Peter is quick, daring, and full of mischief – and like
all boys, he loves to play, though his games often end in blood. His
eyes are sparkling gold, and when he graces you with his smile you are
his friend for life. He appears to lonely, lost children – the broken,
hopeless, and sexually abused – promising to take them to a secret place
of great adventure, where magic is alive, and you never grow old. But
his promised land is not Neverland...
With
this haunting, provocative, relentlessly thrilling reconsideration of a
timeless children's classic, the acclaimed artist Brom dramatically
displays another side of his extraordinary talent. Exploring the
stygian blackness that gathers at the root of the beloved Peter Pan
legend, he carries readers into a faerieland at once magically wondrous
and deeply disturbing.
Fourteen-year-old Nick would be lying
dead in a Brooklyn park – murdered by drug dealers – had Peter not sprung
out of the trees to save him. Now the irresistibly charismatic wild boy
wants Nick to follow him into a strange and unsettling mist swirling
around the bay. Even though he is wary of Peter's crazy talk of faeries
and monsters, Nick agrees. After all, nowhere in New York City is safe
for him now. And what more can he possibly lose?
There is always more to lose.
Accompanying Peter to a gray and ravished island that was once a lush,
enchanted paradise, Nick finds himself unwittingly recruited for a war
that has raged for centuries. He must learn to fight or die as he
struggles to fit in with the "Devils" – Peter's savage tribe of lost and
stolen children.
Here, Peter's dark past is revealed: left to
wolves as an infant, despised, tormented, and hunted, Peter moves
between the worlds of faerie and man, struggling to understand what he
is and where he belongs. The Child Thief is a leader of bloodthirsty
children, a brave friend, and a creature driven to do whatever he must
to kill the dreaded Captain and stop his murderous crew of
"Flesh-eaters" before they blight every trace of magic left in this
dying land.
Beautifully illustrated by the author with haunting portraits and indelible images, Brom's The Child Thief is a daring novel of darkest contemporary fantasy that will, at once,
haunt and exhilarate any reader who agrees to follow Peter on his
desperate crusade.
