Alice

A deliciously dark and twisty take on Alice's Adventures in Wonderland that can read as both a retelling or a continuation, Alice by Christina Henry finds our heroine Alice locked away in an asylum after she is found wandering the Old City with no memory other than a bloody tea party and a man with long ears, like a rabbit would have. In the cell next to hers is Hatcher, a serial killer who lives in a world of lucidity followed by fits of madness. They form a bond, only able to communicate through nothing more than a mouse-hole in the wall. One night, the hospital catches fire, and Hatcher and Alice escape, just in time to watch the hospital crumble and something dark and sinister rise from the smoke.

The world they escape into, the Old show more City, is run by mob bosses who each holds a portion of the city under their control. There used to be magic in this world, too, but the Magicians were long thought to be gone from the world. Now there is only the Old City, and the bosses that control it. But Hatcher and Alice know there is something else in the city now, something killing everyone in its path as it searches for the one thing that can destroy it, and Hatcher and Alice are the only two who can stop it.

I love new takes on Wonderland, and thought this was an especially impressive re-imagining. Full of dystopian and noir elements, this Wonderland is certainly not full of wonders; instead it is full of dark corners and dangerous shadows, all under the control of the bosses of each district in the Old City, bosses such as Cheshire and the Caterpillar. This was something I particularly enjoyed, seeing familiar characters presented in entirely new renditions, yet staying true to their original essence. These are treacherous characters, though, and the lives of those living in their districts mean nothing to them. It is a precarious balance in the Old City, one that seems to be challenged by the bosses wanting to expand their territory, and whether they like it or not, Alice and Hatcher find themselves caught up in the disputes.

Alice is not for the faint of heart. The world Henry created here is a dangerous one full of violence, and terrible things happen to the people inhabiting it. There are moments of light sprinkled here and there, but this is not really a happy book. Don't come in expecting a dream-like tale, jumping from one psychedelic adventure to the next; this is one giant psychotic nightmare. Of course, should Christina Henry ever revisit these characters, I'll be sure to find out what happens to them. After all, there are still plenty of characters from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There that we haven't met in Henry's world yet. show less

Alice by Christina Henry is... interesting. Compelling. Artful. There's a poetry to the writing, the dialog is spare and evocative. The author's vision of a violent Victorian world, shaped by sharp caste divisions and twisted by strange magic, is deeply rendered and believable.

We meet Alice in an insane asylum, suffering from post-traumatic stress after a violent encounter ten years prior which she can't fully remember. She's from the wealthy part of town but her family has abandoned her. Her only friend is the man in the adjacent cell, who, if anything, is even more insane than Alice and also suffering from memory loss. He knows about a monster trapped in the basement.

There's a fire, they escape, and thus begins a quest through the show more darkest parts of the City's underworld, which returns their memories and brings Alice into her own as a Magician in a world where magic has been banned.

It may not be the most original tale on the shelf but it's a good story, one worth reading.

What elevates Ms. Henry's novel above other similar fare are her characters. There's a depth of humanity to each of them—even the violent, even the depraved—which imbues the narrative with a deeply personal resonance. This is more than just another dark magic story. This is a story about the resilience of human nature.

Ultimately, Alice is a cathartic and moving experience.

But for all the novel's strengths, there's a problem...

This isn't a story about Alice. Not in the sense that we expect from a work which presents itself as a riff on Lewis Carroll.

This novel was initially inspired by Carroll's Alice stories. As inspiration, that's fine—but I wish it had been allowed to move beyond that inspiration, to throw off those shackles and breathe freely as its own idea. The references to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass actually get in the way of Ms. Henry's story.

Beyond the names of the characters (some of which are delightful puns) and the quasi-Victorian setting, this novel has nothing in common with Carroll's original Alice stories: structurally, thematically, stylistically, it's an entirely different beast. None of the characters need to have their Alice-referencing names: every one of them could be rendered exactly has they are with completely different names and nothing would be lost from the story. There's a tea party, but again: it could have been rendered as any other kind of party where food and beverages are consumed and it would serve its function equally well.

All of these references to Carroll are arbitrary. But because of these references, I kept looking for something more meaningful in them, some essential point of connection between this story and Carroll's, which would make all of it necessary. There aren't any. They do nothing to add meaning or expand the narrative. Searching for concrete points of connection between Ms. Henry's story and her source material becomes a distraction, interrupting the flow of my reading. As a result, this whole concept becomes a stumbling block which gets in the way of my ability to fully invest myself in this story on its own terms.

Ms. Henry's story is good enough that it deserves better.

Moreover, presenting this story as an Alice in Wonderland-inspired tale significantly undersells what Ms. Henry's novel has to offer. Dark, violent riffs on Lewis Carroll are a dime-a-dozen, commonplace to the point of cliché. Alice is good story, a compelling vision with fascinating characters told through powerful language. Insisting that it's another dark, violent riff on Carroll characterizes the tale as something less than what it is.

Ms. Henry's story deserves better. It's interesting enough on its own without the forced and awkward trappings of Carroll's Alice. It's an ill-fitting costume thoughtlessly draped over a tale which deserves to be seen and appreciated for itself.

I really don't understand why she insisted on presenting her Alice as something it's clearly not. She got stuck on her own clever idea and it prevents the novel from reaching its fullest potential. show less

Holy bloody flowing rivers of Hades, this book was darker than I imagined (or was lead to believe), beyond twisted, and yet I couldn't stop turning the pages! This has all the characters you know, and yet only just. Here, they are only a fraction of their well known selves, and the names they are making in the Old City are likely to ever be forgotten. This is Alice as you've never seen, Hatch (likened to the Mad version of himself in more recent times) as you couldn't believe, Dor more atrocious, the Rabbit and Walrus and Caterpillar as you would never want to see. This is...something else than what you've ever dreamed in your darkest nightmares, but still remarkable in its telling.

Wow. That was an excellent retelling of Alice In Wonderland.

It's bloody, visceral and full on mind-bending. I love Alice. She's strong, but has serious doubts about herself at all the wrong times. She stomps across the pages only to get the precipice and experience profound fear.

The best part of the book is that she doesn't feel like the Mary-Sues of so much woman driven fictional work in the 21st century. Alice falls victim to the worst that society has to offer. Although she refuses to let it define her, it has a profound effect on her nonetheless. She allows herself to be emotionally carried by the Mad Hatcher at times. She realizes that his trauma is as deep as hers and that he expresses his in a very different way and he show more struggles with it from minute to minute. He is utterly insane and he needs her as much as she needs him. Both broken, they grow into their own private horrors. They see each other as complimentary beings rather than both being strong in the same ways. I love it.

The setting is a horror show of Victorian-Steam Punk-Gothic pieces arranged crazily into a city. Real people taken to their extremes in the setting that makes them grotesque parodies. The rich separated from the poor by a caste system that is brutally enforced. The enforcers consisted of the other Wonderland characters and their lackeys. The secondary characters are well written villains.

Starting to read The Red Queen right away. I'm excited to learn more about Alice's family and how she came to be. We know Hatcher's story and I hope to see the resolution in the end, but Alice must be the most important element in Red Queen. There's so much mystery surrounding her. I can't wait for more! show less

This dystopic future riff on the ideas of Alice in Wonderland is a delight from start to finish. A bitter commentary on the place of women in society, the story still allows Alice to have some agency, even as she runs as fast as she can to never quite get anywhere. Recommended for fans of Alice in Wonderland, transformative works, and dystopia horror.

*Trigger Warning: Sexual Abuse*
This book frequently mentions and also hints at sexual assault.

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The Chronicles of Alice is a series written by author Christina Henry. Book One, Alice was published in August 2015 and it seems like I’m only now catching up with this addictive series.


*Alice has spent ten years in a mental institution, slowly losing her mind.*

‘She was a broken thing and the New City did not like broken things. They liked the new and the whole.’

Almost as soon as I began reading, I felt a kinship with Alice. The description of her being ‘a broken thing’ really hit me at my core. From my point of view, diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder, I always feel broken and I’m not sure if I will ever be able show more to fix myself. In this retelling, Alice became someone I could look to for relatable experiences, someone I could share my secret pain with until the very last page.


*Another quote that shook me at the start was- *

‘That was the trouble with not being right in the head. You couldn’t always tell if your eyes were telling the truth.’

This is so true. If your perception is altered for any reason, you may not see (whether literal or metaphorical) things that sit right beneath your nose. You may misunderstand a situation or someone’s intentions or may even read into something that isn’t there at all.

These initial relatable quotes really helped me to get into the story, which I consider a must read for anyone experiencing mental health issues as it helped me to feel connected to someone, despite them being a fictional character.

............

The review I wrote for Alice is quite long so if you'd like to read the full review, please visit my blog: https://www.daxwrites.com/chronicles-alice-book-review/ show less

"Why are you here?" she asked one day, long after they were friends, or at least friends who never really saw each other.
"I killed a lot of people with an axe," he said. "That's how I got my name. Hatcher."
"What was your name before?" Alice asked. She was surprisingly undisturbed by the knowledge that her new friend was an axe murderer. It seemed unrelated to who he was now, the rough voice and grey eyes though the hole in the wall.
"I don't remember," he said.

What if Wonderland were not a pretty place in a little girl's dream? What if it were a real city with its own history, its own true laws, its own economics? What if those economics were fueled by power and greed, by the trade of magic and flesh? If the pretty story were pealed back show more to the primal things underneath, to lies and sex and broken trust, it would look something like this. A broken, dirty city where no one is really safe, where the Jabberwock is come again, and the only unlikely hope lies with two murderous lunatics escaped from the asylum.

I cannot stress enough that this is the story of a dark, ugly world. Rape is not so much something that happens in this story as it is a theme uniting the whole story from beginning to end. Men, all men, are darkened by the possibility that they will turn traitor and use their strength to commit the same crimes as the slavers and johns who fill the night. Yet women must have their protection, or they will be sold or taken. The redemption, the possibility of love, arises not out of the remittance of danger, but out of Alice's realization that she herself is also dangerous.

Alice's transformation from a broken, drug addled castoff into a a genuine heroine, one who can face the Jabberwock, is believable and real. Her changing relationship with Hatcher is also authentic. This is a deeply feminist story that leaves behind the slapstick kick-ass heroines* and watches its protagonist grow honestly out of her helplessness and into a woman who can stand on her own two feet. In many ways, it breaks and rearranges the stories of Wonderland and the Lookingglass so that instead of the nonsense adventures of a little girl, they become a real progression. As Alice moves from confrontation to confrontation with the bosses of the Old City, I saw her become the Red Queen, bloodied, yes, but also capable, able to protect others.

At the same time, the book doesn't offer any easy answers. Throughout, Alice meditates on how the City came to be as it is, her own relationship with her parents (especially her mother) and they way they abandoned her, the responsibility of strength and power, the dynamics of vulnerability and the way there is a cost to helping those her heart goes out to, and most of all the fact that she cannot help everyone.

This is a lot to pack into 300 pages, but the book never drags. I could have wolfed it down in a couple of sittings. (Really I did, but I stopped to reread [b:Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass|24213|Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass|Lewis Carroll|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1327872220s/24213.jpg|2375385]. I highly recommend a reread of the originals with this; having certain little details of the story fresh in mind was nice.) Also, the writing is gorgeous. (I'm saying that a lot this year, I know. I've read a lot of gorgeous stories!) Highly recommended.

*Don't get me wrong. I love my kick-ass heroines. But there is fantasy and then there is candy. This is not candy. I also tend to shy away from stories that are discernibly wrapped around feminism. This, however, was not a lecture, but a story that happened to deeply concern the power relationships between women and men. I very much liked the exploration.

(Reviewed March 2015) show less