Reven: Across Golden Skies

Got sent my first advanced reader copy (ARC) from The Nerd Fam and was so freakin’ stoked! I really wish I could give it a glowing review, but sadly it’s only a ⭐️⭐️ for me. Based on the synopsis, I was ready to love this book, but alas. Ultimately, the concept was super clever and fun, but the execution left a lot to be desired.

"Reven" is a retelling of the classic Disney animated film Peter Pan written by Emily Swaim. If you’re a fan of the movie, you’ll either love or hate the concept of this book. It’s got all the same characters, but they are not the same people in the slightest. It was rather fun to see how each character would manifest in this retelling. Here, Wendi is written as the main hero, which was unfortunate because I personally couldn’t stand her. I found her to be incompetent and useless and her inner monologue was basically the same for the entirety of the novel. She grew very little as a person despite going through it. The majority of the characters are 12-15yo, so maybe I’m just too far removed from the target audience to fully appreciate it, but I fear kids that age won’t have the attention span to get very deep into the story.

It starts off slow with a lot of world-building and info-dumping in the form of a history/geography test. By the end of the book, I felt like we’d been given too much information on the wrong things and not enough on the important things, to the point that the relevance of key events was still murky. The fight scenes are all insanely chaotic, and yet are the best writing in the whole novel. And there are plenty of fight scenes. The rest of the writing is pretty simplistic, which again leads me to believe this novel is intended for middle grade audiences.

I personally found the “resolution” at the end to be horrific. I can’t say much more than that without giving it away, but suffice it to say I do not agree with how “justice” is portrayed in this book. Aside from that, my other main beef is with the diversity representation. There was so much diversity that none of it felt authentic. It felt like each character was given their diversity trait to tick a box and it was the author’s goal to tick every single box. It came across as performative. Take Wendi, for example. She has a panic attack (not her only diversity trait) after not being able to finish her exam. But then proceeds to run away from home, land on the business end of some futuristic weapons, and never have another panic attack for the rest of the novel. I mean, really? So yeah, I’m rather particular when it comes to accurate diversity representation in literature.

There’s a lot of hypocrisy in this novel, some blatant, some covert. I’m still trying to suss out if that was an intended device of Swaim’s, if she was trying to make a point and I’m simply too dense to get it, or if this too went the way of the world-building and lost focus. All it did was annoy me the more it kept happening.

Ultimately, I didn’t read this book in a single sitting, and that’s pretty rare for me. I also found myself getting distracted while reading a few times, another strike. Swaim’s reinvention of the classic characters really is brilliant. It’s just all the rest I could’ve done without. Seriously though, if you have a middle grade reader, I think Reven would actually be a good fit for them. You can purchase a copy here.