This is not the wonderland you remember. Alice has resided in a mental hospital for the past ten years, abandoned by her family after returning from a mysterious absence from which she can only remember a man with long ears and a knife. When a fire takes hold of the building, Alice escapes with the madman Hatcher into the sour, cruel, and illegal magic of the Old City. They are thrown into a harrowing spiral of events to discover the truth behind what they've tried to forget and what that means for who they are now.
Wow! Alice was unforgettable. I've been so curious to read this, but I put it off for years because of my particular allegiance to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, and knowing that it was a dark fantasy/horror twist on the classic scared me a bit (that genre is usually not my cup of tea). However, I could not tear myself away and devoured the book in a day. It is grim and violent (filled with too many trigger warnings to count), but also compelling--to grow with Alice and Hatcher throughout the course of events, to watch Alice become a real badass, and, as a reader, to fit this interpretation into its inspiration like a strange puzzle piece. Many retellings of classics/fairy tales fall flat for me when they stick too close to the original, but I found that Alice was wildly creative and it worked. It made me want to reread the originial and then dive into this once more.
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