The Child Thief by Brom has been on my reading list for a good long time, as has been The Devil’s Rose and Krampus: The Yule Lord. I figured that now that I’m done with the 2019 POPSUGAR Reading Challenge, I’d sit down and work on a few other books that have been on my list for ages.
I first encountered Brom’s work when a patron at my library requested The Devil’s Rose. It was both beautiful and terribly (as in nightmarish) at the same time, and I was instantly awed by Brom’s paintings. The Child Thief is the first book of his that I’ve read, and it didn’t disappoint me. He’s an amazing writer!
This dark retelling of Peter Pan is hauntingly beautiful, showing us a side of Peter that we’ve never really seen before. The book is full of horribleness of various sorts. Rape, torture, blood, gore, manipulation, murder, backstabbing, cursing, the list goes on! Awful things happen to children in this book, and while some people would find that abhorrent and ask “Why would you write about that?” I felt it was pretty realistic for this world that we live in.
I really enjoyed his explanation of all the mythology that inspired him to create this world that these children live in. Some old favorites of mine were there, and as a kid I remember reading about Jenny Greenteeth and being creeped out because we had a pond at the time that was covered in duckweed and it looked like the exact sort of place that she would live. Overall, this book made me a bit nostalgic for those younger days, despite the kids in this story not being any sort of carefree at all.
