Alice

In a warren of crumbling buildings called the Old City, a hospital echoes with the screams of the poor souls inside. Inside, there is a woman. Her hair, once blond, hangs in tangles down her back. She doesn’t remember why she’s in such a terrible place. Just a tea party long ago, and long ears, and blood…Then, one night, a fire at the hospital gives the woman a chance to escape, leaving her free to uncover the truth about what happened to her all those years ago.

I did a video for TikTok about fanfiction and adaptions, and spoke of The Horseman and Alice in it. I’m posting the video here so you can hear my thoughts on this book, at the 5:13 mark. It’s disgusting, and ratings on Amazon had people thinking the same thing. I cannot believe her editors and publishers thought this adaption, or retelling, or whatever the fuck one wants to call it, was appropriate for young adults. I’m 51, and I thought it was gross and sick. As far as I’m concerned, you NEVER take someone else’s creation and make it a disturbing shit pile like this author did. What was in her head?

Deeply disturbing is right.

Red Queen

The land outside of the Old City was supposed to be green, lush, hopeful. But the verdant fields are nothing but ash—and hope is nowhere to be found. Still, Alice and Hatcher are on a mission to find his daughter: a quest they will not forsake even as it takes them deep into the clutches of the mad White Queen or into the realm of the twisted and cruel Black King. The pieces are set and the game has begun, and each move brings Alice closer to her destiny.

I only wanted to read this book to find out if Hatcher found his daughter.

Well…they found a whole lot more. In Alice, there were many scenes about a rabbit named Pipkin and the girls they saved from the Walrus.

Once Alice and Hatcher killed the Rabbit and imprisoned the Jabberwock, they travelled along the same underground tunnel Pipkin had taken the girls with the promise of freedom and green fields. Sadly, what Alice and Hatcher found was anything but. A wasteland of ash from burning. Something or someone had burned the entire land, and after days of walking, Alice and Hatcher discovered the charred remains of Pipkin and the girls. And that was it. Alice and Hatcher moved on. No tears, no prayers, no burying the bodies. Barely a mention after all of the scenes in the first book.

Nothing!

They moved on, and found a small town unaffected by fire, still lush and green, but no one existed. They bought food and clothes and slept under the fountain. They met three brothers who had been turned into trolls by the White Queen, and got lost in a wood, where Hatcher was taken and turned into a wolf. One troll, who was helping Alice, left her in a cabin for the night, and was sad that she was still alive the next morning. But the Queen had killed his brothers and taken the town, and Alice had to go on alone.

She went on to defeat the White Queen, who turned out to be Hatcher’s daughter. Unfortunately, his daughter remembered nothing, and because of the magic on her, she withered away and died. But the White Queen had given birth to a baby and her father managed to take her outside before dying himself. Alice rescued some of the stolen children and found the baby in the arms of her dead father before taking them back to town and leaving the baby with her aunt.

Alice and Hatcher just walked away because she dreamed of a cottage on a lake with green fields.

You left a baby with it’s aunt, even though you’re the grandfather? And Hatcher soon forgot he had a daughter.

Lots of death in this book, once again, and I felt the story was left undone, like many of them.

I gave this book 7/10

Looking Glass

Lovely Creature: In the New City lives a girl with a secret: Elizabeth can do magic. But someone knows her secret–someone who has a secret of his own. That secret is a butterfly that lives in a jar, a butterfly that was supposed to be gone forever, a butterfly that used to be called the Jabberwock…

Girl in Amber: Alice and Hatcher are just looking for a place to rest. Alice has been dreaming of a cottage by a lake and a field of wildflowers, but while walking blind in a snowstorm she stumbles into a house that only seems empty and abandoned…

When I First Came to Town: Hatcher wasn’t always Hatcher. Once, he was a boy called Nicholas, and Nicholas fancied himself the best fighter in the Old City. No matter who fought him he always won. Then his boss tells him he’s going to battle the fearsome Grinder, a man who never leaves his opponents alive…

The Mercy Seat: There is a place hidden in the mountains, where all the people hate and fear magic and Magicians. It is the Village of the Pure, and though Alice and Hatcher would do anything to avoid it, it lies directly in their path…

Elizabeth wants to know who “Alice” is. Her father mentions her. Her mother calls her by that name, as does the butler. But all Elizabeth wants to know is, “who is Alice?”. And then she sees a man whom she follows, all the way into the Old City, and discovers the Jabberwock and the fact she’s a magician, just like Alice. Her sister.

Alice, meanwhile, has a dream about a girl that looks just like her, and then, when she and Hatch keep wandering on their way to wherever the hell they’re going, they are separated by someone who wants Alice’s magic. Alice defeats him, and in return, finds a witch to stay with who teaches her how to deal with her magic.

I’ll bypass the third story as I flipped through it. I wasn’t interested in how Nicholas came to be known as Hatcher.

The last story is the end of the road. Alice and Hatch leave the witch’s house and travel through a town high in the mountains in order to get to the other side. And I’m sure there’s a joke in there somewhere. But with Alice’s dreams of death and the Mercy Seat, she finds a witch with power who takes matters into her own hands. But so does Alice.

I managed to get through this book pretty quickly. It rouunded both books of Alice and Red Queen out and Alice and Hatch finally found their place she had dreamt of.

I gave this 6/10.

Next fortnight is my review of the horror books by Christina Henry.