Peter and Shadow Thieves

Sequel to Peter and the Starcatchers. Quite a thick book, and felt like it was taking me forever to read it, though really it was just over a week. It was a bit hard to focus on for me, not because the plot was very complex, but because it followed two or three separate groups of characters, alternating between their viewpoints in very short chapters (some only a page and a half, others maybe up to six pages) and that made the narrative feel very jumpy and tired me out. Also, I really felt like this book would have shaved fifty or more pages off, if there had not been so many chapter breaks with tons of blank space after just a few lines on the second page…

Well, the story was certainly full of adventure! Peter finds out that Molly is in danger in London. A strange man in a dark cloak who can mind control people, is tracking her down. He’s also after the starstuff. Peter feels he has to warn Molly, but first he has to get to England (sneaking aboard a ship), and then he has to find her. In this large, sprawling, hazy, confusing city full of people who mean him ill (or at least are not helpful). It’s good he has Tinkerbell along, though she is reluctant about the whole thing, and makes lots of snarky comments that Peter deliberately mistranslates to his companion, to keep the peace. Peter is always hungry and cold, being poorly dressed for the chill and having no resources. He can’t let himself being seen flying. He runs afoul of a man who forces kids into begging on the streets, and then briefly winds up in prison, before he reaches Molly. Then they have to figure out how to protect her mother, reach and warn her father, and stop the bad guys from getting the starstuff. Molly enlists the help of a friend from school down the street, George, who turns out to be the Darling boy that is the father in the original Peter Pan book. There’s also an encounter in the park with a character that’s James Barrie himself; I thought both these inclusions cleverly done. Other things that gave nods to the original story didn’t work quite so well for me. The whole shadow thing, for example. I don’t recall (but it’s been a long time since I read it) the separation of Peter’s shadow in the original being anything other than an amusing oddity, but here it has quite sinister connotations. And the Ombra figure reminds me way too much of Tolkien’s ringwraiths or Rawling’s dementors, so that didn’t feel like a new idea at all- I found it rather tiresome, though I’m sure kids reading this would be thrilled with the horror. There is violence in the story, and a few deaths.

The ending suddenly switches back to the island, showing what happened to the Lost Boys that Peter had left behind when he went to England, and the story just as suddenly feels a bit more lighthearted, with some humor that reminded me of the original again. It feels wrapped-up in terms of completing the adventure and saving the starstuff, but I know there’s a third book (and several more after that). The opposition now have more information about the starstuff and have learned some of the starcatchers’ secrets, so they are an even greater threat. You just know Peter is going to continue to be wrapped up in this.

There is a bit of reflection in the story- Peter realizing how far apart and different he is from other boys, when he encounters kids on the streets of London, how odd and extraordinary his life on the island is. He feels bad seeing how Molly has begun to outpace him in growth- for he remains the same age forever now. It makes the reader wonder if some of his cockiness and indifference in the future, comes from bitterness at his fate. In spite of all the wonders he lives among, and the amazing ability to fly, there’s downsides to his new life too, and he doesn’t quite seem reconciled to it all yet.

Borrowed from the public library.