When fire breaks out in the asylum, setting Alice and Hatcher free into the city underworld, they set out together in search of the demons of their past, and discover wild powers thought long-lost. In an adjacent cell is an equally psychologically damaged murderer named Hatcher, Alice’s only refuge from disintegration into her own scarred thoughts. Her few memories haunt her: parents long gone, a horrific tea party, blood, and the ears of a deranged man known as the Rabbit. Within a hospital asylum in The Old City, a young woman named Alice endures the uncertainty of who she exactly is - or how she has gotten to be locked up. Ultimately the novel is a story about surviving and overcoming trauma, setting the characters up for further challenges and self-discovery in Red Queen, the follow-up novel due out next month. Yet, Henry also manages to end Alice with a sense of hope and, above all, a strong resilience that shines in her characters.

More inspired by Carroll’s twisted characters and their world as opposed to being a point-by-point ‘retelling’, Christina Henry tweaks Carroll’s work into her own distinct plot and themes, with a marked shift to darkness.Īnd as the cover to the book illustrates, oh yes, this is dark – filled with traumas physical and psychological alike. But the continual presence of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass in the popular zeitgeist is sufficient familiarity for anyone to pick up Alice, an arresting novel by Christina Henry published last summer. I’ve never even watched any of the Alice in Wonderland adaptations that have been animated or filmed. Outside the door stood hand in hand with something dark and hideous, a thing crafted of shadow with flashing silver teeth…” Blood on her hands and under her feet, blood in her mouth and pouring from her eyes. She matched her breath to his, and it was almost like holding his hand as the night closed in.Īlice dreamed of blood. said nothing, but she heard his breath go deep and even, and she let her eyes fall shut. “Her voice trailed off, her throat full of love and loss and pain.

Christina henry chronicles of alice