This story will not be for everyone, that’s for sure. And if you’re thinking that sounds painful, well actually, it was. But by the end I changed my mind, and Henry’s odd and disquieting take on Alice in Wonderland managed to get under my skin. Early on, I had issues with the story, and I thought it was going to get a lower rating. I have to admit this is one of those books where I wasn’t sure how I was going to rate it until the very last page. Her mother would pour out the tea and then Alice would be permitted to choose one small slice, only one, for her mother did not approve of sweets. A plate piled high with fat wedges of yellow cake with different icings-pink and blue and violet. There used to be cake with tea, before the hospital. There certainly was no cake at the hospital, only thin grey gruel, thin as the faces that delivered it morning and night. She was thinking of cake, the soft crumbly sweetness of it on her tongue. Except in this book, you may not recognize them…Ĭake.

The nitty-gritty: A dark (very dark) and violent (very violent) trip through a deranged landscape with the characters of Alice In Wonderland. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review. Agent: Lucienne Diver, Knight Agency.I received this book for free from the Publisher in exchange for an honest review. The darkness in this book is that of fairy tales, owing more to Grimm's matter-of-fact violence than to the underworld of the first book forest-dwelling giants, magic cottages with perpetually burning fires, and magical sacrifices to sustain immortality take the place of sex trafficking and rampant murder.

Alice's ongoing struggle is to distinguish reality from illusion, and Henry excels in mingling the two for the reader as well as her characters. When Alice and Hatcher are separated, Alice must rediscover her own identity among the choices and challenges that face her and the past that continually tries to draw her back into madness. Their dangerous journey takes them through the exposed wastes of the Black King, and into the magic forest of the White Queen, where breaking the rules means death but the rules are always unknown. Henry's sequel to Alice, a retelling of Through the Looking Glass, leaves the City behind as Alice and her companion, Hatcher, begin a quest to find Hatcher's daughter, Jenny.

Alice christina henry book