Book Review: Capt. Hook-The Adventures of a Notorious Youth


“Courage is the decision to fly straight into the flame while knowing the consequences.” 



Someday, I will be caught up in my book reviewing.  And it will be wonderful.  For now, I'm behind.  Way behind.  I read this book back in December while I was home for Christmas.


I was extremely wary of this book for two reasons.  1) I don't like books/movies/etc that try to make the villains into non-villains.  I agree that everyone is good, and such.  In most of the books I write, I don't even really have villains.  I simply have antagonistic circumstances most of the time.  But in fairy tales and the like, villains are just bad because they are.  They don't need reasons.  2) I love Peter Pan, too, but why does only it get 1,000,001 retellings?

This is a origin-story for Captain Hook.  James Matthew, or as he styles himself "Jas Matthew Bastard," is the illegitimate son of some lord--Lord B.  Doesn't clarify past that.  He shows up at Eton, and immediately makes many enemies.  The book is based off of a speech that J.M. Barrie gave at Eton about how Captain Hook was an Etonian.  The speech was better than the book, but most things written by J.M. Barrie would be difficult to be better than. It was hard to get into at first, and I wasn't all for the entire book, but it wasn't as bad as I was afraid it would be. 

I can't say that I loved it, but I think that other people might.  To me it felt like they were trying to make a bad person likeable.  And they weren't even trying to say, "Oh, he's just misunderstood," it was just that he was bad. But with flair.

It was written with a bit of fun and flair, and had a lot of creativity, but it just wasn't really my cup of tea.

3 stars for Capt. Hook--The Adventures of a Notorious Youth. 

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