Book Review - The Child Thief

From Goodreads: 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" 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.

What I thought: The opening of The Child Thief captures you immediately.

 It would happen again tonight: the really bad thing. The girl had no doubt. It had started a few months ago, around the time her breasts had begun to develop, and now, with her mother gone, there was no one to stop him.
From her bedroom she could hear him…He was in one of his fits, muttering to himself, cursing the television, his boss, Jesus, but mostly cursing her mother for taking all those pills...There came the sharp snap of a beer tab, then another, and another. Her hands began to tremble and she clutched them to her chest. She wished she could fall asleep…but she knew there’d be no sleep for her tonight. 

 And you want her to be saved, wanted Peter to intervene and take her away to safety. And he does, but them Brom puts true fear into your heart.

The boy came and knelt beside her. While she cried into her hands, he told her of an enchanted island where no grown-ups were allowed. Where there were other kids like her, who loved to laugh and play. Where there were great adventures to be had…What else did she have to lose?…If the girl could only have spoken to the other boys and girls, the ones that had followed the golden-eyes boy before her, she would have known that there is always something left to lose. 

 Could where she is going possibly be worse than where she already is?

And thus the tone for the book is set - one minute Peter is a saviour, the next a devil. What of his own tortured past has lead him down this path?

Brom wrote this after reading the original J.M Barrie book - not the sanitised Disney version - of Peter Pan. The one in which Barrie writes:

The boys on the island vary, of course, in numbers, according as they get killed and so on; and when they seem to be growing up, which is against the rules, Peter thins them out.

"I forget them after I kill them" he (Peter) replied carelessly.

A lot darker than you remember? Yep, me too!

From this Brom leads us through a world that is magical, but with a darker side. Are the children who are there, there voluntarily or have they been brainwashed? And why is Avalon - the home of faeries and magical creatures slowly dying? What is the price of saving it?

The artwork in this is spectacular. You can check out more of it on Brom's homepage, but these would be two of my favourites.

The Child Thief is dark and horrifying. In the space of one page I would be disgusted by Peter and then feel a heart wrenching sadness for him. Brom has weaved a tale that I think is closer to Barrie's true vision of Peter Pan - a vision Disney and it's like have strived to keep out of sight. By using aspects of Welsh mythology, Brom has made the tale of Peter his own, setting it in a framework that allows it to fit seamlessly into today's world - a world with many lost children looking for love and acceptance in the wrong places.

Challenges: 13 in '13.

Pyramids

Title: Pyramids
Author: Terry Pratchett
Series: Discworld
Genre: Fantasy/ Comedy Fiction
Audience: Adult
Format: Kindle

From Goodreads: It's bad enough being new on the job, but Teppic hasn't a clue as to what a pharaoh is supposed to do. After all, he's been trained at Ankh-Morpork's famed assassins' school, across the sea from the Kingdom of the Sun. First, there's the monumental task of building a suitable resting place for Dad -- a pyramid to end all pyramids. Then there are the myriad administrative duties, such as dealing with mad priests, sacred crocodiles, and marching mummies. And to top it all off, the adolescent pharaoh discovers deceit, betrayal - not to mention a headstrong handmaiden - at the heart of his realm.

What I thought: Yep, another Pratchett! And to be honest, not one of my favourites. It took me a little while to get into this. Normally with Pratchett you can see where he is going, knowing he is not going to get there the way you think he will. In this, it seemed to take awhile to find the direction, but once he did, it picked up. Again, the every day is turned on it's head and given the Pratchett treatment of being ridiculed, twisted and generally laughed at. I'm also using this for my What's in a Name challenge for a type of house because the dead (undead??) pharaoh's lived (existed?) in them. Do you think I can get away with it??

Challenges: Ebook Challenge, What's in a Name Challenge

Mistborn Book One: The Final Empire

Mistborn Book One: The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson

First off, don't you just love the cover of this? I think it's fantastic. I'd frame it and hang it on my wall even!

This is our book group book for August.

From Goodreads:

For a thousand years the ash fell and no flowers bloomed. For a thousand years the Skaa slaved in misery and lived in fear. For a thousand years the Lord Ruler, the Sliver of Infinity, reigned with absolute power and ultimate terror, divinely invincible. Then, when hope was so long lost that not even its memory remained, a terribly scarred, heart-broken half-Skaa rediscovered it in the depths of the Lord Rulers most hellish prison. Kelsier snapped and found in himself the powers of a Mistborn. A brilliant thief and natural leader, he turned his talents to the ultimate caper, with the Lord Ruler himself as the mark. Kel's plan looks like the ultimate long shot, until luck brings a ragged girl named Vin into his life. Like him, she's a half-Skaa orphan, but she's lived a much harsher life. Vin has learned to expect betrayal from everyone she meets, and gotten it. She will have to learn to trust, if Kel is to help her master powers of which she never dreamed.

For me it was a bit slow to begin with, but it picked up speed and quickly became un-put-downable.  Sanderson has created a world and a story that would be so easy to turn into a movie - and apparently he has sold the rights. It has everything - betrayal, deception, romance, good v's evil.  I will definitely reading the other two.