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Mar 31, 2016bookswithbrooke rated this title 5 out of 5 stars
Rating: 6/5 stars After being recommended this book 2 years ago by my friend Shuichi, I can’t praise it enough. The Child Thief by Gerald Brom is nothing like your watered down Peter Pan novels. The Child Thief is a dark, complex retelling and is not for children. Brom uses violence and fear to drive his story of immortality and the dangers of deception home. The story follows a young man named Nick who is whisked away by a dashing odd teenager named Peter after he is almost killed. Nick is taken to a land known as Avalon and is trained to be a “Devil” and fight the “Flesh eaters” who are threatening the land and their Lady. The characters are complex. None of them are good, none of them are bad. One of my friends told me they remind him of the Game of Thrones characters in that way. Their morality is warped a bit, but they aren’t necessarily good or bad. The characters are just that, characters. Growing and learning how to handle situations with every experience and trial they face. Peter is not only a master manipulator but a very complex teenager with a twisted morality. He uses immortality, never growing old and adventure to kidnap children so that they may fight a war for his world. Despite him being a complete jerk in that way, he has a redeeming quality of loyalty and some decency to do the right thing in scary and hard times. After I balled my eyes out, I sat down myself and contemplated what Brom was trying to tell us through this novel. I personally believe that every good author has some drive to their book and wants the reader to learn something from it. One thing I did learn is that you can’t trust everyone. People will lie and deceive you. Humanity is corrupt like that. However, I believe the concept of mortality can be learned from this novel. That to ignore the concept of mortality and how we are set to die is to become a fool. We have to accept our morality and the idea that we have to “grow up” in some ways or another. Adulthood is mostly inevitable, despite this idea of never growing up that most of us wish for. Overall, this book is brilliant in every way. Gerald’s storytelling and illustrations give this book new life and make the reader think. The concept that Neverland (or in this case Avalon) isn’t all it’s so sought out to be is, in my opinion, a very rare and interesting one. Brom did a brilliant job as always and I always look forward to reading more of his stuff. He is, after all, one of my favorite (if not my favorite) authors of all time.