Partecipai tempo fa al release blitz del primo volume, come non partecipare anche a quello dedicato al secondo? :3 Continuano le avventure di Peter e Gwen ma con un'aggiunta di personaggio <3
The Piper’s Price
Audrey Greathouse
(The Neverland Wars #2)
Published by: Clean Reads Publishing
Publication date: February 21st 2017
Genres: Fairy Tales, Retelling, Young Adult
Peter is plotting his retaliation against the latest bombing. Neverland needs an army, and Peter Pan is certain children will join him once they know what is at stake. The lost boys and girls are planning an invasion in suburbia to recruit, but in order to deliver their message, they will need the help of an old and dangerous associate—the infamous Pied Piper.
Hunting him down will require a spy in in the real world, and Gwen soon finds herself in charge of locating the Piper and cutting an uncertain deal with him. She isn’t sure if Peter trusts her that much, or if he’s just trying to keep her away from him in Neverland. Are they friends, or just allies? But Peter might not even matter now that she’s nearly home and meeting with Jay again.
The Piper isn’t the only one hiding from the adults’ war on magic though, and when Gwen goes back to reality, she’ll have to confront one of Peter’s oldest friends… and one of his earliest enemies.
—
EXCERPT:
They found the forest’s hiking trail moments before breaking the tree line. “Where are we going, Peter?” He was heading toward a mobile home community next to the state park.
He continued to walk with confidence. His usual cocky stride looked surprisingly like the swagger of an ordinary teenage boy. “My friend lives here. Don’t worry. Don’t look like such a stranger here.”
She didn’t want to appear conspicuous, but Gwen was too baffled to help it. The unkempt lawns were boxed in by chain-link fences covered in varying degrees of rust. They passed a lawn littered with bicycles; on the other side of the gravel street, two different cars were parked on the lawn, clearly non-functional. Satellite dishes were on every trailer home. Despite all being painted differently, the track housing still managed to present a uniformity of depressing color.
Multiple houses had motorcycles out front or a dog milling around their yard. When she and Peter passed a pack of Rottweilers, the dogs ran up to the fence and began snarling until all the other dogs in the neighborhood were barking too. “Ignore it,” Peter advised her.
She was scared. This was not the sort of place she ever expected to visit with Peter. She didn’t trust his ability to protect her here. This wasn’t his world, but it wasn’t hers either. They were both out of their element. Peter just didn’t have the sense to realize it.
Winding down the gravel road, Gwen matched Peter’s pace almost step for step. They approached a blue-and-grey house. Like the others, it had wooden latticework around the bottom to help obscure the fact it didn’t have a foundation in the ground. The square house reminded Gwen of how she would take shoeboxes and try to turn them into homes for her dolls by decorating them. It was hard to fathom that she was walking up the plastic steps of the porch to knock on the door.
She waited, feeling her heartbeat in her throat, her toes, and everywhere besides her chest. Even the predictable noise of the door opening startled her.
A woman with a long, black braid and beige cardigan stood in the doorway. Gwen looked up at her, and then watched as the sharp features of her dark face dissolved into unadulterated shock.
“Peter?”
The startled woman ushered them in. She was just as uncomfortable with their presence in the trailer park as Gwen. Once inside, they stood in a living room full of old furniture, facing a kitchen with old electric appliances. There was no unity or romance to the orange recliner, chipped mixing bowl, off-white blender, dull toaster, and sunken couch. It was a bunch of old stuff that looked like it represented several decades of objects abandoned at Goodwill. The chingadera and bric-a-brac wasn’t any more cohesive: porcelain angles, an antique pot, a vase full of bird feathers, and a stopped clock made the place confusing and strange in the same way her grandmother’s house had been.
“What are you doing here?” she hissed, pulling her cardigan close and tossing her thick braid over her shoulder and out of her way. She had a shapeless housedress underneath the beige sweater, and a pair of black leggings insulating her legs as she stomped around, heavy-footed in her leather slippers. She looked comfortable, except for the unexpected guests who were putting her so ill at ease. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“I need your help,” Peter said.
“They’re still keeping tabs on me.”
“That’s why I came in disguise.”
“You’re being irresponsible. You’re jeopardizing us both, and Neverland to boot.”
“I took all the right precautions. This is important.” Hollyhock and Foxglove wrestled their way out of the pixie purse and came twinkling out now that they knew they were safely inside.
“You brought fairies here?” she exclaimed. She leaned down and grabbed a hold of his arm, forcing him to look her dead in her dark eyes. Gwen wanted to leave. This wasn’t a friend, not anymore. This was a grown-up, and unlike Antoine the aviator, she was not amused with Peter’s wartime antics.
“What happens if they figure it out and come to question me?”
Peter scoffed. “You won’t tell them.”
“What if they threaten to arrest me? They could put me away forever until I told them what they needed to know, and nobody here would stop them.”
Peter broke free of her hold with ease; she wasn’t actually trying to restrain him. “Preposterous,” he declared. “If they did that, you would sit, stone-faced and silent in your cell until they all died.”
“What if they beat me?”
“You’d take the blows as though you were made of rock, and you would not speak.” Peter seemed to disregard the question.
“What if they tortured me and stuck blades under my nails?” she demanded.
“Then you would not even scream, but stay silent as a stone!” Peter insisted, hopping up onto a wooden kitchen chair at her dining table, looking down at the woman.
“What if they bring knives and cut off my fingers, one at a time, until I told them how to find you?”
Peter yelled right back, “Then you would steal their knives and scalp them all like the redskin princess you are!”
Her anger slunk off her face and out of her shoulders. She shook her head, frowning as a sad laugh escaped her. She clung to her sweater, blinking back tears, until, at last, she flung her arms around Peter. Still on the chair, he had to bend down to return the embrace.
“Oh, Peter,” she muttered, unaware of the tears slipping off her smiling face. “Oh, Peter.”
“It’s good to see you, Tiger Lily.”
PLAYLIST:
THE PIPER'S PRICE
Complete Playlist:
1. Impossible Girl #1
The Impossible Girl
She's the first one of
her kind, and the last one in her line.
She's
a creature so rare, you can't be sure she's really there.
Sometimes I like to remember that Gwen really is in a unique
position, and look at her from the admiring eyes of everyone else
around her. She might not admit it, but this is her song.
2. Start With Goodbye, Stop With
Hello
Eliza Rickman
We'll start with goodbye, stop with
hello
Never a hand hardly to hold...
Even though this is a more of a love song, it reminds me of Gwen and
Peter because of how full of paradox and confliction all Peter's
relationships are. It seems pertinent when he sends Gwen away from
Neverland in the start of the book.
3. Businessmen
Snowapple
Thousands of them businessmen
crumbling, crawling up the stairs
Two thousand of them sleepy eyes
fighting against time...
This song (and its music video
especially) captures a little bit of the anonymous antagonistic force
that Gwen starts to hunt down and put faces and names too in this
installment of the story.
4. Seven Years
Lukas Graham
It was a big, big world but we
thought we were bigger
Pushing each other to the limits, we were
learning quicker...
This song seemed
to be all over the radio while I was drafting The Piper's Price, and
I think it captures Gwen's fear of how fast growing up can happen.
5. Circles
Machineheart
If I get tired and say that I wanna
change my mind
Pull me in a circle, so I can change it one more
time...
If this doesn't sum
up Gwen's decision making process, I don't know what does. She pulls
180 degree turns in her head so often, she always seems to circle
back 360 degrees by the end of her fretting. She's very consistent
for someone so conflicted.
6. I'm in Love Again
Maria Mena
Oh I'm in love again, again,
And
you may call me tomorrow my friend, yes,
You may kiss me again and
again...I'll hold on tight
There's nothing better than realizing
you're in love and getting a second chance at things with a good
friend. I can only imagine how this song loops in Gwen's head every
time she sneaks out to meet up with Jay.
7. Phoenix
The Jane Austen Argument
Oh, what have I become? And where is
my mother?
Oh, bring me my sticks and spices,
that I may build this birthing pyre...
It wouldn't be a complete playlist
without a melancholy song about questioning who you are and wondering
if it wouldn't be such a bad idea to start this whole “life”
thing all over again.
8. The Pied Piper
Del Shannon
This was on a “Hits of 1960s” CD my
Dad had, and I loved it for inexplicable reasons as a child. I like
to imagine this peppy love song is playing as Piper walks into the
bar, and its upbeat tempo curdles his already dismal mood.
9. I Walked Alone
Rachel Rose Mitchell
If one's as
good as their word,
There's nothing
good in you
And there's nothing I can do.
When Gwen makes a shady deal with the
Piper and gets burned, you have to wonder whom she's more frustrated
with: the mysterious man who tricked her, or the cocksure boy who
sent her on the mission in the first place?
10. Come Little Children
From Hocus Pocus
Come
Little Children, I'll Take Thee Away,
Into a Land of
Enchantment...
Nothing
says “kidnapping children with song” like this classic,
originally sung by Sarah Jessica Parker for Disney's Halloween-y
“Hocus Pocus” movie. I ended up going in a very different
direction with Piper's song, but this was often playing in the
background while I wrote.
Author Bio:
Audrey Greathouse is a lost child in a perpetual and footloose quest for her own post-adolescent Neverland. Originally from Seattle, she earned her English B.A. from
Southern New Hampshire University's online program while backpacking around the west coast and pretending to be a student at Stanford. A pianist, circus artist, fire-eater, street mime, swing dancer, and novelist, Audrey wears many hats wherever she is. She has grand hopes for the future which include publishing more books and owning a crockpot. You can find her at audreygreathouse.com.
Grazie mille alla Xpresso per avermi permesso di partecipare a questo blitz <3
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