These Deathless Shores by P.H. Low

“The Island tracked everything that washed ashore.
An invisible barrier surrounded it, a shimmering wall a hundred kilometers in every direction. Canoes sank in crossing; navigators lost sight of the stars. Later, trawlers and airplanes split themselves against nothing, and the probes they sent into the water returned out of sync or cracked precisely down the middle.
Only the birds arrived unscathed. Only the foxes floating in on driftwood rafts.
So the Island embraced them with limestone arms and swaying trees- as it did the corpses, the broken gunports. Death is the way of things, after all, and who was it to question the sea?
And then came the child.          
A baby, gurgling happily in the wings of birds, a laugh-bright golden creature clutched in his chubby hands. He lived. And when he grew into a boy, he flew away and brought others back to play with him: children from faraway lands, sailors reeking of gunpowder and cannon fire, silver-tongued tellers of stories. Cloaked, all of them, in the winged creature’s brightness- or else so close to death that they might as well have worn their own wings.”

-These Deathless Shores by P.H. Low

I am all about retellings. Books that take a classic story, like Peter Pan, and twist them into something entirely new. When I heard about These Deathless Shores, I knew I had to read it, and it is an incredibly dark and wonderfully new story that readers will find themselves drawn into. Jordan once ran away to the Island and became a Lost Boy, but when it was discovered she was a girl and that she was growing up, she fled and ran back into the city, San Jukong, that she’d never loved at all. Nine years later, Jordan is barely scraping by. She fights for a living, chasing enough money to pay for the drug karsa. It helps abate her addiction to what she truly craves, Dust. But she can’t get Dust in San Jukong. She can only get it if she goes back to the Island and tries to take it from Peter. The one who scorned and betrayed her the first chance he got.

The first time Jordan went to the Island, she wasn’t alone. She went with her close friend Baron. They opened the window and fled to the Island. Baron isn’t really looking to go back to the Island. He’s not sure if it’s possible, but he’s also really trying to put the past behind him and make a name for himself the ‘normal’ way. By going to college, getting a job and working like everyone else. Jordan slightly mocks this life for him. Baron isn’t addicted to Dust or karsa, but he struggles with crippling anxiety that leaves him breathless and overwhelmed. When Jordan runs to him with the idea of going back to the Island, he’s adamant about all the reasons it would be a bad idea. But in the end, the two go.

Threatening a pilot she knows, Tier, the three embark on a dangerous journey back to the Island. What waits for them isn’t open arms and piles of Dust, but darkness, cruelty and violence. Jordan, who once helped defeat Captain Hook, is now living in a time where she must come to terms with the fact that she might be a villain herself.

There’s so much I loved about this book. I loved that Peter Pan was not a perfect ideology of staying a child forever. There was a lot of darkness and danger to Peter in this story. I wish I could have seen a little more of how he became who he was, but he wasn’t really the focal point of this story. It was more about Jordan, Baron, the Lost Boys and fighting for what you want and believe in. Jordan was a really interesting character to me because she was so incredibly flawed and struggling with a pretty serious addiction. I think at times that warped her sense of right and wrong, but her fall and growth as a character was really dynamic. Deep down, I believe Jordan has a good heart, but she lived in a tough world, and she had to fight for everything she wanted. Nothing was handed to her, and for a lot of us, that’s what real life is like, isn’t it?

Baron’s struggle with anxiety was so well-depicted. It is one of the best mental health depictions I’ve come across in awhile. P.H. Low has done a tremendous job of illustrating how much of a constant force anxiety is against the mind. I have enormous respect for his character to keep pushing forward, despite it all, no matter how hard it got.

Don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of other really great characters in this book. Tier and Chay among them, but I recommend just walking into this story and discovering them for yourself. It’s a really beautifully written, incredibly diverse and complex novel, and I’m absolutely excited to read more by this author in the future.