Book review: Peter & Max

What with going to the theatre all the time and then writing about it, I don't read as much as I used to, as you can probably tell from the infrequency of my book reviews. My reading of comics has pretty much disappeared completely, but I did used to like Bill Willingham's Fables series, which recast famous fairytale characters in the real world, against the backdrop of a war across multiple worlds. So it was fun to revisit the Fables universe for Willimgham's spin-off novel, in prose (with just the occasional illustration by Steve Leialoha,) Peter & Max.

It focuses on characters who didn't figure much in the comics (so shouldn't be particularly alienating for anyone who isn't familiar with them,) Peter Piper and his older, evil brother Max, aka the Pied Piper. The story alternates between the Mundy (real) World in the present day, where Peter discovers his brother has returned to wreak havoc, and decides to take him on before he can do so; and flashbacks to their childhood in the Fable Homelands, and how and why their relationship turned into a deadly rivalry, and Max into a monster. I really enjoyed this, it's a separate story from the main Fables arc but a few familiar characters do turn up as well - not in a way that required prior knowledge though, if anything it might be a good taster for people not sure if they want to read graphic novels, to get an idea of the twisted spin Willingham puts on familiar figures. The final confrontation between the brothers ends rather abruptly, which at first I found a bit of a let-down, but on reflection it felt like the very simple, obvious and inevitable culmination of the story up to that point, and had a poetic justice to it.