 Okay, so today we're doing another patron-requested review. It's The Child Thief. And I'm actually glad that a patron requested this of me, because I have never heard of this before. I likely never would have come across this, or even the author. But I really enjoyed it. This is the introduction song. It's not very good, but it's not too long. The simplest way to describe the concept of The Child Thief is that it is a dark, modern retelling of the story of Peter Pan. Although, if you read the original Peter Pan book, that's already pretty dark. It's just that most people are familiar with the more Disney-fied adaptations of it, so people don't really think of it as being a dark story with a bunch of death and children dying and stuff when the original really did have that. But that said, yeah, the Child Thief came out around that time where modern retellings of fairy tales were starting to become bigger. It was around that time that Beastly came out, and the Once Upon a Time TV show, that sort of thing was happening. So you might be thinking from that that this would be kind of in that same category, but not really. It is kind of its own thing. And in fact, they changed so much from the original story that it doesn't really feel like a dark version of Peter Pan, where it's just like, oh, it's the same thing, but edgier. It feels more like a story that was inspired by Peter Pan. And that's not a bad thing. Like I said, I really enjoyed it. But it is, they change enough that you can definitely see the parallels, like you can see, okay, so these are supposed to be like The Lost Boys, and this is supposed to be like Neverland, this is supposed to be Captain Hook and all that. But as I said, it feels more inspired by Peter Pan than just a remake of it. And I think that's good because that makes it harder to tell where the story is going to go. So just like in the original story, it's about Peter Pan, who is this kid, but he's actually hundreds of years old. He's magical, or lives in a magic place, that sort of thing. And he lives off in this magical land, which in this book it's called Avalon instead of Neverland, I'm not sure why. And he comes to our world and finds kids that are being abused or neglected out on the streets, something like that, and he takes them over to Avalon, but he's not doing it for charitable reasons. He's doing it because he needs them as soldiers to fight some sort of threat that's in Avalon. And actually the prologue shows this off pretty well, like this shit gets dark. Like if you're expecting this to be light-hearted, I'm not going to go into detail about it, but like the sorts of child abuse and stuff that they talk about in this, it goes hard. So if you're expecting this to be just relatively light-hearted, no it's really not. And then enter the main character, this kid named Nick, who basically his house has been taken over by drug dealers and so he just decides, fuck it, I'm running away, I'm leaving, I'm gone. And then he gets into a lot of trouble, he runs into Peter Pan, and Peter takes him over to Avalon and he's like, okay, I guess this is my life now. And from there the book is kind of split between two different storylines basically. There's the flashback storyline, which just shows Peter Pan's backstory, which is kind of interesting. And then the modern day stuff with Nick and the rest of the Lost Boys. Although in this they're called the devils, I don't really know why they changed the name, I guess it's because there are girls there as well, but I don't know where. It's Nick and the Lost Boys fighting against this threat called the flesh-eaters, who we don't know much about them at the beginning, so I'm not going to go into too much detail about them, but you know, they're these creature man animal things, and they're led by this mysterious figure that they just call the captain, who, not hard to figure out who that's supposed to be an XB of. And so it's kind of split between those two things. And that's really my only big problem with the books. Like I have a couple of small problems, but my only big one is that it splits its focus between those two things a little too much, and so what we wind up getting is a book that's simultaneously too long and too short. I know it's a little confusing, but let me explain. So a pretty big chunk of this book is taken up just with Peter Pan's backstory, and it goes into a lot of detail, but not as much as it probably could go into. Like if it really wanted to explore all the crazy stuff that Avalon has to offer and all the crazy stuff that Peter Pan has done over the past couple of centuries, then it could probably have been expanded into its own book. Like you could easily make a prequel novel about that, and then just have the child thief be just the modern day stuff, and that would be fine. And you could also just have it be more of a vague flashback. Like you could just have it be, okay, it's more of a myth than anything. It's a legend. We don't know all that much about it. We don't have that many details, but we get little snippets of like, oh, Peter Pan was born to a forest spirit, and this crazy stuff happened, and this happened, and this is why Avalon is hidden away from the rest of the world. You know, that sort of thing, and we just get a couple of little details like that, and that would also be okay. And that would leave more time to focus on the modern day stuff, because the modern day stuff, Nick is only in Avalon for like a week, I think, but the story kind of treats it as though he's there for months or years. Like he's going around with all the other devils, and he's thinking, yes, these are my comrades, and they're all thinking, yes, he's our comrade, that sort of thing. And it also brings up a bunch that we don't really get to know that much, because we get to know around four or five of them pretty well besides Nick, but then it occasionally will name other ones, and it treats it as though we should know them pretty well, and we really don't. So when, you know, if bad things happen to them, we just sort of feel, oh, that sucks, but like, alright, whatever. And so if I had to choose something, I would say leave the flashbacks as more vague and mythical, and then spend more time in the present, because I think had we done that, we would have had a stronger character cast, especially with the villains, because the villains don't really do a whole lot until like the last third of the story, but once they do, they're pretty good villains. But yeah, I think we could have spent more time with the characters, had a more solid cast if that was the case, and also we'd have better pacing, because the first third of this book is pretty fast-paced, and there's always stuff going on, and I didn't really mind when it veered off into different directions that much, because it was always interesting. And then the last, not quite half, like the last 40% of the book, let's say, is also really good, because that's when the real story really gets going. But then that bit in the middle drags a bit, and it feels like it goes in circles at a few points, because it needs to switch back and forth between the flashbacks and the modern day, so some of the stuff that happens in modern day just feels repetitive, and I wasn't a fan of that, but I mean, I really have read worse in that regard. Other than that, like I said, I got no big problems. I love the character cast. I loved Nick. You can really feel why he wound up doing this, and he has a lot of moral conundrums over the course of the story, and you can feel like, man, he did not want to be in this situation, but he's here now, and he's just trying to make the best of it, and he's making new friends, and just, you know, he's settling into his new life, and I think that's a really good idea, at the very least, and it is really neat to see it. I just wish, you know, again, it had been longer. And then Peter Pan is also a really fascinating character, because I kind of wish we hadn't gotten quite as much time in his head as we do, because if we're just watching his actions from the outside, then it's kind of ambiguous as to whether he's really a good person or a bad one, and it winds up being somewhere more in the middle. At least that's my interpretation of it, like other people might come away with him feeling as though he's totally evil or something like that, but, you know, either way, the fact that there is room for interpretation makes him a very fascinating character to watch, and I mean, I really enjoy doing that. And then the rest of the devils, like I said, we only get to know a couple of them, but they all have their own personalities, they all have their own interesting reasons for being in this situation, and even the ones that are kind of dicks are dicks in an interesting way, you know? In fact, I would say pretty much every character in this book is at least a little bit interesting. Like, they have actual personality and they feel like an actual person, and that includes the villains as well. Like I said, there is the captain. There's another guy who works with the captain named the Reverend, and then there's this... I don't want to give too much away, but basically he's a leader of some of the magical creatures in Avalon, and just... Oh man, they're all pretty good except for the leader of the creatures in Avalon. We'll get to him in the spoiler section, don't worry, but basically the other two villains at least have very real reason for doing what they're doing, and once you see their side of it, you're like, oh, okay, I kind of understand. I'm not saying you're right, but I'm saying I get it. And so that's always a good thing to have with villains. And plus, they are, you know, very powerful, and they're going up against these kids who are, frankly, in way over their heads, so they work pretty well as villains on both levels. I also just love the way that this is written. You know, the prose of it is fantastic. The way it describes the scenery is amazing. It's a cliché, but I felt like I was there. You know, and all the kids have sort of different ways of talking, and they all have their own unique appearances, so even when it's just describing what they look like, I can immediately in my head go, oh yeah, that's a red bone, or that's Sakeu, that sort of thing. And when the fight scenes start up, man, shit. This book is really violent as well. Like, it's dark in other ways, but it's especially violent. People get heads chopped off, limbs chopped off, completely impaled by weapons. It's pretty bad at times. But I will say that it feels a little awkward that the narrator seems to feel the need to push a certain morality on us. I don't mean that in the sense that it's moralizing like, ooh, drugs are bad or anything like that. I mean, in the sense that it treats some characters as being worse than they really are and it treats other characters as being better than they really are. Like Nick, for example, for a big chunk of the story, it treats him as being a worse person than I think he is, because they sort of say it as like, oh, he abandoned his mother when really like, what was he supposed to do? He was going to get killed if he stayed. So the other characters and the narrator and the story itself really kind of treating him like he's an awful person just feels stupid to me. And there's a few other little bits like that, which I didn't like very much, but for the most part, the actual writing of this is genuinely phenomenal. And once we get to the climax, things are great. There's actually kind of two climaxes in this, which is a little odd, because like I was reading and it got to a point where it felt like, oh, okay, that was the big battle. The big battle's over. But then there was still a while to go, so I was like, okay, let's see what happens. There's kind of another climax and it's a little odd. I'll admit I wish that the first one had been the end, but I'm not going to complain too hard. So yeah, okay, whatever, it's not that big a deal. Okay, so that's pretty much all I have to say for the non-spoiler section. Do I recommend this? I think if you're looking for dark fairy tale sort of thing, then yes, I would recommend this. And if you're not looking for a dark fairy tale, then I would, I don't know, maybe if you're looking for some sort of just regular dark fantasy adventure type deal, because I'm always in the mood for one of those. And this one, like I said, it's different enough from the original story of Peter Pan that it feels very much like its own thing. So it's not just retreading ground except, oh, it's darker and edgier. It really is a genuinely good book. I couldn't quite bring myself to you at Five Stars on Goodreads, mostly just because of that one pacing issue I mentioned earlier, overall really, really good book, and I think if you're at all interested in the premise, then you'll fucking love it. Okay, so spoiler section. Now, this one I kind of have to talk about how Ulfger is not a very good villain. So the leader of a bunch of the other magical creatures on Avalon is named Ulfger. And as it's revealed in the backstory, he and Peter Pan don't really like each other. It turns out they're actually half-brothers, I don't know, the end of the story kind of treats that as though it's a twist, but I could see it coming based on stuff in the flashbacks much earlier, but okay, whatever. And anyways, him and Peter Pan don't really get along, and so they can't really unite against the flesh-eaters who are basically just humans that got trapped on Avalon, and they just want to go home, and neither side is really talking to each other, and it's made clear that if they had done that, then the flesh-eaters could have just gone away and left Avalon to its own devices and no one would have had to die. But anyways, Ulfger and Peter Pan, had they been able to work together, they probably could have just smashed the flesh-eaters without too much trouble. But Ulfger is like, you know, jealous of him, and he feels, no, I need to be in charge. I can't share power with anyone, that sort of thing. And so he is the one of the villains that even though I understood where he was coming from, he was kind of, he's the only one that was kind of boring. But I could work with that if he was just a rival character, is the thing. But near the, right before the climax, Ulfger basically tricks the devils into running into an ambush and a bunch of them getting killed by the flesh-eaters and a bunch more getting captured. Like he specifically leads them off to get them killed, and man, at that point, he stopped being even an okay character that I could work with. Because like I said, as a rival character, someone who's just really stubborn and kind of a dumbass works, but once he turns into a villain, he just becomes too stupid and I can't really, I can't work with it anymore. He's not interesting anymore. And it's even worse when you realize that like, things would have been okay, or maybe not necessarily okay, but things would have gone a lot better had he not done that, which makes it feel like the flesh-eaters only had so much success because they got lucky. Like they didn't even work with Ulfger. Ulfger just sort of did this on his own. So when it feels like they only got lucky, they don't really feel like intimidating villains anymore. I mean, that said, it's made up for because around that time we really start to get an introduction to the captain and the reverend. And they're both really good villains. And that is just kind of a crazy person who thinks that, you know, God is testing them and they're stuck in purgatory and all that. Whereas the captain is just a guy who wants to get back home and he wants to protect the people under his command. And they're both sort of in charge of the flesh-eaters, but they're also constantly vying for influence over each other. And so they're both really good villains in their own way. But then during the two climaxes, he kind of swaps between which of those guys is supposed to be the main villain. Like for a while, it's the captain with the reverend kind of in the background and Ulfger's just off doing his own thing. And then for a while, the reverend comes to the forefront and the captain's becoming kind of a better person. Or maybe he's not becoming a better person, but like he just decides not to let them kill one of the devils. He's like, no, this kid's innocent, just leave him alone. And then so he becomes kind of a good guy for a while there. And then Ulfger comes out and he's like, no, I'm the real villain of the story. And that's how the final climax ends with them fighting and killing Ulfger. And, you know, I just... Swapping between all those villains just didn't really give me a chance to truly get into any of them. Like I would say just cut Ulfger out of the story entirely or just leave him as a rival character or just have him be like off in the background somewhere. Like, trying to make him into the main villain just did not work on any level, I don't think. And I know I said that this isn't like a major problem earlier and it's really not. I just see it as like wasted potential rather. Because like I don't think this part is horrible. I just don't think it's as good as it could have been because had the story really just focused on the captain and the reverend because those are two very interesting villains, very intimidating villains. I think that things would have worked out a lot better. But other than that, don't really have any issues with the ending. Like I think both the climaxes are pretty good in their own way and the denouement is all kind of sad and everything but it also leaves on a little bit of a hopeful note. So overall, not that bad. And as I said earlier, if you're looking for a dark fantasy adventure thing where a bunch of kids get cut up into pieces by horrifying monsters then check this one out, it's pretty good. I need money, please. I need want you more money now. And subscribe and channel like video stuff. Bye.