Peter and the Starcatchers, by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson
Synopsis: A Peter Pan origin story.
Book Review: This is straight-up very good fanfic. I guess not technically fanfic, since fanfic is fiction that you can’t legally sell, and Peter Pan is in the public domain now. But any reader of fanfic will recognize this in a heartbeat!
It’s a good story. It’s fun, it updates the story for modern audiences (ie: makes Peter Pan relatable, and removes the racism), and it creates a cool magic system that gives a neat alternate explanation for all the stuff we saw in the Disney animated movie. It’s full of witty humor and action. In fact, the entire second half of the book is basically one long, running, climax.
It’s also a very good portrayal of a newly-teenaged boy, if my memory of being 12-13 can be believed. I normally dislike YA, but this was well done. My only real complaint was that the introduction of Tinkerbell felt tacked on, like the authors didn’t want anything to do with her, but felt obligated to have her in there. She should have been left out if she wasn’t going to do anything (she literally just appeared for the span of a few paragraphs to be included in the origin story), and maybe introduced in some future novel where she’d have some reason to exist.
This book was a very quick, light read. That being said, it was a light read because there wasn’t anything of substance here. I had fun reading it, and I’ll probably never think of it again. Very good as a palette cleanser, or if you want to take a break after slogging through something overly-long and tiresome. But nothing to write home about. Not Recommended.
Book Club Review: As mentioned above, this is very light. Normally I wouldn’t care for this sort of thing, but it really had impeccable timing for us, having come on the heels of SevenEves. We all needed a break, and this story was delightful and refreshing. It was nice to enjoy a simple thing together, and have a chat. I wouldn’t want to do this sort of thing often, but it’s good to do now and then. So, overall, Not Recommended, but consider Keeping It In Reserve for when your book club needs something like this to recharge. :)
