2011 Book 5: Peter & Max
Book 5: Peter & Max by Bill Willingham, isbn 9781441836953, 400 pages / 7 cds, Vertigo/Brilliance Audio, $7.99
The Premise: (adapted from the back cover of the audiobook) When an unspeakable tragedy befalls a family of traveling minstrels in the heart of the Black Forest, Peter Piper and his older brother Max encounter ominous forces that will change them both irreparably ... changes that will follow them from their over-run Fable homeland into our own modern Mundane world. Sibling rivalry, magic, music and revenge abound.
My Rating: 3 stars
My Thoughts: Flippantly, this could be called "The Secret Origin of Peter and the Pied Piper." Then again, Willingham's entire FABLES concept could be written off flippantly ... which does it a great injustice. The FABLES story (characters of myth, legend and fairy tale driven out of their own mystical homelands and taking refuge in our own Mundane world while doing battle with their Adversary) is mostly told in the monthly comic book and then collected in the trade paperback "graphic novels." This original novel stands alone. Many of the main Fables cast make appearances or cameos, with Bigby Wolf and Frau Totenkinder playing important supporting roles despite some brief screen time. With so many classic European-based fairy tale characters making appearances in the ongoing series, it shouldn't have been a surprise that Willingham would eventually have a story that connects Peter Piper -- he who picked a pickled pepper, locked his wife in a pumpkin, and at age 10 faced down a great Wolf -- and the Pied Piper of Hamelin.
The story Willingham tells is a fairly straight-forward tale of sibling rivalry taken to extraordinary extremes. He stretches the drama of the story out by alternating between the characters' present-day existence in our own world and the events of their childhood and early adulthood in the fabled land of the Hesse, where most of the Fables hail from. The alternating of time periods does add some tension to the book, although it never quite reaches the level of tension I often experience reading the comic book. Where most of the comic storylines manage to surprise me, quite a bit of Peter & Max feels predictable. That being said, there was one moment late in the book, a moment that reveals a major plot point, that did take me by surprise. It explained an aspect of the book that had been bugging me earlier in terms of Peter's relationship with his wheelchair-bound wife without going for the explanation that would be emotionally easiest for the characters, and the reader, to deal with.
If the plot is predictable, what makes the book worth reading? Sometimes it's okay to know exactly where a book is going and not have any real suprises along the way. You know from the beginning that Peter and Max are headed for a final confrontation sometime before the book ends, and you know that along the way they are both going to encounter certain other Fables. The fun of the book is in seeing how Willingham runs the characters through their paces, and in the breezy storytelling. The story never bogs down -- we get the defining moments of each character's history (and sometimes get the same event told from two different perspectives) but we don't get a lot of extraneous detail.
So should people who have never read a Fables comic read Peter & Max? Yes. The story is "done in one." Fans of the Fables books will pick up on the "easter eggs" (some obvious, some not) that the author drops, but the casual reader will not be put off by rampant in-jokes. Everything you need to know about the world of the Fables is info-dumped for you at the start of the book, including the history of Fabletown and the famous Fabletown Compact. So there's no reason for readers who enjoy reading about "what happened after the fairy tale / nursery rhyme ended" to avoid the book just because it says "a FABLES novel" on the cover.
The Premise: (adapted from the back cover of the audiobook) When an unspeakable tragedy befalls a family of traveling minstrels in the heart of the Black Forest, Peter Piper and his older brother Max encounter ominous forces that will change them both irreparably ... changes that will follow them from their over-run Fable homeland into our own modern Mundane world. Sibling rivalry, magic, music and revenge abound.
My Rating: 3 stars
My Thoughts: Flippantly, this could be called "The Secret Origin of Peter and the Pied Piper." Then again, Willingham's entire FABLES concept could be written off flippantly ... which does it a great injustice. The FABLES story (characters of myth, legend and fairy tale driven out of their own mystical homelands and taking refuge in our own Mundane world while doing battle with their Adversary) is mostly told in the monthly comic book and then collected in the trade paperback "graphic novels." This original novel stands alone. Many of the main Fables cast make appearances or cameos, with Bigby Wolf and Frau Totenkinder playing important supporting roles despite some brief screen time. With so many classic European-based fairy tale characters making appearances in the ongoing series, it shouldn't have been a surprise that Willingham would eventually have a story that connects Peter Piper -- he who picked a pickled pepper, locked his wife in a pumpkin, and at age 10 faced down a great Wolf -- and the Pied Piper of Hamelin.
The story Willingham tells is a fairly straight-forward tale of sibling rivalry taken to extraordinary extremes. He stretches the drama of the story out by alternating between the characters' present-day existence in our own world and the events of their childhood and early adulthood in the fabled land of the Hesse, where most of the Fables hail from. The alternating of time periods does add some tension to the book, although it never quite reaches the level of tension I often experience reading the comic book. Where most of the comic storylines manage to surprise me, quite a bit of Peter & Max feels predictable. That being said, there was one moment late in the book, a moment that reveals a major plot point, that did take me by surprise. It explained an aspect of the book that had been bugging me earlier in terms of Peter's relationship with his wheelchair-bound wife without going for the explanation that would be emotionally easiest for the characters, and the reader, to deal with.
If the plot is predictable, what makes the book worth reading? Sometimes it's okay to know exactly where a book is going and not have any real suprises along the way. You know from the beginning that Peter and Max are headed for a final confrontation sometime before the book ends, and you know that along the way they are both going to encounter certain other Fables. The fun of the book is in seeing how Willingham runs the characters through their paces, and in the breezy storytelling. The story never bogs down -- we get the defining moments of each character's history (and sometimes get the same event told from two different perspectives) but we don't get a lot of extraneous detail.
So should people who have never read a Fables comic read Peter & Max? Yes. The story is "done in one." Fans of the Fables books will pick up on the "easter eggs" (some obvious, some not) that the author drops, but the casual reader will not be put off by rampant in-jokes. Everything you need to know about the world of the Fables is info-dumped for you at the start of the book, including the history of Fabletown and the famous Fabletown Compact. So there's no reason for readers who enjoy reading about "what happened after the fairy tale / nursery rhyme ended" to avoid the book just because it says "a FABLES novel" on the cover.