By Lisa Maxwell
Rating
4 stars
Date Read
14/3/16 - 3/4/16Age Group
14+
General Thoughts
...a world magnificent and dangerous, with a sea full of monstrous mermaids, a jungle that comes alive, a villain who calls himself a hero and an unapproachable but honest pirate taking up the role of the bad guy.
A refreshing retelling of the classic fairy tale, a wonderful, terrible description of what Neverland means, of the devastating poignancy of losing one's memories, of having them distorted until you start to lose your grip on your sense of self, until the reader realises how truly fitting it is to call those boys trapped there lost.
A girl who's spent her whole life violently uprooted from each and every place she's learnt to call home, who doubts her mother's sanity and leans on the support of her only friend, suddenly finds herself inside a fairy tale.
Only it feels more like a nightmare.
(TEASERS BELOW!)
Main Characters
Gwendolyn
Defiant, confident, determined and loyal. At seventeen she's already unbelievably tired with the endless relocations that have been her life and yet she feels completely powerless to put a stop to them. Then she finds herself in a gloomy London.Kidnapped by a shadow, snatched away from her bed at night, and thrown into a world where logic holds no place and her sceptic nature only hinders her from coping, Gwen sets her mind on finding her friend, Olivia, who was also kidnapped, and getting them both back to the safety of their own world, a goal that proves to be a lot harder that she thought, especially when her memories are constantly slipping away to the point she fears she'll forget there's even a different world to go back to.
And life in Neverland isn't easy: heroes are villains, trust is a weapon that can and will be used against you, promises are made to be broken and stories hold lies in this new reality...
"For days I have been tossed from one danger to the next. Misled, tempted, tricked. Used. For days I have not known which way to turn, what the truth was, or who to trust." Gwen
Olivia
Superfluous. Possesive.
Maybe she starts out as good friend, the very image of the typical, neglected progeny of a wealthy family, she follows her best friend of two years to help her settle down in her new apartment in London. She's discreet, considerate and supportive, never questioning Gwen's mother's erratic behaviour even though her curiosity is evident in her eyes.
And then she's thrown into Wonderland, forgets all about her friends
Maybe I am judging her unfairly, considering that even Gwen, righteous as she is, felt the pull to the gorgeous, self-proclaimed hero and would have lost herself in the process, if it weren't for the advantage hidden in her blood...
Pan
The biggest lie ever told. Charming, gorgeous. Powerful, cruel. Pretty words, pretty eyes, pretty lies. Maybe it was the unlucky circumstances of his life, maybe it was the air in Neverland, maybe it was fraternisation with the Dark Ones. The result is still the same: nothing touches him. Neither Death nor loss, neither love nor friendship. Anything that doesn't help in adding to his power, if it doesn't amuse him, it'll leave him indifferent. And he's so unfeeling he cannot be human.
"His white-blond hair stands on end in an artful disarray that gives the impression he’s constantly in flight, like the wind itself can’t keep its greedy fingers out of those unruly locks."
"His eyes, with their glacial-blue irises ringed by midnight, never leave mine. “In this world, power requires sacrifice, Gwendolyn." Pan says."
The Captain
"The boy who chose to play the villain in order to battle a monster who calls himself a hero."
There's a reason the book is called unHOOKed. That reason is tall, dark and dangerous and features a metal hand. He's the one that sets the bar so high, he's why everyone else's unfeeling, cold nature cannot be excused or blamed on the unworldly magic of Neverland. An yet, even he is not saintly in any case.
"Do not paint me a hero" he tells Gwen.
Of course, he carries his fair share of demons.
He starts as a mask, a Captain, gentle yet cold and unapproachable. He would do anything to protect his boys, his crew, and yet he would also commit terrible cruelties if it fit his cause. As he has, time and again.
In time, he turns into something more, a soldier with a dark past, a boy who has suffered terrible loss a born leader, protective and demanding, a man strong, confident, charming and honorable.
"He has a long lean face with a straight nose, and his sharp chin is tipped with the barest shadow of a beard. His hair—a black so dark and shiny, it’s almost blue—is longer on top and brushed straight back from his face in an old-fashioned style. It looks like it might fall lazily over his forehead if he ever let it. Somehow, he doesn’t look like the type who ever would." Gwen
His attention was like a flame, warming me, even as it threatened to burn. His dismissal makes the night feel that much colder, that much more dangerously empty.
You can't seriously think im going to fly off with you after what you did to Olivia?” I snap “I don’t bloody well fly,”
"I'd not put my trust in stories. They tend to pass off lies as the truth and hide the truth in their lies.”
Writing Narrating
The author does a wonderful job of describing the horrors of such a magical world, retelling a popular story from a different point of view where heroes and villains are titles that shouldn't be thrown around easily, and depicting the protagonist's own struggle with how is easy it is, along with your memories, to let your sense of self slip away.Also, the metaphors are quite something:
"And as the chill brushes against my skin, the green-gold scent of the jungle is overwhelmed with a familiar odor that speaks of the sweetness of rot and the dustiness of memory."
"I was on a ship . It is huge. And it’s beautiful —all gleaming, polished wood, with three soaring masts that tower above me, their arms outspread against the clear blue of the sky. The white sails are tied up so tightly, they don’t even flutter in the gentle breeze, but in the soft evening air, a scarlet flag flutters from the topmost mast. "
"Have you seen or heard of many islands, then, that move and dance to their own heartbeat in your world?” The Captain takes a step closer, and I resist the urge to back away. “Have you seen a forest rise and fall with its own will and of its own wanting?”
 |
"They look like dark angels or, maybe, like nightmares come to life" Gwen about the Dark Fey that kidnapped her |
"I can’t recall the color of my old room or the hallways where I went to school. The few images that come to me rise up through the thickness of the past, murky and indistinct, like bubbles coming to the surface of a muddy pond. And then the memories sink down again, below the surface where I can’t reach them."
"The beauty of the island overwhelms—the staggering heights of the pink cliffs shot through with silvery veins of glittering crystal, the jeweled green of the jungle growth clinging to the rocky land."
All in all
I haven't read any other retellings of Peter Pan's story and now I'm probably not going to. Unhooked sets the bar quite high, tackling all the main aspects of the well known fairy tale with a refreshing perspective, drawing a handsome, dark pirate as the villainy hero and the gorgeous, flying boy as the heroic villain, presenting us with a dark and dangerous world that melts into itself and changes it form as it pleases, living of its own accordance and breathing with its own heartbeat.
PS It was not boring at all, it just took me a while because I read it in parallel with Uberto Echo's Numero Zero (which I have yet to finish)
PSS Songs
XOXO
Aggie Pearson
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