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I really enjoyed this book. The series so far has been wonderful, and the narrator, Jim Dale, is one of the best I’ve heard. The writing itself was very good: the syntax, word choice, and especially the overshadowing mood of a world filled with darkness, adventure, and grave risk. Part of what I like about both this book and Peter and the Star Catchers (book 1) is the presence of darker themes in what is still very much a children’s book. Child abuse, cruel children, deceitful bird-sellers—whether the scene is a daytime scene or set in the dark and murky London night, the world is always presented as one filled with evil, but where good can still win and where light shines in the darkness. The exception, however, is Neverland, where evil can for the most part be laughed at, danger be flirted with, and adventure is as fun as it is risky (the exception: when Lord Ombra arrives). England remains the grown-up world, where evil prowls at night and merely hides by day, being replaced not by goodness or friendliness, but by the cold light of indifference.
Beyond the world-building, tone, and description, the book has a host of attractive elements, not even including those it inherited from J. M. Barrie: Lord Ombra’s sinister presence and terrifying powers, which are mysterious enough to inspire fear, but clearly defined enough that there can be tension and believability when he wins or loses; the cruel pirates, always on the lookout for themselves; the interesting and almost carichaturish side characters, good and evil, who may win or lose regardless of their affiliation. The fact that evil can win, though not in the end, creates good tension throughout the story. And the noble Star Catchers, with Molly as the sensitive but courageous young protagonist beside Peter, would captivate the heart of any young lad or lass reading it. At this point I’m rambling—or gushing. But I have reason for doing so. One more note: I thought that the third-person omniscient perspective worked very well. Seeing the pirates and Lord Ombra’s plans in action, almost as if the reader were a fly on the wall, increased the tension at Molly’s house and the terrifying mystery behind Lord Ombra as we see the pirates’ fear around him, and as we partly see what becomes of the shadows he steals. And this increased moreover the tension in any scene with Ombra and the protagonists together.
Now I want to discuss three things I did not like about this book, things which I’m not sure existed in the first one (though I’ve not done a review of the first). First, the character arcs, or lack thereof. Peter, of course, is not going to mature in the same way as others, but he could still have an arc. I would even have enjoyed it if the whole series showed him becoming progressively more set in his ways as an adventurous, ornery boy with magical abilities. But I couldn’t see a difference in him from the beginning to the end. As Tim Hickson put it, at the end of an arc the character ought to be able to make a choice they couldn’t have at the beginning (they don’t necessarily need to make the choice, but they ought to be able to). At the beginning of the book, Peter is clever, daring, loyal to the Lost Boys, and able to leave someone he loves (the Lost Boys) in order to help someone else he loves (Molly) with the promise of returning. At the end of the book, he is still clever, daring, loyal to his friends, and able to leave Molly in order to help the Lost Boys, with the promise of returning. Books 1 and 2 actually end the same way, basically, with Lord Aster offering for Peter to stay with them, and Peter declining. More variance between the two books would have made for a more interesting story.
Now, maybe he is supposed to be a static character. Not every character needs an arc. But even then Molly ought to have had an arc. Her arc is as dynamic as the protagonists’ in Harry Potter. Throughout the book she makes emotionally driven decisions in order to save her mother, putting others—indeed the whole world—at risk. This is quite understandable, but in the end her disobedience and impulsiveness is praised. She does not even learn from the mistake in the Tower of London, in which she got someone killed by inadvertently leading Lord Ombra to a hideout; instead she makes the exact same mistake again by going to her father and the point of the Return, only the second time there are no repercussions simply because Lord Ombra doesn’t try to follow her this time (since he doesn’t need to—he got all the information he needed from her first mistake). Again, what she does is understandable, but the moral presented is that if one makes emotionally charged and reckless decisions born out of love, all shall work out for the better (and this is a children’s book, so it ought to teach moral lessons, and even if it refrains from doing so, children shall receive them anyway). And unlike Harry Potter, in which the first three books would have all ended sooner and likely better if Hermione had been the main character (i.e. if Harry been obedient), this book does in all likelihood end better due to Molly’s decisions. Had Molly and Peter simply remained behind, the Return would have happened, a Starcatcher’s life would have been saved, and Molly’s mother would have died. Technically, since one life isn’t worth more or less than another, one might say it would have been equal to what did happen. Except that the way it did happen, Molly risked the fate of the entire world, and wasn’t even very careful in going about it. There have been children’s books where characters make understandable mistakes, and all works out for good, but their mistakes had real consequences. Two good examples would be The Silver Chair by C. S. Lewis and The Night Gardener by Jonathan Auxier. This book could have remedied the problem by changing the focus of the last half or third of the story to Molly needing to remedy her mistake while living with the consequence of the death she and Peter were responsible for (she is sad when it happens, but there doesn’t seem to be any real change in her character or disposition afterward). For example, while still in London she could have recalled that the starcatcher was still alive when Lord Ombra attained the shadow, thus compromising the site of the Return, so that she and Peter need to figure out where it is and warn her father. And maybe she is overly fearful and afraid of making another mistake, so Peter has to encourage her. This would be an interesting turn for her character’s arc, and would further establish Peter as the perpetually fearless boy he is, always ready to take risks. A bigger change the writers could have made would be Molly having to make the difficult decision of having her and Peter rescue her mother instead of risk the fate of the world by going to her father (so they don’t go to the tower at all). It still could have resulted in the same climax if by some means Lord Ombra did ascertain the site of the Return on his own. Again, it’s not bad that Molly made a huge mistake. It’s just bad that the consequences are either erased or forgotten.
I’ve forgotten the name of the other character, Molly’s friend from the Darling family. George, that’s it. I momentarily forgot because he isn’t really a character and doesn’t have an arc. He is a walking and talking plot device serving four purposes: he provides a safe house, he provides information, he provides a little conflict between Peter and himself which isn’t that interesting since we know Peter can never marry Molly (he and Molly dealing with that fact, however, is far more interesting, and doesn’t need a love triangle).
Tinkerbell was a great character and doesn’t need an arc. She is there to anchor Peter to his strangeness, his otherness which will always be a part of him, and to accompany him in that otherness so he is not alone. Also, she provides some humour what with Peter mistranslating her sass. All of this was accomplished well.
The next issue was not necessarily a problem with the book, but with me, so I’ll be brief. The pacing was a lot. I had to take a break at one point because there were so few respites and I was getting anxious. Probably just me. I suppose the up and down pacing and tension for which I praised Sweep by Jonathan Auxier, or which I am used to in Harry Potter, Redwall, Narnia, and Prydain Chronicles, is not always necessary, at least not for children’s literature. Children do need excitement or intrigue of some sort (although all those books I just mentioned do captivate children). However, just know that there is almost constant tension until maybe half or two thirds of the way through. It does get better after the scene in the Tower, however.
Finally, the pirates & lost boys side quest. Throughout the first act or so, we go back and forth between Peter and Molly and the lost boys, but with basically no payoff. There was some suspense in the first act as to what would happen in Neverland, but not nearly as much as there was in London, since Neverland retained the fun wickedness of Captain Hook and the silliness of the lost boys, whereas London was filled with child abuse, the evil Lord Ombra, and evil maid that calls to mind The Omen. Moreover, since a lost boy never died in the first book, and since Captain Hook wasn’t even really planning on hurting them until after he got Peter—which the reader knows wouldn’t happen for a long time—there wasn’t much tension there. And in the end, Peter just comes back and saves them with no difficulty (which in a way is good, or else there would have been two climaxes and the ending would have been distorted).
I guess it was supposed to add some fun adventure in the midst of the conflict in London, but I didn’t feel it worked very well, because it seemed to play up the tension in Neverland more than it could or actually did, and because it was so trivial that as soon as the narrator moved back to London then Neverland was forgotten. This resulted in a bit of a jarring effect of two endings: the first, when Peter and Molly say goodbye, and the second in Neverland, when suddenly we recall that whole subplot which had been abandoned many chapters earlier. It seemed added in so that Peter needed something to go back to in the end. However, it would have flowed better if the writers had emphasised Molly’s arc and maturity in contrast to Peter’s stasis, so that at the end it is clear that he cannot stay (or feels he cannot). If the writers had wanted to end on a fun, Neverlandy note, instead of the sad goodbye, they might still have had Peter return to Neverland and throw a mango at Hook. I think if he had come back to find the lost boys captured and Hook trying to use them as a trap for Peter, even without any setup thirty chapters earlier, it still would have worked since that setup wasn’t really necessary. The potential payoff died in the long period where we didn’t focus on Neverland at all, and in the midst of the much higher tension in England. And would we have really been that sad if any of the lost boys had died in this one, aside from it being sad when children die? In the first book, maybe, but in this one I got James and Thomas confused anyhow—they were all such relatively small characters. Jim Dale’s Scottish accent for James is all that helped me. In the end this whole subplot didn’t annoy me, but it didn’t fit in well or flow well with the rest of the story. I would have appreciated some lighter scenes mixed in, if they had fit better with the England plotlines.
Now I still really enjoyed this book. It is not a great children’s book, like Sweep or The Prydain Chronicles. It is not a solidly good one like The Night Gardener or Gypsy Rizka. It is, in the end, decent in quality, and exceptional in enjoyability, due to its merits listed at the beginning of this essay (which is why I rambled for so long—to be fair, since I was going to go on critiquing it for so long). I’ll probably keep reading the series. Suffice to say, this book is like the best pie or dessert you can get from a grocery store. It is good, and definitely not low quality. But it’s still a dessert, not a meal, and still from a grocery store, not a bakery; and there are higher quality children’s books out there.
Beyond the world-building, tone, and description, the book has a host of attractive elements, not even including those it inherited from J. M. Barrie: Lord Ombra’s sinister presence and terrifying powers, which are mysterious enough to inspire fear, but clearly defined enough that there can be tension and believability when he wins or loses; the cruel pirates, always on the lookout for themselves; the interesting and almost carichaturish side characters, good and evil, who may win or lose regardless of their affiliation. The fact that evil can win, though not in the end, creates good tension throughout the story. And the noble Star Catchers, with Molly as the sensitive but courageous young protagonist beside Peter, would captivate the heart of any young lad or lass reading it. At this point I’m rambling—or gushing. But I have reason for doing so. One more note: I thought that the third-person omniscient perspective worked very well. Seeing the pirates and Lord Ombra’s plans in action, almost as if the reader were a fly on the wall, increased the tension at Molly’s house and the terrifying mystery behind Lord Ombra as we see the pirates’ fear around him, and as we partly see what becomes of the shadows he steals. And this increased moreover the tension in any scene with Ombra and the protagonists together.
Now I want to discuss three things I did not like about this book, things which I’m not sure existed in the first one (though I’ve not done a review of the first). First, the character arcs, or lack thereof. Peter, of course, is not going to mature in the same way as others, but he could still have an arc. I would even have enjoyed it if the whole series showed him becoming progressively more set in his ways as an adventurous, ornery boy with magical abilities. But I couldn’t see a difference in him from the beginning to the end. As Tim Hickson put it, at the end of an arc the character ought to be able to make a choice they couldn’t have at the beginning (they don’t necessarily need to make the choice, but they ought to be able to). At the beginning of the book, Peter is clever, daring, loyal to the Lost Boys, and able to leave someone he loves (the Lost Boys) in order to help someone else he loves (Molly) with the promise of returning. At the end of the book, he is still clever, daring, loyal to his friends, and able to leave Molly in order to help the Lost Boys, with the promise of returning. Books 1 and 2 actually end the same way, basically, with Lord Aster offering for Peter to stay with them, and Peter declining. More variance between the two books would have made for a more interesting story.
Now, maybe he is supposed to be a static character. Not every character needs an arc. But even then Molly ought to have had an arc. Her arc is as dynamic as the protagonists’ in Harry Potter. Throughout the book she makes emotionally driven decisions in order to save her mother, putting others—indeed the whole world—at risk. This is quite understandable, but in the end her disobedience and impulsiveness is praised. She does not even learn from the mistake in the Tower of London, in which she got someone killed by inadvertently leading Lord Ombra to a hideout; instead she makes the exact same mistake again by going to her father and the point of the Return, only the second time there are no repercussions simply because Lord Ombra doesn’t try to follow her this time (since he doesn’t need to—he got all the information he needed from her first mistake). Again, what she does is understandable, but the moral presented is that if one makes emotionally charged and reckless decisions born out of love, all shall work out for the better (and this is a children’s book, so it ought to teach moral lessons, and even if it refrains from doing so, children shall receive them anyway). And unlike Harry Potter, in which the first three books would have all ended sooner and likely better if Hermione had been the main character (i.e. if Harry been obedient), this book does in all likelihood end better due to Molly’s decisions. Had Molly and Peter simply remained behind, the Return would have happened, a Starcatcher’s life would have been saved, and Molly’s mother would have died. Technically, since one life isn’t worth more or less than another, one might say it would have been equal to what did happen. Except that the way it did happen, Molly risked the fate of the entire world, and wasn’t even very careful in going about it. There have been children’s books where characters make understandable mistakes, and all works out for good, but their mistakes had real consequences. Two good examples would be The Silver Chair by C. S. Lewis and The Night Gardener by Jonathan Auxier. This book could have remedied the problem by changing the focus of the last half or third of the story to Molly needing to remedy her mistake while living with the consequence of the death she and Peter were responsible for (she is sad when it happens, but there doesn’t seem to be any real change in her character or disposition afterward). For example, while still in London she could have recalled that the starcatcher was still alive when Lord Ombra attained the shadow, thus compromising the site of the Return, so that she and Peter need to figure out where it is and warn her father. And maybe she is overly fearful and afraid of making another mistake, so Peter has to encourage her. This would be an interesting turn for her character’s arc, and would further establish Peter as the perpetually fearless boy he is, always ready to take risks. A bigger change the writers could have made would be Molly having to make the difficult decision of having her and Peter rescue her mother instead of risk the fate of the world by going to her father (so they don’t go to the tower at all). It still could have resulted in the same climax if by some means Lord Ombra did ascertain the site of the Return on his own. Again, it’s not bad that Molly made a huge mistake. It’s just bad that the consequences are either erased or forgotten.
I’ve forgotten the name of the other character, Molly’s friend from the Darling family. George, that’s it. I momentarily forgot because he isn’t really a character and doesn’t have an arc. He is a walking and talking plot device serving four purposes: he provides a safe house, he provides information, he provides a little conflict between Peter and himself which isn’t that interesting since we know Peter can never marry Molly (he and Molly dealing with that fact, however, is far more interesting, and doesn’t need a love triangle).
Tinkerbell was a great character and doesn’t need an arc. She is there to anchor Peter to his strangeness, his otherness which will always be a part of him, and to accompany him in that otherness so he is not alone. Also, she provides some humour what with Peter mistranslating her sass. All of this was accomplished well.
The next issue was not necessarily a problem with the book, but with me, so I’ll be brief. The pacing was a lot. I had to take a break at one point because there were so few respites and I was getting anxious. Probably just me. I suppose the up and down pacing and tension for which I praised Sweep by Jonathan Auxier, or which I am used to in Harry Potter, Redwall, Narnia, and Prydain Chronicles, is not always necessary, at least not for children’s literature. Children do need excitement or intrigue of some sort (although all those books I just mentioned do captivate children). However, just know that there is almost constant tension until maybe half or two thirds of the way through. It does get better after the scene in the Tower, however.
Finally, the pirates & lost boys side quest. Throughout the first act or so, we go back and forth between Peter and Molly and the lost boys, but with basically no payoff. There was some suspense in the first act as to what would happen in Neverland, but not nearly as much as there was in London, since Neverland retained the fun wickedness of Captain Hook and the silliness of the lost boys, whereas London was filled with child abuse, the evil Lord Ombra, and evil maid that calls to mind The Omen. Moreover, since a lost boy never died in the first book, and since Captain Hook wasn’t even really planning on hurting them until after he got Peter—which the reader knows wouldn’t happen for a long time—there wasn’t much tension there. And in the end, Peter just comes back and saves them with no difficulty (which in a way is good, or else there would have been two climaxes and the ending would have been distorted).
I guess it was supposed to add some fun adventure in the midst of the conflict in London, but I didn’t feel it worked very well, because it seemed to play up the tension in Neverland more than it could or actually did, and because it was so trivial that as soon as the narrator moved back to London then Neverland was forgotten. This resulted in a bit of a jarring effect of two endings: the first, when Peter and Molly say goodbye, and the second in Neverland, when suddenly we recall that whole subplot which had been abandoned many chapters earlier. It seemed added in so that Peter needed something to go back to in the end. However, it would have flowed better if the writers had emphasised Molly’s arc and maturity in contrast to Peter’s stasis, so that at the end it is clear that he cannot stay (or feels he cannot). If the writers had wanted to end on a fun, Neverlandy note, instead of the sad goodbye, they might still have had Peter return to Neverland and throw a mango at Hook. I think if he had come back to find the lost boys captured and Hook trying to use them as a trap for Peter, even without any setup thirty chapters earlier, it still would have worked since that setup wasn’t really necessary. The potential payoff died in the long period where we didn’t focus on Neverland at all, and in the midst of the much higher tension in England. And would we have really been that sad if any of the lost boys had died in this one, aside from it being sad when children die? In the first book, maybe, but in this one I got James and Thomas confused anyhow—they were all such relatively small characters. Jim Dale’s Scottish accent for James is all that helped me. In the end this whole subplot didn’t annoy me, but it didn’t fit in well or flow well with the rest of the story. I would have appreciated some lighter scenes mixed in, if they had fit better with the England plotlines.
Now I still really enjoyed this book. It is not a great children’s book, like Sweep or The Prydain Chronicles. It is not a solidly good one like The Night Gardener or Gypsy Rizka. It is, in the end, decent in quality, and exceptional in enjoyability, due to its merits listed at the beginning of this essay (which is why I rambled for so long—to be fair, since I was going to go on critiquing it for so long). I’ll probably keep reading the series. Suffice to say, this book is like the best pie or dessert you can get from a grocery store. It is good, and definitely not low quality. But it’s still a dessert, not a meal, and still from a grocery store, not a bakery; and there are higher quality children’s books out there.
