Ratings:
2 stars (Goodreads)
Average star rating – 1.75 stars
T/W - Rape (Severe) Murder
Synopsis
Alice sounds like a retelling of the classic Alice in Wonderland Story, with a psychological horror/thriller element thrown in.
Alice has been put in a mental asylum after being found wandering the streets ranting about a white rabbit, she is covered in blood. Whist inside the asylum, she is able to converse with Hatcher, the man in the cell next to hers through a hole between the two cells. Hatcher explains about the Jabberwocky, a mythical creature that is also being held under the asylum. Following a daring escape from the asylum one night, we follow Alice and Hatcher as they try to destroy the Jabberwocky and find the White Rabbit who started this whole thing.
Review – minor spoilers ahead
I went into this story knowing that there is going to be a horror element, or at the very least some dark scenes, but assumed that it was going to be a story that focused on what happened to Alice after she left Wonderland and was placed in an asylum. However, what happened was a girl called Alice walked through a world that did not really have any similarities to Wonderland with characters that merely shared similarities in names characteristics with their namesakes in the original story, for example, Cheshire has a really big smile and speaks in riddles and Alice is the main character who we follow through this story. But it is there that the similarity ends. The book is not marketed as a retelling however, it is inspired by Lewis Carrol’s work. I was therefore disappointed to find the inspiration limited to the names and physical descriptions of the characters in the story rather than something that was based on the plot, but that may be down to me rather than an actual issue with the book.
Writing style – I am not going to lie and say that I didn’t enjoy reading this story when I was reading it. It was written well, although limited in some of the descriptions. I enjoyed the flow of the writing, but there was nothing stand out about it.
Plot – I hated it, the basic premise of the story was Alice trying to find the way to defeat the Jabberwocky after it is released from the Asylum. However, what actually happened was Alice going on a Kill Bill style spree going against the top grand leaders of gangs in Old City, who are also characters from the original story – and I am not talking the Red Queen (who doesn’t even feature in this book) but rather characters like the Caterpillar!!! There are scenes throughout that include nudity, rape and sexual depravity it is a disturbing read, just not in the way I was expecting.
Characters – Alice contains very few good characters despite the source material. Alice is a bit mindless and I wasn’t a big fan. Despite all of the evidence around her, she would not believe what she is being told. Despite what she has been through, she seems very unshaken by the whole experience and is able to engage in some of the murders without so much as flinch. As for the forced romance with Hatcher, it made me distinctly uncomfortable as it seemed to be a shoe horned into the story as an afterthought. He is depicted the same as nearly every man in the story (i.e. a potential rapist), even though he does not act on his impulses which is what is meant to distinguish him from the bad guys in this story. The fact that he uses the line “she is mine” when referencing Alice is also a cause for concern for me. The four main people (and they are people) that Alice and Hatcher go after (as they are the bad guys) are completely one dimensional as they are all guilty on one heinous act throughout (depicted in all its gory nature), although they may go about it in different ways. There are two-real evil, nasty, bad guys that we need to be concerned about – the White Rabbit (WHAT??!!!) and the Jabberwocky – both of which are dispatched with incredibly quickly and without much fuss. There was no need for the amount of time that was taken to get to the end, as apparently all that was needed was imagination! It is so annoying when a character that is supposed to be the bad guy is removed from the story in a total of 2 pages. Also, where is the red queen in all of this, I know she appears in the sequel, but her character is almost as iconic as Alice and it seems a bit out of sorts to have an Alice in Wonderland based story without her.
World building - I still don’t know if we are in wonderland or somewhere else with the same characters. The World itself develops along with the story but there is not a lot of detail. There are two cities – Old and New – in which these characters live. There are gang leaders who all fight each other for rule of the streets, with civilians caught in the middle. It sounds a bit like Victorian England with occasional mythical creatures. I wish there had been more information about the world we were in as it was unclear.
Conclusion - A disturbing dive into what would happen if the Bride was Alice
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