Number 8 is Tigerheart by Peter David. I've had some ups and downs with Peter over the years (well, ok, really only one down, so nevermind) but overall, I've always enjoyed his stuff, and he is mentioned a few times in this blog due to his Arthurian cycle. So when I saw Tigerheart on sale for a ridiculously cheap price, it had to come home with me.

I loved this damn book. It's been awhile since a book made me tear up, but this sure did. Tigerheart is a pastiche of Peter Pan. It's not a true retelling, perhaps a bit of a sequel, but whatever it is, I thought it beautiful and I enjoyed it much more than the original.

It's not just that the story is familiar of course, but it's also that David's narrative voice so perfectly captured the narrative voice of so much late 19th/early 20th century children's literature, where the narrator is omnicient and very nearly a character in themselves. It's a voice I don't find that's pulled off well very often (I think C.S Lewis did it brilliantly in his Chronicles of Narnia) and so David should be lauded for this alone.

But he should also be lauded for creating an interesting character in Paul Dear, who holds his own with The Boy and Captains Hack and Slash and sweet Gwenny. And he should be lauded for such a beautiful, moving treatise on what it means to be a child, and what it means to be an adult, and how moving from one to the other is difficult but doesn't always mean they have to be mutually exclusive either.

Well done Peter David, really, really well done.