This book was fun, well-written, and a great take on a Neverland ever-after adventure story, with interesting options for an expansion into additional magical and mythological hijinks. I definitely hope to see more of this world and these characters in future books.

Ghosts, gremlins, fairies, oh my!

Three words: fantastical, unique, and adventurous. There are many aspects of the Peter Pan story that we know and love included in Gods of Neverland. It kept me engaged and was full of different legends and folklore I’ve never seen paired with Peter Pan. It was almost too unbelievable but what can I say? This is a fantasy novel. I recommend to anyone who has an open mind and loves spies and adventure.

This was a fun retelling of Peter Pan, but it has quite a few flaws. The writing is a bit disjointed and lacks depth, especially with its main characters' stories. We know virtually nothing about them and it was hard to build a love for them. Overall, it was fun but I probably will not be revisiting this.

While I will say this book did a good job taking inspiration from the original work Barrie wrote, I also wonder if that's where it could fall flat. I believe this is supposed to be an adult book, but it very much feels like it is meant for a younger audience. Particularly in its discomfort taking risks. Peter Pan retellings are popular this year, and subverting a lot of the original tropes of the story is what sets these apart and makes them feel mature enough to stand up with other adult works.

I think there is room for earnest interpretations of fairy tales, but there needs to be enough calculation to understand WHO wants that. This would have been a good concept for middle grade.

There's an identity crisis going on with this book and I blame the marketing team.

"YA APPEAL: Despite Michael’s age, this is a story about rediscovering the magic of youth. Centered around Peter Pan and set in a fantastical world, God of Neverland will appeal to fans of YA fantasies, such as Elizabeth Lim’s So This Is Love and Jen Calonita’s Mirror Mirror. While a prolific self-published YA author, this is Gama’s first adult novel."

So, let's digest that. The Author has four self-published books. This is his first go-around for an "adult" novel from a legit publisher. At no point did anyone actually read this book between it being written and it being marketed because it is way off base. Despite Michael being an Adult, the book reads like a YA Novel. This is its biggest weakness. If it had more snark it would be a Percy Jackson novel. It's not bad despite how often characters half-smile or have tight grins. I wouldn't classify it as being for adults. YA Appeal? No...this IS a YA book. I'm sorry.

But that also works in its favor. Because acting as a YA Book, you get to excuse a lot of what happens without explanation. The Knights of the Round? The brief mentions of other literary characters such as D'Artagnan? Different deities existing? There's a lot thrown in your face all at once which people are going to complain about. I think it's forgivable in a YA Series.

As with most things, I feel like it plays on the safe side. If I was writing this, I would have pushed it to the extreme a little bit more. There's a line to cross when you are dealing with something many people have cherished memories of. Even Neverland is sacred. I would have toppled those pillars. Maybe Adult to me is too adult. Too Gritty.

I would agree with others that as the cast grew in size they largely become uninteresting. Will serves only to ask questions and have some minor conversations about how Neverland works but in most encounters with enemies he fades away. It would have been interesting to see some more physicality out of his character in dealing with Neverland.

I'd probably go on more, but I'm exhausted. I will say that every time I sat down to read this, no matter what time of the day, I could only go a few pages at a time before my eyes started drifting close. Getting through to the ending was a challenge. Will I pick up book 2 in 2023? Possibly. But I'll bring a pillow next time.

I received an eARC in exchange for an honest review; thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity.

Michael Darling left Neverland to grow up, but the magic, monsters, and wonders of his childhood were not so easy to leave behind.

This book was fun, well-written, and a great take on a Neverland ever-after adventure story, with interesting options for an expansion into additional magical and mythological hijinks. I definitely hope to see more of this world and these characters in future books.

Michael is no Prince Charming, but rather a damaged, complicated hero still recovering from personal tragedy, trying to build a new “normal” life. Called back to his knightly duty (“just this once”) by loyalty and his irrepressible love of adventure, Michael returns to Neverland (taking his emotional baggage with him) and teams up with an unlikely crew of assorted heroes, villains, ghosts, and fantastical individuals to save Peter Pan and Neverland itself.
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It seems like lately the urban fantasy genre has really begun to embrace the inclusion of characters and mythological creatures from more recent works like Peter Pan and Alice in Wonderland, and I’m here for it. I’ve read several takes on the Peter Pan story - darker ones such as Brom’s The Child Thief, the deeper emotional recovery journey of A.C. Wise’s Wendy, Darling, and the adventurous “What If?”of Liz Brasswell’s Straight On ‘Till Morning - and this one is the first that I’ve read that’s opens up the story to include the possibility of other coexisting magical realities.

Michael is a very sympathetic and likable protagonist who demonstrates reasonable levels of vulnerability, charm and humor. I liked the exploration of themes of grief, growing up, and vulnerability that were explored through his arc in this story. His interactions with other characters are believable and appropriately established- we get enough information and backstory to accomplish the goals of a complete arc in this book, with more left open to explore in future books. I liked that there were strong female characters who were not just included to be a romantic love interest or a reward for the hero at the end of the book. I would definitely like to know more about Vanessa and her character and history in a future story. The use of established Peter Pan characters was great - it was just enough, but not too much. Again I think there’s lots of opportunity to explore more with some of the characters that appeared in this book. And Hook absolutely stole the show for me on this one.

I really liked the world that we get to explore here. The supernatural elements and the secret society parts were super fun. I think it would also be fun to explore the timeframe here. I haven’t read a lot of urban fantasy stuff that takes place in a post-WW1 one timeframe. I think if the series were to continue there could be some really interesting things about the exploration of grief and trauma post-wartime, particularly maybe expanding some of the stuff that we see with Will’s character.

I had a slight concern in that there did seem to be some slight queer baiting with one of the characters, and I hope they’re bold enough to explore that more explicitly in future books, if I read that correctly. It could just as easily be the very rare deep non-romantic feelings of love within a friendship i.e. between Bucky Barnes and Steve Rogers. IMO the set-up did seem to support it, and there’s a lot you can infer from context about the character, but it was pretty subtle, and could just have been added to demonstrate absence of toxic masculinity. Again I hope we get to see more of that journey in future books, but it is fine if it’s not talked about in this particular story.

The story was not dark in tone, but did have some tense moments. I feel like it’s definitely comfort adventure material. The tension level felt about like what you would expect from an Indiana Jones film, minus some of the more problematic parts.

I would recommend this book if you are in the mood for an action oriented urban fantasy, especially if you like Elliot James’ Pax Arcana series, Simon Green’s Ghost Finders series, Seanan McGuire’s Indexing duology, or are a general fan of new takes on Peter Pan mythology. This world set up also gave me very early vibes from tv shows like Grimm or The Librarians.

I liked it. More, please.

Me blitzing through Peter Pan retellings at the speed of sound? It's more likely than you think.

This was an enjoyable one. I would give it 3.5 stars if I could.

Unlike a whole lot of modern, adult Peter Pan retellings, this one isn't trying to be edgy, subvert the story, and tell some kind of dark version where Peter was the villain all along. God of Neverland leans hard into the original Barrie version, weaving it into a larger picture of magic and myth.

It's like a more grown up Peter and the Starcatchers, if you will. Refreshing.

Michael, the youngest Darling, is now grown up. He's a jaded ex-member of a secret society dedicated to fighting magical threats from all around the world. That doesn't last long and he gets dragged back into adventure quickly.

There's a lot to enjoy here:

• I like how the story just jumps right in. It doesn't spend five chapters explaining the backstory and the secret society ad nauseum. We're just going in feetfirst and getting our bearings as we go, which I liked because it had me immediately invested in unraveling the worldbuilding.

• The Knights and whole secret society idea is a lot of fun. I honestly wish they had featured in the story more strongly.

• Expanding the mythos of Neverland. I totally buy the idea that there was way more to that place than the original story contained, and I enjoyed exploring it.

• All the nods to the original book!!

• The whole subplot with Will, Wendy, and Jane.

My rating isn't higher because I think there's a lot of good here, but also kind of a lot that should have been MORE.

The biggest issue here for me is the characters and relationships:

Michael's past trauma is covered in a lot of ways, but we never really figure out what happened. We never really feel Michael's feelings about it, and we never really process him moving past it. Michael is a good character because he's dynamic, he takes action, but he barely has any personality outside of that. We don't know much about his past life or his internal, emotional life and all of that leads to him feeling weirdly shallow for a main character.

For all that we know little about Michael, we know even LESS about the other characters. Vanessa, the female action hero, is completely opaque. She works for the Knights, and that's LITERALLY all we know. She and Michael seem to know each other, but we never really find out how or why, and their friendship doesn't vibe very well. Anything about Vanessa as a person -- her motivation or past or hopes or thoughts or fears -- would have been helpful to convince me to care about her. But there was nothing, so I really just don't care.

The Never Bird? I don't even know why he was there other than to essentially be the pop-up text bubbles in a video game tutorial that tell you all the inside knowledge.

All the other members of the adventure squad were almost literally not even there.

Even the Will/Wendy/Jane subplot, which had the most emotional pathos, should have had far more than it actually did. Will was IN WWI for crying out loud. PLEASE lean a little harder into the time period, and into his trauma as a prisoner, and into who he is as a person besides just being the token outsider POV and saying "What? I don't understand" every ten seconds.

I also think that trying to make Hook an actual, serious villain would take more real work than this. I'm not afraid of him, and I'm not going to be afraid of him because even in the original book he was beat up by a little boy all the time. Raising this up to the level of successfully suspending disbelief for an adult audience is going to require more than just saying, "Hook is scary."

Overall, I enjoyed the read, but wasn't as head-over-heels as I wanted to be. This book easily could have been an amazing new favorite. There is so much imagination and potential here, but the necessary character investment to make it amazing just wasn't there for me.

So id like to start off by saying the premise of this book was awesome seeing michael as the focus but upon reading i felt thrown into something that i had no clue why or what was happening. It was very unsettling after finishing and realizing nothing came together.

I want to start off by saying that the concept of this book is great. I loved that Michael was the focus, instead of looking to Wendy as the main character like a lot of Peter Pan retellings tend to do, and I liked the idea of a secret organization investigating and interacting with all sorts of deities and supernatural creatures. I read and really enjoyed Peter and the Starcatchers growing up, so reading the summary put me in the mind of a similar idea but for an older audience. Where things went very wrong for me was the execution of this book. The plot was hard to follow, it picks up years after Michael has already left the organization that tries to pull him back in for one more job, so there is a lot of context here that gets skipped over. The characterization is not strong, and the dialogue is hard to get through. The author throws a lot of concepts, like Peter Pan being a god known by another name, at readers very quickly with little explanation that hints are a very interesting world the author has crafted, but is overall not easy to follow or get into. There's no sense of why this organization is so invested in Peter, who's gone missing, or than even Michael himself, who's never been back to Neverland, would truly care enough to be pulled back into something it was made very clear he left for a reason. All in all, I liked the concept, but the finished product is too rough to tell a fun story i'm willing to stick with.

I'd like to thank NetGalley and Harper Voyager for allowing me a chance to read this book.

Any time that Brandon Sanderson adds a blurb for a book I'm interested. He writes books that I enjoy, Maybe he reads books that I enjoy too. (Also I think the cover art is done by Chris McGrath and I love his art for books.)

Woo. Boy. This is a confusing book. While reading it I had to think I missed something. The summary had me a bit confused because I thought that there would be some sort of backstory or covering from the author of why Peter is called Mapos and why Neverland is some sort of mythological place. Why Michael is some kind of 'knight', and why there is a following that sees into taking down evil sprites/wraiths/etc.

You're not given anything. You're thrown into this book where you have no idea why things are the way they are, you have literally no backstory or tales interspersed of this new Peter Pan lore the author has come up with. Nothing.

This appears to be the authors' first big official release and for it to be so confusing from Chapter 1? Not good. I seriously think I missed out on a book or something but if this is book one then perhaps a prequel novel or novella is needed.