Everyone loves Peter Pan, the boy who never grows up. He’s a symbol of childhood innocence. But what if he has a more sinister side? P.H. Low explores the dark side of Peter Pan and Neverland that J.M. Barrie hinted at, in his debut novel These Deathless Shores, out this July.
[Note: While I am reviewing this novel independently and honestly, it should be noted that it has been provided to me by Orbit for the purpose of this review. Warning: My review of These Deathless Shores contains some spoilers!]
The island will change you forever in These Deathless Shore
Jordan is a lost girl. For the past decade she’s been fighting addiction to Dust. Not some new trendy drug, but the Dust that allows Peter Pan and his lost boys to fly. You see, as a little girl she convinced Peter that she was a boy and joined his band of lost boys on the island. She thought she’d get to stay there forever, never growing up, never growing old. But everyone grows up eventually (except for Peter of course) and when Jordan gets too old she finds out the hard way what happens to those that Peter tires of.
Luckily Jordan and her best friend Baron manage to escape the island alive but it’s left its mark on both of them. Jordan developed a crippling addiction to Dust while she was on the island. Now she’s replaced Dust with karsa. Between the drug and the illegal fighting she does to afford the drug, Jordan is dying. So she devises a plan to find the island, confront Peter, and put an end to it all one way or the other.
But the island is even more brutal than she remembers and if she wants to defeat Peter she will have to become every bit as vicious and cold-hearted as Peter himself. Does that make her the hero, or the villain? Even Jordan isn’t sure, but she doesn’t care either.
Author P.H. Low brings us a horror story version of Peter Pan
Most of us are only really familiar with Peter’s story through the Disney animated movie. While it does depict Peter as selfish and a little mean, it glosses over the violence that Barrie hints at in his novel. Of course, Barrie isn’t super explicit in his story, either. Peter’s darker side is more hinted at than anything. But most people agree that when Peter “thins out” the lost boys, that he does so by killing off those that have gotten too old.
Low, however, is very explicit in These Deathless Shores. Peter (and the lost boys) glory in the vicious killing and torture of the adults on the island. They also mutilate the bodies of anyone that they kill, removing the bones to use for the Dust that allows them to fly (apparently it takes more than faith, trust, and pixie dust after all).
While Peter leads the lost boys and their Ama (the girl who pretends to be their mother) to believe that he takes the lost boys who have gotten too old back to the real world, that’s not always the truth. Some of them do get taken back, but Peter is too selfish and lazy to do that routinely. So most of the time they end up being led off by Peter and simply having their throats slit (if they’re lucky) before he removes their bones and forgets about them.
The amount of carnage in These Deathless Shores is extreme. It’s not a book for anyone with a weak stomach, that’s for sure. And if you’re looking for a lighthearted fantasy full of childhood wonder, keep on looking because this isn’t it.
The title is a little ironic because while it suggests a land without death, the truth is that everyone, everyone, except Peter dies. Usually sooner than expected and always brutally. About the only thing that makes the shores of the island deathless is that no one there really thinks that they will die. Even though they face death on the daily, they all seem to think that they will be the one to beat the odds, and each character seems truly shocked when they meet their end.
A very bleak view of the child psyche
Peter Pan is often seen as the essence of childhood. More than a little selfish, he just wants to play and have fun all the time. Low seems to think that children are also extremely savage creatures. The amount of violence that Peter and the lost boys perpetuate and even revel in is extreme. Having spent most of my life caring for and raising countless children, I have certainly seen the capacity for violence that they can harbor, and the selfishness. But usually those come from a lack of experience and not the malice that Low suggests.
And Low completely ignores the vast wells of empathy and love that I have seen in countless children from very young ages. Indeed, Low suggests that what separates Peter from adults is the ability to love, something that he will never develop. But children are capable of intense love from a very young age.
I think that Low’s view of children and their emotional landscapes is a little one-dimensional and sad. Even with the excuse he uses that if Peter “ever was a child, he isn’t any more” doesn’t really make it better because he’s still supposed to be this ideal of childhood; both good and bad, just with an untamed intensity, which is what really intimidates us adults.
Peter Pan’s fascination with certain families
Another of Peter’s proclivities from Barrie’s original story that Low keeps in These Deathly Shores is his family fetish. Barrie has Peter return to the Darling family again and again. Not only does he visit Wendy even after she wants to return home, but he takes her daughter and granddaughter to Neverland. Most likely he took later generations of the family too, but the novel only covers so much time.
Low doesn’t have the Darling family in These Deathly Shores (although I guess we can’t rule out a blood connection, but if there is one, it’s not conveyed to the readers). But he does have Peter return to Jordan’s family multiple times. First he takes Jordan and her best friend, then a few years later he goes and gets her little sister, Chay. Perhaps if Jordan or Chay had returned to “normal” lives after being on the island, Peter would have returned for their children as well.
It makes me wonder why he seems to fixate on certain families. Perhaps some bloodlines are better at acclimating to the island’s magic. Or maybe the imagination of certain families (whether by nature or nurture) is higher, which makes them better playmates for Peter. Neither Low nor Barrie ever commented on this that I know of, but there must be some reason that Peter likes to run through families like a curse.
These Deathless Shores is a grown-up Peter Pan story
Overall, Low offers us a Peter Pan story for adults. The childish adventures of Barrie’s Pan are expanded upon and fleshed out into an adventure for adults (which is rather ironic, isn’t it?). I can’t say that it’s my favorite take on Peter Pan, but it is an interesting one. Looking at the island in more realistic and modern ways is interesting. Dust isn’t just something to fly, it’s an addictive substance. Fighting isn’t just pretend, it’s actually life or death. Growing up isn’t just scary, it’s downright dangerous.
People who cling to the idea of Peter Pan as some paragon of childhood innocence aren’t going to like Low’s version very much. But people who are open to different interpretations of beloved characters will find These Deathless Shores very intriguing. Just be ready for a lot of gore and disillusionment.
Rating: 7/10
These Deathless Shores by P.H. Low is now available most places books are sold. Are you going to check out this book? Or have you already read it? Let us know what you think on social media @mycosmiccircus!
Book Review: Straight On Till Morning: A Twisted Tale by Liz Braswell
Book Review: A Twisted Tale Anthology Edited by Elizabeth Lim
