was up to this tome's heft (lost that Levenger reading desk, dammit!). And a darn good thing, too, since I was rather often scared poopless by some action or another. It's a real story, this Child Thief...a real, balls-out, the-world's-a-meanass-place Matterhorn of a journey, made in excellent company and told in truthsome, sparklingly grim prose.

I want Tim Burton to make this mini-series, starring Johnny Depp as Peter, don't care how old he is he's the *perfect* beautiful sociopath with no fear for scare...animate it, do the thing they did with The Polar Express whatever that's called, and BTW that's one of the all-time great Xmas stories isn't it?, but let's get this fucker made (to quote Bela Lugosi from Ed Wood, another Depp masterpiece) and not shilly-shally!

In case you can't tell, this book is Recommended with Joy.


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. show less

After reading Slewfoot and the Child Thief, I think I have found a new favorite author!! Brom kept me on my toes, anxiously anticipating each page. I thought I knew where this book was going, and it kept taking me for a new turn! All while continuing to build believable, lovable characters and palpable conflict in a gritty fantasy world not unlike our own. I also appreciate how much Brom borrowed from Scottish folklore!

I loved this! Never been a big fan of Peter Pan but this is a highly entertaining, well written modern-day-meets-original-gruesome-fairy-tale. Darkly beautiful story telling, entertaining players with good character development and excellent imagery. Modern day fantasy that ends up only loosely resembling the Peter Pan most of us think of. I especially like the fact that almost every character displays multiple levels, no one is just good or bad, rather complex and complicated. There’s plenty of action revolving around all manner of relationships between fantastical beings, human and other. I would suggest this book to anyone who likes fantasy set in (or rather loosely surrounded by) a modern world, regardless of your opinion on show more either Peter Pan or fairy tales in general. I would also recommend this to anyone who likes/loves [b:The Book of Lost Things|69136|The Book of Lost Things|John Connolly|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1388253367s/69136.jpg|1164024] by [a:John Connolly|38951|John Connolly|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1201288913p2/38951.jpg] (which I do!). High recommendation!! show less

4.5 stars

“If you don't learn to laugh at life it'll surely kill you, that I know.”

Was a group read with Novel Books and Reading Challenges

The most curious question is, how could I have not heard about this book before it was announced as a group read? Apparently it's well liked, artful, tastefully twisted, a modern day play on the old lore of Peter Pan (which I already find fascinating). It's almost a criminal shame this hadn't hit my radar until recently.

It's clear to see from the blurb and diving into the first chapter that this is not a childlike, glorified version of Peter Pan, some fun recapturing of youth for the grownup folks. The author explains in the afterword the inspiration of this telling, that unspoken suggestions in show more the original tale gave him pause and morbid inspiration. This was especially true when he mentally finished the lines Pan spoke in the original fairy tale, that once kids reached a certain age he didn't 'keep them anymore.' What did this mean, the author wondered? Since they couldn't return home, what happened to the boys when they aged? He wondered if Peter actually killed them or something else bizarre, and an idea was born for this story.

This definitely isn't just a retelling and re-imagining of the fairy tale - it only takes bare inspiration and the original heart of the story, but gives it entirely new life. There's a complicated world invented that makes Neverland seem tiny, an expansion of the politics that wage wars in the land and with its various peoples. A queen, betrayers, enemies among families, witches, and of course Peter and 'lost children.'

Immediately I was sucked into the beginning. Finding children in the middle of their reality hells, then convincing them to follow their savior into the fog and new land? The opening was a girl with a sadistic father. You couldn't help but cheer Peter on as he wreaked vengeance and had a mischievous mind. Fascinating lead ups to the actual land they're going to. And that dark walk...creepy. It reminded me of the dark bridge in Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman. They were quite similar, for if you paid attention to sounds and things that touched you in the darkness, you could be lost forever in the dark and with whatever was out there waiting.

Peter is no villain, but neither is he a hero. There does exist a certain type of hero, but he is not in black or white. The obsessing with 'the Lady' shows that Peter himself falls prey to the same thing that draws in and consoles children everywhere, the yearning to be loved by another and felt to be the center of their world. All the children stand on their own feet as unique beacons of intriguing characterization. Adults are shown to be feared for good reason, but for the children it can be said the same.

Captain Hook gets a makeover also, absorbed into a town of demented, puritanical paranoia where the wand of evil is waved by the detestable Reverend. Creepy guy!

Brom's writing style comes across beautifully seductive. I can still hear the three demented sisters singing and picture the hidden world hiding and waiting over the water.

The Child Thief brings us back a beloved fairy tale but not only transforms it for an adult audience, it digs deeper into the original wording and symbolism. Brom's artwork suits it, deepening the depth of a story which was already buried beneath mounds of flourishing creativity . I can't recommend the story highly enough for fans of dark fantasy.

“Don't let them win. Don't let them beat you. Don't let them steal your magic.” show less

I love the idea of faeries as mischievous, cunning beings, who are so much older and more weary than humans that they don't give a crap about any one of them in particular. And Brom does this as well as anybody I've read. Even though Peter "rescues" these children from awful situations and almost certainly saves their lives (if not their sanity), he does it for personal gain, not out of concern.

While it was a little tough at times to follow the flashbacks (sometimes I was confused as to whether or not the action was happening in the present day or in Peter's past), the interweaving of Peter's story and Nick's was well done, tantalizing the reader with the mystery of the dying magic and the Flesh-Eaters (I though The Change was what made show more people into Flesh-Eaters, and so Peter was responsible for Avalon's own destruction, which would have been poetic...).

But what Brom really excels at is making Peter in turns terrifying and beguiling. It makes total sense that these children would follow their fierce, bloodthirsty and protective god to the death, and even more sense that Peter wouldn't care about them beyond what they can do for him. But it feels true to his character that, when Nick calls him out on it, he begins to reflect and change. show less