Series: CHRONICLES OF ALICE
Plot Type: Dark Fantasy
Ratings: Violence—4; Sensuality—4; Humor—1
Publisher and Titles: Ace
Alice (8/2015)
Red Queen (7/2016)
This ongoing post was revised and updated on 7/17/2016 to include a review of Red Queen, the second novel in this series. That review appears first, followed by an overview of the world-building and a review of the first novel.
NOVEL 2: Red Queen
PUBLISHER'S BLURB:
The land outside of the Old City was
supposed to be green, lush, hopeful. A place where Alice could finally rest, no
longer the plaything of the Rabbit, the pawn of Cheshire, or the prey of the
Jabberwocky. 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 and her goblin or into the
realm of the twisted and cruel Black King.
The pieces are set and the game has
already begun. Each move brings Alice closer to her destiny. But, to win, she
will need to harness her new-found abilities and ally herself with someone even
more powerful—the mysterious and vengeful Red Queen.
MY REVIEW:
At the end of Alice, the heroine and her companion (and true love), Hatcher, had turned their backs on the murder and mayhem of the City and were entering a tunnel, headed East to find Hatcher's daughter, Jenny. Many years ago, when Jenny was taken from him, Hatcher fought hard against the kidnappers, but went mad when he lost the battle…and his daughter. Although they expect to find lush, green land at the end of the tunnel, instead they find themselves in a lifeless, ash-covered wasteland. To prevent starvation, Alice experiments with using her magic and is finally able to conjure up two tiny, greasy meat pies and four dried-up apples, but she can't help but wish that she could find someone to teach her about how to make her magic more reliable and more effective.
Eventually, they come to a village that has fresh food, open shops, a lovely fountain…but no people. After taking food and supplies from the shops, the two leave gold coins in payment and spend the night bedded down next to the fountain. During the night, both dream of three giant shadowy figures who lament that they can't eat Alice and Hatcher because, "they haven't broken the rules…not a single one." The dark giants also discuss the lack of travelers ("That's his doing isn't it? Burning up everything in sight.") and a scary woman ("There are rules, and we must follow them. Unless you want her to get angry.")
Next on the landscape is an enchanted forest, where Alice and Hatcher become separated, leaving Alice on her own until nearly the end of the book. She soon gains a frenemy—Pen, one of the giants (a man who was bespelled into his giant form after he and his brothers angered the White Queen).
At this point, Alice has to figure out a number of puzzles: Who set up the enchanted village? Why is a horrible goblin trying to catch her in the enchanted forest? What happened to Hatcher and how can she get him back?
At the base of the White Queen's mountain, Alice finds a normal, non-enchanted village that is facing an ongoing problem. Four times a year, the White Queen demands the sacrifice of a village child, and the next sacrifice is due in three days. Of course, Alice sees this as an opportunity to get to the White Queen's icy castle at the top of the mountain, so she volunteers to be the sacrifice.
Meanwhile, Alice intermittently hears two voices in her head. One is the voice of the Jabberwocky, who keeps telling her to remember him, and the other is the sarcastic voice of Cheshire. Alice is trying her best to forget the Jabberwocky, although she is still carrying the little jar that contains the purple butterfly that he turned into at the end of their last confrontation. As for Cheshire, even though he can be overbearing, and even though she thought that she had broken the connection between them, she sometimes welcomes his advice because he is almost always right.
Alice learns a number of life lessons as she travels across the ashy plain, the enchanted forest, and the ice-covered mountainside:
1. She learns to temper her natural curiosity and use extreme caution because things in the White Queen's kingdom are never as they seem.
2. She figures out the difference between reality and illusion.
3. She discovers what the rules are in this world so that she can avoid breaking them. Then, she has to learn to play by her own rules, not the Queen's.
4. She learns that stolen magic corrupts, weakens, and eventually kills the thief who takes it from another.
5. She learns that she has to believe in her own magic with all her heart in order to make it work.
6. She learns to accept Hatcher's violent nature. "Hatcher was no wolf in an innocent's clothing. He was a wolf in a man's form, a killer forced to pretend that he was civilized."
During Alice's travels, she spends a lot of time stumbling through dark tunnels and entering rooms with multiple, closed doors. All she really wants is "a green valley and a field of wildflowers and a little white cottage by a blue lake," where she and Hatcher can live happily ever after, but in order to achieve her dream life, she must defeat the White Queen, rescue the children of the village, and save Hatcher. Most of all, she must not succumb to the lure of taking someone else's magical power; she must maintain her "Alice-ness" and not become a vessel for someone else's magic.
The supporting characters are well-developed, with interesting backstories and—especially in the case of the giants—dialogue that is filled with noir humor. Hatcher disappears into the enchanted forest very early in the book, just after he murmurs, "The night is alive, Alice…And so am I." From that point on, Alice is really the star of the show, and she steps right up to keep herself and the innocents she meets safe from danger. No one has to rescue Alice; she rescues herself. The Alice-Hatcher relationship deepens in this book and the two eventually express mutual love. My favorite line is this one that comes near the end of the book: "His eyes were…a little mad and much sadder than before, and also eyes that loved her. A great relief washed over her then, because Alice was a little mad and much sadder than before and she loved him."
The supporting characters are well-developed, with interesting backstories and—especially in the case of the giants—dialogue that is filled with noir humor. Hatcher disappears into the enchanted forest very early in the book, just after he murmurs, "The night is alive, Alice…And so am I." From that point on, Alice is really the star of the show, and she steps right up to keep herself and the innocents she meets safe from danger. No one has to rescue Alice; she rescues herself. The Alice-Hatcher relationship deepens in this book and the two eventually express mutual love. My favorite line is this one that comes near the end of the book: "His eyes were…a little mad and much sadder than before, and also eyes that loved her. A great relief washed over her then, because Alice was a little mad and much sadder than before and she loved him."
The storyline has some major twists and turns, particularly towards the end when assumptions you might make turn out to be completely false. This is great story-telling in action—a real treat for the reader. At one point early on, Hatcher mourns, "The world gobbles us and chews us and swallows us…I think happy endings must be accidents." But the HEA ending to this story isn't an accident. It's the result of a skilled author's creation of a smart, plucky heroine who is determined to make the world a better place for everyone she encounters (with the exception of the villains, of course).
The primary adjective I would use to describe this book (and series) is dark—very dark. As was true in the first novel, a number of characters do not survive their trials and tribulations, but their deaths are not described in gory detail as they were in the first book. In fact, this book does not have nearly as many brutally traumatic scenes as the first book had. This is more of a scary, suspenseful journey with a scattering of Big Bads to spice things up. The plot moves from violent episodes to heart-wrenching emotional scenes and back again, always twisting and turning and changing up the pace. It is a wonderful sequel to Alice.
Click HERE to go to Red Queen's Amazon.com page where you can read or listen to an excerpt by clicking on either the cover art or the "Listen" icon.
FULL DISCLOSURE: My review of Red Queen is
based on an electronic advance reading copy (ARC) of the book that I received
from the publisher through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. I received no promotional or monetary
rewards, and the opinions in this review are strictly my own.
The first book is set in a divided city with a 19th century ambiance. The elegant and refined New City is home to the rich, educated upper classes, while the filthy and decaying Old City harbors the illiterate, hardscrabble poor, who live in neighborhoods ruled by cruel bosses: "The Old City seemed to have no beginning and no end, a circling maze of stairways and narrow alleys connecting buildings that had been patched and rebuilt on top of crumbling ruins for centuries. There was nothing gleaming and new there, not even the children, who seemed to be birthed with haunted eyes." (Alice, chapter 2)
The only people from the New City who visit the Old City are men in search of sexual pleasure, and for that reason, the most prevalent "industry" in the Old City is the slave trade of women and young girls, who are kidnapped from their family homes and locked up in brothels. Generally, their families are murdered during the kidnappings.
Henry uses Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland stories (Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass) as a framework for her mythology, taking the main characters and their general characteristics and twisting them to suit her darker needs as she offers a macabre mutation of Alice's adventures. Here is an example of one of those character twists, as Alice meets Cheshire for the first time: "A man [was] standing near the center table and grinning an oversized grin...He was small and neat…His head…was covered all over with golden brown hair carefully curled in ringlets. Cheshire's grin widened…Alice decided she didn't like that grin. it wasn't happy. It was more like a predatory animal baring its teeth." (Alice, chapter 7)
On Henry's Facebook page she warns, "This is not Wonderland," and you should heed her words. Alice is a suspense-filled, violent tale about greedy, misogynistic men, the women they mistreat, a heroine who decides that she will do her best to rescue the innocent and punish the guilty, and a mad hero who will lay his life on the line for her.
NOVEL 1: Alice
Hatcher and Alice make their way to his grandmother's house in the Old City, where Grandma Bess announces that she has had a vision that Alice and her grandson are the only people who can kill the Jabberwock. From that point on, the pair wanders the dangerous streets and alleys of the Old City, meeting up with various characters who trick them, attack them, betray them, and sometimes try to kill them—human characters who are called Dormouse, Cheshire, Caterpillar, Walrus, Carpenter, Rabbit, and (of course) the Jabberwock himself.
Both Alice and Hatcher have tragic histories, but neither can remember the most traumatic events of their past, except in unconnected bits and pieces. Alice has been locked up for 10 years, since she was sixteen and rescued herself from a kidnapper, after which she babbled on about a rabbit and a tea party until her family consigned her to the asylum. Hatcher (aka Nicholas Carbey) is ten years older than Alice. He earned his nickname from a violent incident in which he killed a lot of people with his axe—but he can't remember why he did it. Both Alice and Hatcher can remember what came before and after these violent events in their pasts, but they can't remember exactly what happened to them that caused them to go mad. As the plot advances, the two begin to retrieve their memories as they learn new information about themselves from the various villainous characters they meet on their quest to locate the Jabberwock's missing artifact. In Alice's case, she also begins to realize that her family heritage has bequeathed her some unexpected powers. As Alice becomes more confident, her snark level rises, resulting in some snappy dialogue.
The highlight of the story is the relationship that develops between Alice and the mad Hatcher, who sometimes is caught up in rages that turn him into a raging, cold-blooded killer. As they depend upon one another for survival, Alice realizes that Hatcher truly cares for her when he promises that he will kill her and then himself if there is no other way to avoid capture: "From another man this might be terrifying, that he would so blithely consider murdering his companion. but she understood that from Hatcher this was tantamount to an offer of marriage. This was what he could do for her, how he showed he cared." (Chapter 3)
Henry has done a great job interweaving significant characters and plot points from Carroll's story into her all-new and much darker fantasy. Be aware, though, that Alice is quite violent, particularly in the way that women are brutalized. No young girl is safe on the streets of the Old City because the bosses' slave traders are always on the lookout for new candidates for their oh-so-profitable brothels.
Most of the story lines are resolved by the end of the book, as Alice and Hatcher work their way through the city conquering villain after villain, but new information gleaned from various contacts ensures that there will probably be a sequel. (Alice hasn't yet met up with the Red Queen, the White Queen, the Knave of Hearts, or the Mock Turtle.)
If you are searching for a fresh, fast-paced, action-packed fantasy, you'll probably enjoy this book, particularly if you like your fantasies on the dark side.
RT Book Reviews awarded Alice 4 1/2 stars and made it a Top Pick. Click HERE to read the RT review. Click HERE to preview the first two chapters.
FULL DISCLOSURE: My review of Alice is based on an electronic advance reading copy (ARC) of the book that I received from the publisher through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. I received no promotional or monetary rewards, and the opinions in this review are strictly my own.
The only people from the New City who visit the Old City are men in search of sexual pleasure, and for that reason, the most prevalent "industry" in the Old City is the slave trade of women and young girls, who are kidnapped from their family homes and locked up in brothels. Generally, their families are murdered during the kidnappings.
 |
Sir John Tenniel's
1866 Cheshire Cat
illustration
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On Henry's Facebook page she warns, "This is not Wonderland," and you should heed her words. Alice is a suspense-filled, violent tale about greedy, misogynistic men, the women they mistreat, a heroine who decides that she will do her best to rescue the innocent and punish the guilty, and a mad hero who will lay his life on the line for her.
NOVEL 1: Alice
PUBLISHER'S BLURB:
In a warren of crumbling buildings and desperate people called the Old City, there stands a hospital with cinderblock walls which echo the screams of the poor souls inside.
In a warren of crumbling buildings and desperate people called the Old City, there stands a hospital with cinderblock walls which echo the screams of the poor souls inside.
In the hospital, 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, tumbling out of the hole that imprisoned her, leaving her free to
uncover the truth about what happened to her all those years ago.
Only something else has escaped with her. Something dark. Something
powerful. And to find the truth, she will have to track this beast to the very
heart of the Old City, where the rabbit waits for his Alice.
MY REVIEW:
In a poem in Through the Looking Glass, Carroll warns, “Beware the Jabberwock, my son! The
jaws that bite, the claws that catch!" And that is the crux of the plot of this novel, with the Jabberwock as the primary villain along with several lesser, but still dangerous, bad guys. In the days leading up to the asylum fire, Alice's friend, Hatcher (in the neighboring room), keeps warning Alice that the Jabberwock—a mysterious dark and hungry monster—is coming and that no one is safe: "His mouth will open wide and we will all fall in, fall in and be devoured." (chapter 2) Unfortunately, when they escape from the fiery inferno, the horrific Jabberwock also escapes and soon begins wreaking havoc in the Old City, as he/it desperately searches for...something. Hatcher claims that only a magician can dispatch the Jabberwock, but Alice tells him, "All the Magicians are gone. They were driven out or killed centuries ago, during the Purge." (chapter 1) But is that true? Maybe not.MY REVIEW:
Hatcher and Alice make their way to his grandmother's house in the Old City, where Grandma Bess announces that she has had a vision that Alice and her grandson are the only people who can kill the Jabberwock. From that point on, the pair wanders the dangerous streets and alleys of the Old City, meeting up with various characters who trick them, attack them, betray them, and sometimes try to kill them—human characters who are called Dormouse, Cheshire, Caterpillar, Walrus, Carpenter, Rabbit, and (of course) the Jabberwock himself.
Both Alice and Hatcher have tragic histories, but neither can remember the most traumatic events of their past, except in unconnected bits and pieces. Alice has been locked up for 10 years, since she was sixteen and rescued herself from a kidnapper, after which she babbled on about a rabbit and a tea party until her family consigned her to the asylum. Hatcher (aka Nicholas Carbey) is ten years older than Alice. He earned his nickname from a violent incident in which he killed a lot of people with his axe—but he can't remember why he did it. Both Alice and Hatcher can remember what came before and after these violent events in their pasts, but they can't remember exactly what happened to them that caused them to go mad. As the plot advances, the two begin to retrieve their memories as they learn new information about themselves from the various villainous characters they meet on their quest to locate the Jabberwock's missing artifact. In Alice's case, she also begins to realize that her family heritage has bequeathed her some unexpected powers. As Alice becomes more confident, her snark level rises, resulting in some snappy dialogue.
The highlight of the story is the relationship that develops between Alice and the mad Hatcher, who sometimes is caught up in rages that turn him into a raging, cold-blooded killer. As they depend upon one another for survival, Alice realizes that Hatcher truly cares for her when he promises that he will kill her and then himself if there is no other way to avoid capture: "From another man this might be terrifying, that he would so blithely consider murdering his companion. but she understood that from Hatcher this was tantamount to an offer of marriage. This was what he could do for her, how he showed he cared." (Chapter 3)
Henry has done a great job interweaving significant characters and plot points from Carroll's story into her all-new and much darker fantasy. Be aware, though, that Alice is quite violent, particularly in the way that women are brutalized. No young girl is safe on the streets of the Old City because the bosses' slave traders are always on the lookout for new candidates for their oh-so-profitable brothels.
Most of the story lines are resolved by the end of the book, as Alice and Hatcher work their way through the city conquering villain after villain, but new information gleaned from various contacts ensures that there will probably be a sequel. (Alice hasn't yet met up with the Red Queen, the White Queen, the Knave of Hearts, or the Mock Turtle.)
If you are searching for a fresh, fast-paced, action-packed fantasy, you'll probably enjoy this book, particularly if you like your fantasies on the dark side.
FULL DISCLOSURE: My review of Alice is based on an electronic advance reading copy (ARC) of the book that I received from the publisher through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. I received no promotional or monetary rewards, and the opinions in this review are strictly my own.
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