DNF Review: Alias Hook by Lisa Jensen

Title: Alias Hook
Author: Lisa Jensen
Genre: Fantasy / Fairy-Tale Retelling
Release Date: 8 July 2014
Source: From publisher in exchange for an honest review

The flip-side of Peter Pan, the historical fantasy, Alias Hook, is a time-traveling love story about male and female, love and war, and the delicate art of growing up.

Captain James Benjamin Hook is a grown man stranded in a world run by a capricious 11-year-old boy. Once an embittered warrior with a grudge against the world, now Hook is trapped forever in a pointless war he can never win against the boy tyrant, Pan, and his magical allies.

When a grown woman dreams her way to the Neverland in defiance of all the boy's rules, she may be the key to Hook's redemption—maybe even his release—if they can unravel the curse that binds him there before Pan can capture her and drag Hook back into their neverending game.

But nothing is won in the Neverland without the forfeit of something else. And the price of Hook's freedom may be more than he can bear to pay.

The problem here is two-fold.

Nothing at all happened for the first 20% of the book. So I read, and read, and read about Hook and his past (Oh, woe is me), and how he was wronged by every woman he ever met, or about how he was always about his own image - at the expense of anyone that got in the way.

I should know by now to expect nothing but treachery from a woman.

I've known it all my life. Why should this woman be different than all the others?

Never mind that you left your fiancee to go pirating. Or that after being captured and freed, you found a woman who engaged you mentally and physically and you left her, too, for your bloodlust. But of course, these women betrayed you.

Women are relegated to the Mary or Whore route. He speaks of attempting to pillage the Indians for their women. He talks of the fairies that try to beguile them with their lusty bodies. They're all temptresses out to get him.

Anyway, that's a whole 'nother rant.

My problems were the damn HUGE blocks of text, listing out every single thing in the damn room, or his wardrobe, or whatever. I struggled not to skim, to just to get something going on. I was so BORED.

Then there's Hook himself. There's no hero in Neverland, is what I can take away from this. There's Pan - the tyrant - who won't let Hook die and go to his peace; because afterall, who else would Pan fight? Then there's Hook, who wasn't a much better person in life. And has carried his rage here for over 200 years.

I'm quite sure that the arrival of Parrish, a woman, is supposed to be the catalyst to his change and I'm kind of curious how they're going to defeat (or escape) Pan...but not enough to keep reading.

Unfortunately, this book just didn't work for me. The long passages of introspection by Hook were too much for me to continue to read.

Grade: DNF at 35%

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