Title: Heartless
Author: H.G. Parry
Publisher: Subterranean Press 2024
Genre: Fantasy
Pages: 141
Rating: 4/5 stars
Reading Challenges: Fairytale Retellings - Villain
Where I Got It: Library
At the age of seven, in a London workhouse, newly-orphaned James meets ten-year-old Peter. Mysterious, mercurial, thoughtless to the point of cruelty, Peter nonetheless takes a liking to James. The two forge a strange friendship, bound together by theirshared love of stories...But one fateful night, Peter vanishes from his bed, and in the morning James is found lying alone and broken in the courtyard outside...Over twenty years later, on the deck of a whaling ship in the frozen wastes of the Arctic...James's obsession with finding his childhood friend will lead him to mutiny and murder, beyond the edges of the world, and finally to an island that shouldn't exist.
I always enjoy a villain retelling usually because the villains of fairy tales are much more interesting than the heroes. In this slim novella, we get the story of Peter Pan told from the point of view of James who becomes Hook. We see the creation of Neverland and the birth of the story we know while understanding the sacrifices James made to survive. I really enjoyed this one. The overall tone of this book is very emotional and sad but it was a good fit for my mood this week.
Next up on the TBR pile:
