'Alice' A Recommendation

Alice is an adaptation/re-imagining/sequel of the Lewis Caroll classic Alice's Adventures In Wonderland by Chicago author Christina Henry. Set in an alternate fantasy world upper-class precocious Alice left the prosperous safety of the New City to venture into the Old City for an adventure. She was kidnapped by the Rabbit but eventually escaped only to be found scared and with almost no memory of her capture. The novel opens on Alice ten years after this event in a sanitarium highly medicated and listless. She befriends a fellow patient Hatcher through a mouse hole, after a mysterious fire the two escape into the Old City.

The story is rich, dark, and violent. It takes various plot elements and characters and repurposes them in such a way that they are familiar but presented in a whole new context, in a whole new world. The novel is a weird, extremely compelling, inversion of the source material.

It operates on a couple different levels- horror, fantasy, romance, and a revenge/survivor story. Straight forward but also vivid allegory, there's a lot to enjoy on the surface and a lot to unpack in the depths. Intense and at times brutal it may not be for everyone but Alice will deliver in spades to genre fans and Carroll appreciates alike.

A gripping, fascinating, transportive read. The sequel- Red Queen is due out in July.