Review: Alice Takes Back Wonderland

After ten years of being told she can't tell the difference between real life and a fairy tale, Alice finally stops believing in Wonderland. So when the White Rabbit shows up at her house, Alice thinks she's going crazy.

Only when the White Rabbit kicks her down the rabbit hole does Alice realize that the magical land she visited as a child is real.

But all is not well in Wonderland.

The Ace of Spades has taken over Wonderland and is systematically dismantling all that makes it wonderful. Plain is replacing wondrous, logical is replacing magical, and reason is destroying madness. Alice decides she must help the Mad Hatter and all those fighting to keep Wonderland wonderful. 

But how can she face such danger when she is just a girl?

Alice must journey across the stars to unite an army. She discovers that fairy tales are real in the magical world beyond the rabbit hole. But they are not the fairy tales she knows. 

Fairy tales have dangers and adventures of their own, and Alice must overcome the trials of these old stories if she wants to unite the lands against Ace.

With the help of Peter Pan, Pinocchio, Snow White and heroes old and new, Alice may have the strength to take back Wonderland. 

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Rating: 3 Stars

I am usually up for a good fairy tale retelling and this was a good book in that sense. It brought Alice to life in a somewhat new way, or at least one that hasn't been explored very much. The idea of Wonderland being the result of mental illness was intriguing, especially when the beginning of the book showed how much Alice was struggling between whether she had really experience these things or whether she was truly mad.

There was also a good parallel here where Wonderland is having all of its Wonder sucked out in order to become a "logical" world like ours. The world can really feel like that at times. After a certain age you're expected to grow up and not imagine things as freely as you did when you're a child. I can see why Peter and Alice got along so well. They shared some similarities in that respect.

The plot moved along at a good pace. I didn't feel like it dragged too much. The only instances where it felt like things were becoming overbearing was when there was the continual onslaught of fairy tale characters showing up. If you like the show Once Upon a Time, then I can't see how you wouldn't like this book.

Maybe it is because I have watched that show, however, that I found the continual introduction of known fairy tale characters to get a bit ridiculous after awhile. I like these characters and it was nice to see them again, but around the 40% mark I found myself getting annoyed when yet another fairy tale person/creature showed up.

Music Recommendation

This song and its video are as surreal as I found parts of this book.

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