The Child Thief by Brom is hands down going to be one of my favorite books of 2010 (yes even though it came out in 2009). It took me a little over a week to actually read this book, but that's because school got in the way. What Brom did for this book is he took the character Peter from Peter Pan and he put him in a blender with Satan and some amazing artwork. This book is without a doubt not for kids.
The prologue to the story gives you an idea of the kinds of children that Peter looks for to "play" with. The girl keeps getting raped by her father and who comes to save the day? Indeed Peter. Now start Chapter 1. You meet Nick who is the main character other than Peter. He got sick of this drug dealer, Marko, being in his house and taking over his family's life, so he takes Marko's drugs and runs. Again enter Peter to save the day. After a bit of convincing, Nick agrees to go with Peter to Avalon which is the faerie world Peter comes from. In Avalon, Nick finds out much more about Peter and his band of "devils". You get introduced to many new characters in this dark world including Sekeu, Ginny aka The Witch, Modron aka The Lady, and Ulfger. The beginning part of this book switches between Nick's current adventure in Avalon and Peter's past so you get to understand him better. The story is very graphic and vulger so if you live with anyone that is critical in your taste of books then I don't recommend reading this one while you're with them.
Shifting gears to the characters real quick. I'm only going to talk about 3 characters here. First is Peter. At first glance you aren't sure whether to like him or not. He tricks his victims into coming to Avalon just to use them for his own personal gain, but at the same time he really cares about his devils. He just cares about something else a bit more. Nick was a pain to read about. I didn't like him very much at all. He was very critical about what Peter was doing to people, even when he himself wasn't much better. The one thing that I will say good about Nick is even though the idea of being a devil didn't appeal to him, he did find a reason to stick around, and her name was Cricket. I'm really not into romance and really this wasn't a lot of romance, but he did pretty much everything he could to protect her. Lastly there is Sekeu. She is kind of amazing. For people that like really great, strong female characters then this is their girl. She has been a devil for a while now and she is hands down my favorite character. She knows how to keep the other devils in line, and she can hold her own in a fight.
I think overall this was a fantastic book that definitally deserves a looking at. If you don't think you can handle this kind of book then at least check out Brom's art books. I know I will. I very much want to get all of his other books. Good luck to all the other books that are slated to come out this year because this will be a hard book to beat.
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