James Nicoll Reviews

P. H. Low’s 2024’s These Deathless Shores is a secondary-universe South-Asian revisiting of Peter Pan.

As children, pals Jordan and Baron took Peter up on his invitation, abandoning homes and families to become Lost Boys on the Island. Nine years ago, the pair were among the lucky few who survived adolescence by fleeing the Island. The mundane world proved a bitter disappointment. The gap in his education left Baron a dismal scholar, while Jordan’s incessant use of Dust left her hopelessly addicted to Dust. There is no Dust in the mundane world. There is karsa, but it is a pale substitute for Dust and it’s ultimately fatal for the addict.

For Jordan to survive, she must find her way back to the Island. For reasons that probably don’t stand up to rational examination, Baron joins in Jordan’s quest. But how to return to an Island notoriously difficult to reach?

Luckily for the pair, hapless Tier not only has possession of a plane, he is desperate to prove himself to his disapproving father. By transporting Jordan and Baron to the Island, he can reach the hidden Island himself. There he is convinced that treasure awaits; treasure will endear him to his father.

The odds favor a mid-ocean death. The trio are lucky. The plane is destroyed, taking vital supplies with it, but all three manage to reach the Island in one piece and alive, if not as unbattered as they might prefer.

The catch? The Island or rather its ruler, immortal, childish Peter, decrees well-defined roles for the people in his domain. Boys become adventurers. Girls (or at least girls who unlike Jordan do not pass themselves off as boys) are mothers, attending to the boys’ whims. Prudent boys and girls flee when they hit puberty. Those who remain on the Island, who survive Peter’s immediate displeasure, become the pirates with whom the Lost Boys endlessly war.

Pirates are as doomed as pubescent Lost Boys. It’s just that Peter defers their inevitable deaths for entertainment purposes. Captains Hook are particularly doomed, Peter taking enormous pleasure in vanquishing his foe over and over. This is of particular concern for Jordan. Jordan has no right hand. This makes her an idea candidate for the role of Captain Hook.

The obvious solution? Kill Peter and take control of Tink, the manifestation of the Island’s power. But if Peter were ever human, he is something very different now. How to kill a demigod?

~oOo~

The dimensions of the Island vary at different places in the book, which I will attribute to the hallucinatory nature of the setting.

I read this book in an advanced reader copy, which as you know generally come with warnings that the text is not final. In this case, each chapter has a curious box like the one below.

I wonder what the significance is? Formatting?

It has not been light-hearted, upbeat fiction week at James Nicoll Reviews. This book is more to the same.

I think it took its start in the unpleasant side to the original Peter Pan, who not only kidnaps beloved children and carelessly forgets his enemies once they are murdered, but is just as heartless towards his subjects. As the original text observes:

When they seem to be growing up, which is against the rules, Peter thins them out… 

Low embraces this aspect of the tale in every way Low could embrace it. Low’s Pan is overtly homicidal and relentlessly abusive as well, in particular to Tink. The pirates aren’t really pirates as such, but they certainly are homicidal, often towards each other. The Island, a personality itself, borders on something from the cosmic horror genre¹. The Lost Boys are amoral wretches and the current mother-figure has a very dark secret.

One might excuse Jordan’s excesses as those of a desperate drug addict. Alas, she was always violently angry at the world. Long before she met Peter, Jordan savagely beat her four-year-old sister for upstaging Jordan. All her history on the Island dictates is how her tendencies emerge, not what tendencies she has in the first place. Luckily for Jordan, one of Baron’s great strengths is blinding himself to Jordan’s reality. Jordan will have to work very hard to lose Baron.

Readers who have long yearned for a Peter Pan populated by monstrous figures², a version of the tale that stresses the hazards of loving violent addicts, rejoice! This is the relentlessly grim dark fantasy you’ve been craving. If you’re a parent, however, you would be well advised not to read this to young children at bedtime.

These Deathless Shores is available here (Amazon US), here (Amazon Canada), here (Amazon UK), here (Barnes & Noble), here (Chapters-Indigo), and here (Words Worth Books). I did not find These Deathless Shores at Apple Books.

1: The Island is an oddly defenseless cosmic horror. What it fears most of all is being colonized by humans and killed off like all the other lands that humans have settled. Peter seems to be part of its immune system.

2: There are a few non-entities in the story, such as Tier.