The Bridge to Never Land (Peter and the Starcatchers #5)

My review



The Bridge to Neverland is the sort-of sequel to the Starcatchers series.  It's set in the same universe as Starcatchers, but fast-forwards to a modern day take on this.  It's so modern, in fact, that it almost seems to read as an OC (Original Character) insert.  Two siblings find a clue to Neverland, a place only in books, and then they befriend Peter and the rest.  However, this IS the official sequel series, so Barry and Pearson did have some tricks up their sleeves, that took the edge off of the Mary Sue-ness of the plot.



First off, the "desperate, thrilling quest" essentially entails them running away from home, so the parents (naturally!) panic, and call a private investigator.  This man, Lester Armstrong, is a "master of the computer-aided search", and has a "nationwide reputation", which obviously means that he'll never be able to catch the kids.  He's great comic relief, as his narration mostly involves his paycheck, and how desperate he is to obtain the reward.  (At least, as a kid, I always found this type of character hilarious.)



They run all over the place, getting clues and meeting people, and they eventually find out that Neverland is actually in a parallel dimension, set up by none other than the famed Albert Einstein, inserting a little bit of physics into an otherwise fantasy-prone world.  The portal to this magical island, coincidentally, is on the Peter Pan ride in Disney World.  This also leads to a bunch of cool inserts of a couple of different background characters, who interpret what they see as part of the "magic" of Disney.



The crowd applauded.  Even the longtime veteran visitors, the true Disney faithful, were pumped.  The Magic Kingdom seemed unusually magical tonight. ~pg. 387



And best of all, Peter is still a kid.  It gets annoying when people start to forcibly make Peter age up in modern tales so that he can be put in a love triangle.  His initial description is none too flattering--"filthy and disheveled" (325)--but it keeps consistent with the Starcatchers series, and makes sure to note that HE HAS A BRITISH ACCENT, cleanly separating him from the Disney-conjured ideal.  It's quite funny when, towards the end of the book, he sees the Disney-fied version of himself, and the subsequent answer of Tinker Bell is amusing as well.



However, there were a bunch of problems that nagged at me while reading.  The tense was quite inconsistent, changing from past to present tense.  For example, in Peter's initial description:



She knew, of course, that he never aged, but his appearance in the flesh drove the point home emphatically: he's just a boy. ~p. 325



That wasn't it.  The modern kids, Aiden and Sarah had unbelievably stilted language.  It often forgoed common contractions (ex. I'm, can't, etc.) and went for the full, formal version.  I forgot which precise example there was in the book, but this was just as bad:



"Stop calling me chicken.  I am not chicken." ~p. 61



Personally, that sort of thing irritates me a LOT.  If you're going to make a teenager, then you've gotta TALK like one, not just assign an age and pretend that the only thing needed is the idea!  Even italicizing the "not" would've made it believable!

Rating