What if the Pied Piper of Hamelin was a homicidal madman with magic powers that had long ago swore to kill Peter Piper? What if long ago when they last met, the Pied Piper was responsible for crippling Peter Piper’s wife, Bo Peep? These are the sort of questions answered in Peter and Max: A Fables Novel.
Peter and Max is a prose novel set in the universe of the long running Fables comic book. While an excellent comic in its own right, no knowledge of the comic is required to enjoy this novel. What new readers need to know about that universe is breezily explained at the beginning of this novel. Essentially, the characters from our oldest myths, fables, and stories were real in other worlds. As those worlds were taken over by dark armies, they fled to our world, living as immortals in a hidden community. There are more details, but that’s most of what the reader needs to know.
Peter Piper and his wife Bo Peep live alone in the wilderness, away from even other Fables. A long time ago, Bo Peep’s legs were twisted by dark magic. Due to her condition, they have kept themselves aloof, settling into a stable but codependent existence for the past few decades. Their stable but sad existence is shaken up when word comes that Peter’s brother Max has come to this world. Peter knows this is their eventual showdown that he had been dreading for many years. Despite his dread, he knows that he must go face Max. Unfortunately, Peter and everyone else knows he can’t win such a showdown; they warn him, but no one stops him.
This novel weaves back and forth between the past and the present. The vehicle for the novel is the present day, where Peter is learning that Max has returned and his travelling to face against him, but the bulk of the novel is the past. In another world that resembled the Bavarian Black Forest, Peter and Max were brothers, young children and travelling minstrels. Max was growing into his troubled teen years and Peter was but ten years old. Things were good. But jealousy and dark armies changed all that. Peter was a more gifted musician, and so was the recipient of their father’s family treasure, something Max believed was his birthright as the elder son. From that erupted a profound jealousy, but jealousy alone would not have caused all this. The dark armies invaded, and everything they knew fell to ruin. They fled into the dark forest of monsters and witches to escape the armies. But in the forest, Max’s jealousy explodes and transforms him into something so much darker…
This novel is written in a very magical storytelling style, but not in the sparkling style of Disney. This is a tale more in the style that readers may be familiar from Neil Gaiman or Diana Wynne Jones. It is like a fairy tale and magical, but there is darkness and pain. Max’s descent from a good person into a violent madman fits this style, seeing a man corrupted by dire straights, evil witches, and fatal flaws. The story of how their lives fell apart would be an interesting story of its own, but attaching it to the modern day story of Max’s return and Peter’s final confrontation adds a depth and foreshadowing to their childhood that makes it even more interesting.
If you’re a fan of Fables and enjoy novels, without question you should read this book. If you enjoy whimsical fantasy, dark fairy tales, the work of Gaiman or Diana Wynne Jones, then you should also read this. For the remaining few reading that don’t qualify in the above: if you enjoy stories and storytelling, some magic, some conflict, and are willing to suspend disbelief, you will enjoy this book.
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