Tigerheart by Peter David
Sep. 5th, 2008 10:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jetpack_monkeyThe story of how I got Tigerheart is funny. I was at Comic-Con, wandering through the book area with ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
midnightfae and (if I recall correctly) liminalliz collecting all the free books we could (and by "we", I mean midnightfae). I saw Peter David was signing and I immediately planted myself in line. Peter David wrote some of my favorite Star Trek novels (Q-Squared, in particular) and one of my most cherished comics ever, Incredible Hulk #393, the 30th Anniversary issue with the green foil cover.
Anyway, he had copies of his latest book, Tigerheart, for sale. I bought it and he signed it while I gushed (a little) about Q-Squared and his blog. Then he reached over to a stack of (free) Incredible Hulk novelizations and said, "You want one?" And I said, "Um, sure." And he signed that. And then he reached over to a Tigerheart poster and said, as he signed it, "Here, have a Tigerheart poster." To which I also said, "Um, sure." And then he looked over atmidnightfae and liminalliz and made sure that they, also, had signed Incredible Hulk novelizations.
Like I said -- very strange, but kind of awesome.
Anyway, fast forward to this week. I finished Jim Butcher's Small Favor on Wednesday and I was in need of new reading material. So I picked up Tigerheart. Which is... really interesting.
It's a different take on/sequel to Peter Pan, that looks at the role that parenting (or a lack thereof) plays in the mythos. Specifically, it asks the question -- if a boy is a boy forever and does not die and has done many heroic things... how long is it before he gets bored and finds playing the villain to be more interesting? Childhood -- true childhood, with all the innocence and wonder therein -- cannot sustain forever. If you try, it rots on the vine and becomes something even more terrible than growing up.
Most of the story is written from the perspective of Paul Dear, a young boy with an as-yet undefined relationship to The Boy (Tigerheart's name for Peter Pan -- all names are changed and all events are tweaked, probably to give David more flexibility in his interpretation). Paul's family is broken due to a tragedy and Paul escapes into fantasy -- but that's not really accurate. More accurately, fantasy was always there and Paul just finds it better than dealing with an embittered, overcritical mother and an absent father.
The prose itself is probably the hardest part of the book to get through. There's nothing wrong with it, per se. It's actually frequently clever and delightful -- J.M. Barrie by way of Neil Gaiman, but there's a persistent sense that it's not really Peter David's idiom and that he may be trying just a little too hard for whimsy. If you can get past that, though, the themes and ideas he's laying out (and the mystery, for even though the book hasn't come out and said as much, I suspect there is one) are fascinating and well worth the read.
I think. Truth be told, I'm only about 100 pages in. I'll let you know if it goes badly from here. I somehow doubt it.
midnightfae and (if I recall correctly) liminalliz collecting all the free books we could (and by "we", I mean midnightfae). I saw Peter David was signing and I immediately planted myself in line. Peter David wrote some of my favorite Star Trek novels (Q-Squared, in particular) and one of my most cherished comics ever, Incredible Hulk #393, the 30th Anniversary issue with the green foil cover.Anyway, he had copies of his latest book, Tigerheart, for sale. I bought it and he signed it while I gushed (a little) about Q-Squared and his blog. Then he reached over to a stack of (free) Incredible Hulk novelizations and said, "You want one?" And I said, "Um, sure." And he signed that. And then he reached over to a Tigerheart poster and said, as he signed it, "Here, have a Tigerheart poster." To which I also said, "Um, sure." And then he looked over at
midnightfae and liminalliz and made sure that they, also, had signed Incredible Hulk novelizations. Like I said -- very strange, but kind of awesome.
Anyway, fast forward to this week. I finished Jim Butcher's Small Favor on Wednesday and I was in need of new reading material. So I picked up Tigerheart. Which is... really interesting.
It's a different take on/sequel to Peter Pan, that looks at the role that parenting (or a lack thereof) plays in the mythos. Specifically, it asks the question -- if a boy is a boy forever and does not die and has done many heroic things... how long is it before he gets bored and finds playing the villain to be more interesting? Childhood -- true childhood, with all the innocence and wonder therein -- cannot sustain forever. If you try, it rots on the vine and becomes something even more terrible than growing up.
Most of the story is written from the perspective of Paul Dear, a young boy with an as-yet undefined relationship to The Boy (Tigerheart's name for Peter Pan -- all names are changed and all events are tweaked, probably to give David more flexibility in his interpretation). Paul's family is broken due to a tragedy and Paul escapes into fantasy -- but that's not really accurate. More accurately, fantasy was always there and Paul just finds it better than dealing with an embittered, overcritical mother and an absent father.
The prose itself is probably the hardest part of the book to get through. There's nothing wrong with it, per se. It's actually frequently clever and delightful -- J.M. Barrie by way of Neil Gaiman, but there's a persistent sense that it's not really Peter David's idiom and that he may be trying just a little too hard for whimsy. If you can get past that, though, the themes and ideas he's laying out (and the mystery, for even though the book hasn't come out and said as much, I suspect there is one) are fascinating and well worth the read.
I think. Truth be told, I'm only about 100 pages in. I'll let you know if it goes badly from here. I somehow doubt it.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
even more Pan...
Date: 2008-09-05 06:19 pm (UTC)http://www.peterpansneverworld.com/
Thanks for the report!
BELIEVE!
The Never Fairy
no subject
Date: 2008-09-05 07:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-05 07:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-05 09:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-06 01:19 am (UTC)I read about half of it on the plane ride back and haven't returned to it -- the weirdness of David's use of the Peter Pan mythos yet CHANGING ALL THE NAMES sort of made me unable to read it without a slight sensation of derision. But it is troooly an amazing story and well written. I need to finish it!