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buttfartspoo 's review for:
Alice
by Christina Henry
challenging
dark
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
I got this at a thrift store for $.50 and thought I would take a chance on it almost purely by the title and concept. I was thinking something like Alice Madness Returns or some kind of Alice in wonderland grime dark thing. I was kind of right. This feels more like a real angsty teenage fantasy that couldn't be sold on its own so the author put Alice in Wonderland character names here and there to make it more inciting. Imma call this the "Wicked" effect. That book also sucked, musical is great though.
It starts with Alice in a mental institution, which sounds intriguing but this is the last time we get any themes of madness so blow that dream out the window.
Alice is continuously followed by some dude named Hatcher....um ok? Alice never was followed by anyone and always took the trek alone, which already kind of ruins the whole Alice in Wonderland shtick. Hatcher has little-to-no personality and very little reason to be in the book at all outside of being a very bad romance option.
The world itself needs heavy rewriting since, while it is very grime-dark and goth, it is slathered a bit to thick. If everything is at an 11 then nothing is really threatening. Jesus the amount of eye rolling I did on how the villains sins had to be escalated because this place. "The Walrus" is probably the biggest eye roll I have done in a WHILE. Old City (great name), doesn't have any respite or normalcy so nothing is surprising or impactful. It also was very gender specific for some reason. All women are treated and written like cattle or livestock for some reason, even by the protagonists. You wonder how anyone exists at all in this world. How do people get born? How do they live? We aren't really given that info. All horrific scenes are also just breezed by. "oh and then that horrific thing happened...ANYWAY." sort of attitude. Very white kid in the suburbs had a fantasy type of writing. We aren't going to sit with that horrific thing? That was just for the ViBeSsSs? ok. Even "The Cook The Thief His Wife and Her Lover" had better pacing with their horrific nonsense and made it have heft.
The book itself is kind of written like a videogame, which is honestly not a bad thing. I love that. We knew where we were going, we are introduced to the boss fights ahead of time, boss fight happens, we go on the the next arena. But even in videogames there are safe areas to save or chill or something to make the rest of the harder parts more impactful. Some down time with the characters to show who they are. Perhaps we could have gotten rid of a boss to open that a bit up.
The book is easy to read and a short book. The prose is simplistic but decent (I just read a Colleen Hoover book so honestly my expectations of good prose is pretty damn low at the moment). The only real reason I won't give this 3 stars is because I was expecting a mind blowing twist of some kind. Something to tie in Alice in Wonderland in a better context, or to make the whole insane asylum moment worth it. I noticed reality kept bending more and more the book went on, which I thought was clever if we wanted a Shutter Island type ending. Nope. There was no twist. Pretty much none at all. Nothing to grab me at the end. In fact it didn't end with a bang, but a real luke-warm whimper. An ending that felt like the feeling of having wet socks.
This book kind of reminded me of the indie movie "Malice in Wonderland" which is also about an Alice who goes into a dark world filled with gangsters named after Alice in Wonderland characters. It is kind of unfortunate because I was comparing this book to that movie and "Alice Madness Returns" and while I do think the latter is hard to live up to, Malice in Wonderland has faults and issues as well. The problem is, Malice in Wonderland was better at keeping the theme of Alice in Wonderland more intact. There wasn't a random "Hatcher" but rather Alice was taken around by "The white Rabbit" who was a taxi driver. The gang leaders were the Queen of Hearts and the Duchess, which makes more sense in context that they would be gang leaders...not the Walrus? Caterpillar? The purpose in the original book weren't antagonists, why would they be in this book?
Anyway. The most important differential between all three of these stories is that with Malice in Wonderland and Alice Madness Returns the location of a "Wonderland" is pretty apparent. This is a wondrous place Alice are a stranger to. This place may or may not actually exist. This book doesn't do that. This is a new place to Alice (kind of, she admits she has been living there for a while) but it does exist. She is aware of this location since she was a child. This is a place she knows more about than we do, so the discovery is kind of not there.
It starts with Alice in a mental institution, which sounds intriguing but this is the last time we get any themes of madness so blow that dream out the window.
Alice is continuously followed by some dude named Hatcher....um ok? Alice never was followed by anyone and always took the trek alone, which already kind of ruins the whole Alice in Wonderland shtick. Hatcher has little-to-no personality and very little reason to be in the book at all outside of being a very bad romance option.
The world itself needs heavy rewriting since, while it is very grime-dark and goth, it is slathered a bit to thick. If everything is at an 11 then nothing is really threatening. Jesus the amount of eye rolling I did on how the villains sins had to be escalated because this place. "The Walrus" is probably the biggest eye roll I have done in a WHILE. Old City (great name), doesn't have any respite or normalcy so nothing is surprising or impactful. It also was very gender specific for some reason. All women are treated and written like cattle or livestock for some reason, even by the protagonists. You wonder how anyone exists at all in this world. How do people get born? How do they live? We aren't really given that info. All horrific scenes are also just breezed by. "oh and then that horrific thing happened...ANYWAY." sort of attitude. Very white kid in the suburbs had a fantasy type of writing. We aren't going to sit with that horrific thing? That was just for the ViBeSsSs? ok. Even "The Cook The Thief His Wife and Her Lover" had better pacing with their horrific nonsense and made it have heft.
The book itself is kind of written like a videogame, which is honestly not a bad thing. I love that. We knew where we were going, we are introduced to the boss fights ahead of time, boss fight happens, we go on the the next arena. But even in videogames there are safe areas to save or chill or something to make the rest of the harder parts more impactful. Some down time with the characters to show who they are. Perhaps we could have gotten rid of a boss to open that a bit up.
The book is easy to read and a short book. The prose is simplistic but decent (I just read a Colleen Hoover book so honestly my expectations of good prose is pretty damn low at the moment). The only real reason I won't give this 3 stars is because I was expecting a mind blowing twist of some kind. Something to tie in Alice in Wonderland in a better context, or to make the whole insane asylum moment worth it. I noticed reality kept bending more and more the book went on, which I thought was clever if we wanted a Shutter Island type ending. Nope. There was no twist. Pretty much none at all. Nothing to grab me at the end. In fact it didn't end with a bang, but a real luke-warm whimper. An ending that felt like the feeling of having wet socks.
This book kind of reminded me of the indie movie "Malice in Wonderland" which is also about an Alice who goes into a dark world filled with gangsters named after Alice in Wonderland characters. It is kind of unfortunate because I was comparing this book to that movie and "Alice Madness Returns" and while I do think the latter is hard to live up to, Malice in Wonderland has faults and issues as well. The problem is, Malice in Wonderland was better at keeping the theme of Alice in Wonderland more intact. There wasn't a random "Hatcher" but rather Alice was taken around by "The white Rabbit" who was a taxi driver. The gang leaders were the Queen of Hearts and the Duchess, which makes more sense in context that they would be gang leaders...not the Walrus? Caterpillar? The purpose in the original book weren't antagonists, why would they be in this book?
Anyway. The most important differential between all three of these stories is that with Malice in Wonderland and Alice Madness Returns the location of a "Wonderland" is pretty apparent. This is a wondrous place Alice are a stranger to. This place may or may not actually exist. This book doesn't do that. This is a new place to Alice (kind of, she admits she has been living there for a while) but it does exist. She is aware of this location since she was a child. This is a place she knows more about than we do, so the discovery is kind of not there.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Addiction, Adult/minor relationship, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Body horror, Bullying, Child abuse, Child death, Confinement, Death, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Genocide, Gore, Gun violence, Hate crime, Mental illness, Misogyny, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Rape, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Slavery, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Torture, Toxic relationship, Violence, Forced institutionalization, Blood, Trafficking, Kidnapping, Cannibalism, Suicide attempt, Death of parent, Murder, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Fire/Fire injury, Cultural appropriation, Abandonment, Sexual harassment, Injury/Injury detail, Classism
Edgeboy type book. Don't think anything is discussed with any depth or care.