Peter Nimble and His Fantastic Eyes

Peter Nimble and His Fantastic Eyes, Jonathan Auxier, 381 pages

Orphan Peter Nimble grew up as a thief with nearly supernatural sleight-of-hand prowess, able to pick a lock with his fingers or steal an orange out of the middle of a pyramid at the market. Although he is blind, his other senses are so acute he can even identify valuables by their smell. But Peter bites off more than he can chew when he steals a mysterious box from a traveling hat salesman and is transported into a mysterious realm full of ravens, traitors, monstrous apes, and clockwork mechanisms, where everything he thought he knew is turned on its head.

This book was pretty good, though it was shockingly, brutally violent – many characters die in the background (including, it is implied, several children killed by their own brainwashed parents!), and several main characters are maimed gruesomely - events that are not given as much weight as they deserve. Additionally, the twists are pretty easy to predict, and the plot feels contrived on occasion (Peter has access to three different pairs of Fantastic Eyes with unique magical abilities, but he can only use each of them when the time is right, which is absolutely just a way to artificially pace out the plot). I think Peter Nimble and His Fantastic Eyes would have been improved as a heist, rather than a more traditional fantasy adventure. Most of all, the treatment of Peter’s disability was very frustrating. To avoid spoilers, I can’t go further into it.

I may be being rather harsh on this book, but there were enough aspects I found disturbing that I would have a hard time recommending Peter Nimble and His Fantastic Eyes, especially not to a sensitive child. I mostly enjoyed it while I was reading, but the more I think about it, the less I like it. I will not be reading the sequel, Sophie Quire and the Last Storyguard.