Title-Alice Author-Christina Henry Year Published-2015
My first review of the new year! This particular book contains some content that could be considered triggeres to some people so I've trimmed down on some of the reviewable content to avoid upsetting anyone.
So I don’t think I’ve mentioned here that I am a huge Alice in Wonderland fan and I’m always looking for Alice related stories. Most of the time what I find is a dark twisted take on Wonderland that can be a fun original read and sometimes not. Christina Henry’s updated take on Alice and her adventures in Wonderland however is both fun and original (as well as gruesome and in instances horrifying) and if I’d read it in one sitting I would have been up all night with nightmares.
The setting is not Carroll’s whimsical Wonderland, but a dank dirty asylum in a city only known as Old City the dilapidated version of its shining sister New City. A young woman with a scar on her face named Alice has been imprisoned in the asylum for around a decade following an event at a tea party which left her emotionally, physically, and mentally scarred for life.
Alice’s only possible friend is a man a bit older then herself known as Hatcher. Her friend has thoroughly earned his nickname after murdering a handful of people with an axe. Even though Hatcher has been committed for a violent crime he displays no violence or cruelty towards Alice or the other inmates and only once and a while towards the doctors and guards.
Hatcher shares with Alice one of the few things if not the only thing that frightens him. A creature known as the Jabberwocky. He explains to her that he needs to destroy the asylum to kill the Jabberwocky which he believes dwells in the basement. He promises her freedom if she doesn’t tell anyone his plan.
Shortly after telling Alice about his plan the asylum is set on fire the only survivors being Alice and Hatcher. The pair seek refuge at the home of a woman named Bess who helps Alice create a disguise so that she looks to be a young boy and also reveals Hatcher’s real name; Nicholas. And as it turns out the Jabberwocky was not in the asylum’s basement and therefore is not dead.
Hatcher cares for Bess and doesn’t want to bring her into the mess that he and Alice have found themselves entangled in and leave the house shortly after the discovery that the Jabberwocky still lives. Hatcher is in search of the beast that he believes forced him to murder others and Alice to search for a man with blue-green eyes and long ears.
Old City is ruled by a certain group of men who control the people through fear and intimidation. The men are known as Cheshire, the Caterpillar, the Carpenter, the Walrus, and the Rabbit. However, the group has already lost one the Carpenter who had formally been friendly with the Walrus, but had been killed by him after being too big of a threat.
Alice and Hatcher first seek refuge in a pub where they meet the owner Harry, his wife Nell, and a young serving girl named Dolly who is the first to mention the Walrus who deals in girls and when he particular likes a girl he devours them in every sense of the word.
At the time the Carpenter’s men are revolting against the Walrus in revenge for killing their leader and as it would turn out Harry’s bar is caught in the cross fire alerting the Walrus to the presence of Alice and Hatcher. Alice is the only one who notices the strange look Dolly gives her when the bar is attacked. The look Alice thinks says that Dolly knows what happened between her and the Rabbit.
Ten years before Alice and a girlhood friend named Dor had gone out into the forest to play when they came across a man with blue-green eyes and long ears. He invites the girls to a tea party with him at which Alice loses conciseness. When she comes too she finds the man with long ears raping her. Alice attacks the Rabbit with a knife removing one of his eyes in the process and has her own cheek cut before she escapes. This attack is what leads to her incarceration in the asylum.
The pair also encounter Cheshire and the Caterpillar one who deals in information and secrets the other deals in flesh. Only one manages to meet Alice and Hatcher and escape with his life.
By this point Hatcher has also told Alice about his life before the asylum. He had known the Walrus who had been a pit fighter like himself known at the time as Grinder when he’d met a woman named Hattie, fell in love with her, and eventually married her. The couple had a daughter named Jenny who was famed for her beauty even at a young age. One day Hatcher (still called Nicholas at the time) had come home to find his wife savaged and dead and his daughter kidnapped. As it would turn out the Walrus had been seeking revenge on Hatcher after having his hands mutilated during a fight so that they now resembled flippers.
The Walrus also doesn’t not survive his encounter with Alice and Hatcher, but instead of dying by their hand is murdered by a rabbit that he’d manipulated into growing to a huge size and then tortured when it refused to fight in the arena.
Using the underground tunnels that Pipkin the rabbit used to take the Walrus’s girls to safety Alice and Hatcher find where the Rabbit has been hiding along with Alice’s old friend Dor. Ten years ago Dor sold Alice to the Rabbit who was then going to give her to the Walrus who would ingest her magical abilities. Maybe out of guilt for betraying her friend or maybe out disgust for the Rabbit, Dor first kisses him and while he is distracted chokes the Rabbit to death before surrendering herself to Hatcher’s axe.
After the death of both Dor and the Rabbit, Alice and Hatcher leave Old City in search of Hatcher’s daughter Jenny when Alice smells sunlight and flowers the same scent from Pipkin’s fur and hear the laughter of the girls he rescued leaving the door open for a possible happy ending to the Alice Chronicles.
So the reason this review seemingly skimps on a lot of details is because of some of the book’s content is pretty rough. Even with some of the content Alice is a refreshing change from the overdone twisted Wonderland trend (I’m looking at you Tim Burton) and does more with twisting the character’s personality. For those of you who can handle subjects such as rape, abuse, and references to drugs Alice is defiantly worth a read, but some of the content could be considered triggers so tread lightly.
Other books by Christina Henry I have read-Red Queen (in progress)
