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A review by secre
All Darling Children by Katrina Monroe
3.0
All Darling Children is a distinctly darker look at the Peter Pan story, several generation on. Madge is Wendy Darling's granddaughter and the third generation to have been stolen away to Never Never Land, but all is not well in this magical world and it doesn't look as though it ever was. Pan isn't an angelic child who refuses to grow up; he is warped and twisted and delights in the painful games that take his Lost Boys lives. Fighting and warfare is a natural pan of Never Never Land even though the pirates have long been slaughtered.
Madge is lured into this world by the promise of seeing her mother, only to find out that nothing is as it seems and Peter Pan is incapable of feeling for anyone other than himself. She is to be the Mother and he the Father and yet the Lost Boys who rely on him are used and discarded with a frightening lack of attachment.
It is far crueller than I was expecting and I'm not sure if this is good or bad in honesty; I can see the reasoning behind that decision and yet this is more than childish cruelty. There is an adulthood in the motivations and actions that doesn't quite marry up with my internal view of the Peter Pan story. I'd have found it easy to get into if the cruelty had been more off-hand and less brutally vicious I suppose. Pan to me is more of a tragic figure whereas here he is undoubtedly a villain. I'd have liked a little more character development I suppose.
That said though, this was an interesting read and well written so I can justify just about giving it four stars.
Madge is lured into this world by the promise of seeing her mother, only to find out that nothing is as it seems and Peter Pan is incapable of feeling for anyone other than himself. She is to be the Mother and he the Father and yet the Lost Boys who rely on him are used and discarded with a frightening lack of attachment.
It is far crueller than I was expecting and I'm not sure if this is good or bad in honesty; I can see the reasoning behind that decision and yet this is more than childish cruelty. There is an adulthood in the motivations and actions that doesn't quite marry up with my internal view of the Peter Pan story. I'd have found it easy to get into if the cruelty had been more off-hand and less brutally vicious I suppose. Pan to me is more of a tragic figure whereas here he is undoubtedly a villain. I'd have liked a little more character development I suppose.
That said though, this was an interesting read and well written so I can justify just about giving it four stars.