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Finsternis im Wunderland

(The Chronicles of Alice #1)

Christina Henry (Goodreads Author)

3.86 · Rating details · 24,969 ratings · 4,043 reviews

Unglaublich packend: Diese düstere Neuerzählung von »Alice im Wunderland« wird Ihnen den Schlaf rauben.

Seit zehn Jahren ist Alice in einem düsteren Hospital gefangen. Alle halten sie für verrückt, während sie selbst sich an nichts erinnert. Weder, warum sie sich an diesem grausamen Ort befindet, noch, warum sie jede Nacht Albträume von einem Mann mit Kaninchenohren quälen. ...more

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Hardcover, 352 pages

Published March 16th 2020 by Penhaligon (first published August 4th 2015)

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Average rating 3.86 ·

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· 24,969 ratings · 4,043 reviews

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Jul 31, 2015 Emily May rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 2015, fantasy

“Alice dreamed of blood. Blood on her hands and under her feet, blood in her mouth and pouring from her eyes. The room was filled with it.”

This is one of the best, darkest and most disturbing retellings I have ever read. The author gets extremely creative with this world, weaving in characters we recognize from the original Alice in Wonderland but telling a very different kind of story. If you like your retellings to stay close to the original, then don't waste your time with Alice - it is v ...more

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Jan 20, 2015 Jessica ❁ ➳ Silverbow ➳ ❁ rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: bat-shit-crazy, retellings, creeptastic, favorites, from-publisher, here-be-slaves, acerocstars, fantasy, rabid-reads-reviews, the-book-boy-is-mine

3/25/18 - ON SALE for $1.99:

https://amzn.to/2I1ZA6B

9/12/15: When I first read ALICE, I had a hard time categorizing it. It was Victorian, but it wasn't steampumk. It was horror . . . ish. Fortunately, it very obviously a retelling, so at least I had that. BUT. Just having read this article: http://www.dailydot.com/geek/dreadpun... I can now solidly identify it at DREADPUNK. *grins creepily*

Reviewed by: Rabid Reads

4.5 stars

The first thing you should know is that I bloody hate ALICE IN WONDERL ...more

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Aug 07, 2015 Wendy Darling rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2015-publication, own-dtb-tbr, inexplicably-violent, penguin, read-2015, food-porn, gothic, 2015-favorites, to-review, adult

This is a bizarre, violent story, one full of menace and dark magic. It's trippy the way that every Alice book should be, and full of nightmarish images and themes.

I loved it for the most part...but. BUT. I have one problem with it, and it's a pretty major one: the book is extremely rape-y. Huge trigger warning if you are bothered by sexual violence of any sort, because it's everywhere in this world, both blatant and implied, and both active and imagined.

While I've always thought most fairy ta ...more

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Jun 06, 2015 Alienor ✘ French Frowner ✘ rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Recommended to Alienor ✘ French Frowner ✘ by: Jessica ❁ ➳ Silverbow ➳ ❁

Shelves: genre-fairytales, genre-mystery-thriller-horror, genre-fantasy, retelling, dark, 2016-reads, abuse, my-kindle-challenges-me

~~Bring it, Alice! I'm not scared.~~ Oh, how I should have.

TRIGGER WARNING : Graphic rape (a lot) and violence

►By no means is Alice a flawless book, and I'm not gonna lie, the first chapters, if they hooked me, confused me as hell in the same time. Who are these people? What do they want? What are their relationships like? Where the fuck are they? What's this world, where human traffic, rape and violence are common practices, where the awful way women are treated makes me want to scream?

To be hones ...more

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Jan 18, 2020 Nilufer Ozmekik rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Welcome to the grimy tales of Alice in Darkland. Team of Alice and Hatcher or let’s call them ALCHER are getting out of the asylum for avenging the people who put them there and leave for nearly 10 freaking years!

Alice was raped by a rabbit and she retaliated by taking his eye with the knife as like the rabbit put an ugly knife scar across the cheeks to mark her. She ran away in front of the horrified servants of rabbit but her own family disowned her so the only person helped her to survive thr Welcome to the grimy tales of Alice in Darkland. Team of Alice and Hatcher or let’s call them ALCHER are getting out of the asylum for avenging the people who put them there and leave for nearly 10 freaking years!

Alice was raped by a rabbit and she retaliated by taking his eye with the knife as like the rabbit put an ugly knife scar across the cheeks to mark her. She ran away in front of the horrified servants of rabbit but her own family disowned her so the only person helped her to survive throughout her asylum years was Hatcher who also witnessed the massacre of his wife and kidnapping of his own daughter.

Team Alcher reminds you of Natural Born Killers’ Mickey and Mallory or You’s Joe and Love but their only resemblance is being blood thirsty killers. They’re not sociopaths, stalkers, obsessive psychopaths. Both of them keeps their light and goodness inside but the traumatic experiences and abandonment made them who they are right now!

This retelling is dirty, irritating, nerve bending, graphic, brutal, It’s even darker than Grimm Brothers stories. There are massacres, rape, illegal girl trafficking, cannibalism, violent murders. You feel like you just stepped into the dark side of the moon.

At some parts I couldn’t decide if I should be afraid of the monsters of the books or inner monsters of the normal people who took control of them for diving into more violent acts. When Alcher leaves the asylum, they accidentally freed one of the most dangerous creature: Jabberwocky out there. But at some parts we see that Alice can control Jabberwock so does it make her more terrifying creature?

When Alice follows her bloody, gruesome, vulgar path, she turns into Tarantino’s Bride from Kill Bill and starts her avenging game. Her partners in crime Hatcher accompanied her at everywhere, they saved each other’s lives and at the end we understand their stories didn’t end so far.

This one is exciting, heart throbbing but also mind numbing and definitely so much bloody journey that I can ever imagine. (Yes, this story should be adapted into series but only Tarantino’s direction can deal with so much blood, violence, rottenness!)

I loved the first book and I’m so ready to dive into second one even though there are mixed reviews and heavy criticism about the direction of the story. Let’s read and decide about it! ...more

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Jun 30, 2019 Charlotte May rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: retelling-fairytale, horror

3.5 ⭐️

“I wish I were a magician…I’d find all those lost girls and bring them home. I’d take all those men who hurt those girls and make them cry.”

Woah. This adds an entire new dimension to the word dark. If you can think of something gruesome, or violent, or harrowing – it’s probably in this book.

I read Lost Boy by Christina Henry, and although that story contained murder, and fighting and battle, it wasn’t nearly on the same scale as Alice was. This bordered on horror, for me at least.

Alice a ...more

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Jan 19, 2016 Kelly (and the Book Boar) rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: black-as-mitchell-s-heart, book-fairy, read-in-2016, kindle, ewwwww, nutters, stabby-stabby

Find all of my reviews at: http://52bookminimum.blogspot.com/

WARNING: MITCHELL WAS IN CHARGE OF GIFS TODAY SO THINGS MIGHT GO A LITTLE PEAR SHAPED

“Beware the jaws that bite, the claws that snatch . . .”

Confession time: I hate Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass and allllll of the movies that have been made from cartoon to Helena Bonham-Carter musey magic. It’s just never been my thing (save your anger – I’ll probably post something more offensive before this review is even over ...more

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Oct 30, 2016 emma rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: non-ya, dark, retelling, 1-star, alice, mystery-thriller-horror-etc, nope, couldn-t-wait-to-read, unpopular-opinion, reviewed

Review: 1.25/5

Well, as a retelling, that did a rather curious job.

I was so excited to read this book! It's even on my "can't wait to read" shelf. There is something about the idea of a retelling in which Alice has escaped from an asylum that so fits the wondrous aura of the original book. Yet this did not stick to any of the plot-points, truly. Which was very disappointing. I imagine it would be extremely difficult to manufacture a narrative from the nearly unrelated curiosities of the original Review: 1.25/5

Well, as a retelling, that did a rather curious job.

I was so excited to read this book! It's even on my "can't wait to read" shelf. There is something about the idea of a retelling in which Alice has escaped from an asylum that so fits the wondrous aura of the original book. Yet this did not stick to any of the plot-points, truly. Which was very disappointing. I imagine it would be extremely difficult to manufacture a narrative from the nearly unrelated curiosities of the original Alice in Wonderland—Tim Burton certainly struggled—but it seemed like the only thing this attempt did was take some names.

It seems that this is not the only shared factor between Tim Burton’s adaptation and Christina Henry’s. Both focus upon the plotline of Alice defeating the Jabberwocky (which is somewhat ridiculous if you think about it). Both require a certain blade to kill it. Both have weird sexualizations of the plot points, which is so odd because the original Alice is a CHILD. (Especially Henry’s—the entirety of the book was centered upon human trafficking for prostitution and sexual assault.) Both have significantly aged Alices, perhaps to fit this. Maybe Henry was adapting Burton’s take on the book rather than the book itself. It all came off as very plagiarized.

Things, specifically, that bugged me about Henry’s take: Alice travels with her middle aged mental-institution-next-door-neighbor, whom she is in love with for some reason? He, to the best of my detection, is not modeled upon a character. The Rabbit is a villain, the main one, and does not share any attributes with the original White Rabbit. In fact, it seems that Henry may have intended the Rabbit to mean the March Hare? Everyone in the book is a villain and there is a strange incorporation of characters from Through the Looking Glass, but not the important ones (Tweedle Dee, Tweedle Dum and the chess pieces, for example, go undiscussed. Maybe in the next books). In general it was so frustrating to try to compare this book to the original, because it didn’t add up. And that is all the fun of retellings!

After 291 pages of unspeakable violence, the ending of this book was unbelievably anticlimactic. We follow Alice and Hatcher, her extremely old, my-only-character-trait-is-I’m-a-crazy-murderer love interest, as they battle their way to the two “boss” characters: the Rabbit and the Jabberwocky. I don’t want to spoil anything, so I’ll just say we encounter these guys for a total of the last dozen pages. Very frustrating.

God, I’m so upset by how much I hated this. What a cool concept, entirely dashed.

Bottom line: if you like very violent books, you may like this. If you like retellings, you will not. I sure didn’t.
...more

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Mar 04, 2017 Matthias rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: my-reviews

With "Alice in Wonderland" Lewis Carroll has created a world that has taken root in many people's minds. Wonderland's mysterious inhabitants have entrenched themselves into our dreams as soon as we heard or read about them. It should come as no surprise then that this realm has spawned millions of references, not to mention the abundance of stories that sprouted in other minds, with Disney twists and darker turns, but always with the Cheshire's grin somewhere lurking about.

When I read Lewis Car With "Alice in Wonderland" Lewis Carroll has created a world that has taken root in many people's minds. Wonderland's mysterious inhabitants have entrenched themselves into our dreams as soon as we heard or read about them. It should come as no surprise then that this realm has spawned millions of references, not to mention the abundance of stories that sprouted in other minds, with Disney twists and darker turns, but always with the Cheshire's grin somewhere lurking about.

When I read Lewis Carroll's work for myself, I came away a bit disappointed. The story felt too disjointed, the characters not relatable enough, and beyond the first moments of awe through encountering such strange creatures and absurd landscapes lay a feeling of anticlimax. Maybe it's the vivid and highly appealing image that has been painted of Wonderland, or maybe it's the feeling that more could be discovered in the white rabbits's burrow, but despite my disillusionment something about the story keeps fascinating me. I think the true power of Wonderland is found in how it works differently in everybody's imagination. For some the set pieces that were created here have become molds for their own dreams, Wonderland being a river bed through which their own fantasies run their course. For me Wonderland used to be that place where imagination has gone the farthest, a horizon for my daydreams. Recently it also felt that it's where fancy has got the longest way ahead of it, as I dream of taking a left where Alice has taken a right.

Christina Henry is one of the many authors to have decided that more could be done with Wonderland, and her take on the matter has been largely met with praise. When I started this book I was skeptical of an author who had to make use of a "mold" to get her story out there. On the other hand, there is no better mold than the one that's got "Made in Wonderland" etched on the bottom, so I decided to give it a try.

And at first, I was highly entertained. The green grassy hills made way for an industrial city, the sparkling blue rivers have been replaced by green sludge and the merry cast of characters have become either bruised and battered victims or terrifying monsters. Alice herself is no longer the curious girl but a scared, scarred and confused woman who has to deal with the trauma of rape while being locked away in a mental institution. Dark clouds gather, fires erupt and another tumble down the rabbit hole ensues, only this time it's going to be bloody.

But as with the original, my initial enthusiastic feelings did not endure. Four stars became three and as I wrote this review it even dropped to two. This is because at some point the narrative was showing some symptoms of the Young Adult Literature-disease.

The first symptom: overexplanation, spoonfeeding of interpretations, making the implicit needlessly explicit. Juicy lines that are meant to grab the reader's interest are put in italics, just to make sure you can't miss their genius. Where Lewis Carroll left a lot of silhouettes in his shrouds of mystery, Christina Henry drags them out into the spotlight and explains them away. Nothing is left up to the imagination. As if it wasn't bad enough that the once magical characters suddenly had to have something as ridiculously mundane as motives, these motives also had to be clarified. In my book, that's akin to blasphemy in Wonderland.

The second symptom: bitterness. I don't know if it's a YA-thing specifically or a recent trend in literature as a whole, but the few stories I have read in the genre carry with them a certain bitterness that goes well with the dark atmosphere in which the protagonists wallow, a darkness that was specifically designed to account for such a supposedly mature sentiment. Like any bitterness, it carries whiffs of pomposity and leads to a certain class of philosophies such as "an eye for an eye" that sound all the more pertinent and alluring due to all the emotional baggage the reader is asked to hold on to.

As a side-symptom, the bitterness, as ever crowned with a false sense of moral highground and intellectual superiority, allowed the author to make a villain out of practically every character. While it was innovative to see the Walrus depicted as a ruthless ganglord in the beginning, it got old very quickly as all the other characters were made into something similar during the course of this story. This book felt more and more like black paint being splashed on a painting of a beautiful landscape. Darkness was spilled all over the place to such an extent that one wonders why the author didn't choose to do it on a blank canvas instead of spoiling such a pretty place. I guess for many it's the contrast that makes it work. It did for a long time for me too, but in the end there was little contrast left as darkness filled the entire frame.

I hoped this story would have been about coping, about wonderment after disillusionment or about finding comfort in magic as cold reality chills your bones, but it became something else altogether. This is a bitter tale of vengeance. Magic, love and mystery are just some tiny sprinkles added on this ultimately cold and saltless dish, and the abundance of blood does little to hide the lack of tension. My final assessment thus becomes two stars, as a testament to the Cheshire's enduring grin, while the rest vanished into darkness. ...more

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Aug 09, 2015 Evelyn (devours and digests words) rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: welcome-to-the-dark-side, retelling, fantastical, the-heck-just-happened, underwhelming, cardboard-cutout-characters, overrated-tbh, tortured-hero, blood-and-flying-entrails

WARNING: Rape & sexual violence. I'm too pissed to let this subject slide off in my review.

I feel like head-banging the walls at how ‘oh-so-dark-and-morbid’ this book is. I can't even bring myself to say ‘This is so dark oMG!1!’ without feeling the need to roll my eyes off my sockets. Gross exaggeration there but I just can't take this book seriously when everything about it is so fucking flat and one-note with no complexity nor weight to it, and my god does this book tries too hard, too ove WARNING: Rape & sexual violence. I'm too pissed to let this subject slide off in my review.

I feel like head-banging the walls at how ‘oh-so-dark-and-morbid’ this book is. I can't even bring myself to say ‘This is so dark oMG!1!’ without feeling the need to roll my eyes off my sockets. Gross exaggeration there but I just can't take this book seriously when everything about it is so fucking flat and one-note with no complexity nor weight to it, and my god does this book tries too hard, too over-the-top to paint the picture of a brutal world. It outright angered me.

This is categorized as Adult, and rightly so because there are actual graphic details of maiming where you'll find yourself knee-deep in bloody entrails, and not to mention, there are a ton of raping and sex assault going on here. A LOT of it.

The way this book tosses out the brutality of rape like it's nothing more but a tool to make the story have that dark, adult and edgy spice to it felt so fucking cheap. If a character with a vagina enters the picture then it's rape alllllll the fucking way. That, or she's under the constant threats of rape. Even our Pretty Alice here wasn't spared except she was the only one who managed to fight off her assailant while the others cower, fall prey and waste away. Why? Because our special heroine needs equally special reasons to back up the fact that she's brave, noble and whatever-the-fuck-else that adds more appeal to her bland characterization.

If I look past all the ‘doom & gloom’, I see nothing much that I can compliment on other than a very strong, compelling beginning that nearly drove me up the wall with WANT when I read the sample chapter, but that was it. The only kicks I got was when Alice and Hatcher interacted together through a mouse hole that separates them, and the whole talk about the Jabberwocky intrigued me if only for a while. It all went to hell when I realize that I felt remote from all the characters here; I don't fear for them because things go too smoothly and convenient. I don't connect nor do I feel for them because the writing leans too much toward telling instead of showing. I have NO clear pictures of the sketchy world-building(the mediocre writing doesn't help either). The villains hardly made me quiver with fear in my socks since they're so laughingly one-dimensional who has no real depths or complex motives to them. I've read better retellings, better horror books and this is the weakest one so far.

Do I still recommend this? Only if you're willing to sidestep that broach of sensitive subject and take a tumble down the rabbit hole to a completely un-Wonderland then Alice might just be for you.

2.5 stars ...more

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Nov 28, 2016 Dan Schwent rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2016-books, 2016

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. After her disastrous encounter with the Rabbit, Alice is confined to an insane asylum in the Old City. When a fire breaks out, she escapes the asylum with Hatcher, the axe-murdering inmate next door. However, the Jabberwock is on the loose as well, and to stop him, Alice will have to cross paths with the Rabbit once again...

Confession time: While I whiled away many a day playing Dungeons and Dragons, most of today's doorstop-sized fantasy novels don't hold a lot of interest for me. Alice, howeve ...more

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Apr 30, 2016 Nenia ✨️ I yeet my books back and forth ✨️ Campbell rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: dark-and-twisted, netgalley, horror, magic-and-sparkles-and-shit

Instagram || Twitter || Facebook || Amazon || Pinterest

Imagine if Tim Burton and Quentin Tarantino sat down at a table to do a book collaboration.

"Let's make a book with tons of over the top violence," Tarantino might say. "Sexual, physical, cannibalism - you name it!"

"Okay," Tim Burton might say. "But only if we get to ruin somebody's childhood classic with an existential nightmare set in a surrealistic landscape of angst and desolation."

"And let's have a female character go on a killing sp ...more

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Aug 15, 2015 Melissa ♥ Dog/Wolf Lover ♥ Martin rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: own, horror-gothic-etc, fantasy-all

www.melissa413readsalot.blogspot.com

What a darktastic ride through wonderland accept... this isn't the wonderland most may be used to... this place is called Old City and it's not somewhere you want to find yourself.

Years ago Alice went from her home in New City with a supposed friend into Old City out of stupidity if you ask me....only Alice came out... and dear Alice was never the same again.

Alice is put in a mental hospital in the Old City by her parents for the rest of her life. You see yo ...more

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Dec 23, 2019 Jenna rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, horror

Another brilliant re-telling by Christina Henry -- the Grimm Brothers would be proud! This book is every bit as gruesome as their original tales, perhaps more so. In spite of the darkness and gore, I was enthralled!

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Nov 03, 2015 Nandakishore Varma rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: horror, gr-2015-choice

By all means, I should have hated this novel. It subverts one of my absolute childhood favourites into a story that is so dark, that you are left gasping for breath many a time. Don't take what I say lightly - this book is not for the faint-hearted. If you are put off by scenes of rape, torture and misery, please stay away - Christina Henry just piles it on.

Then why did I give it four stars? Well, as a horror novel, it is just one dark rollercoaster ride. Once you mount, there is no way to get d By all means, I should have hated this novel. It subverts one of my absolute childhood favourites into a story that is so dark, that you are left gasping for breath many a time. Don't take what I say lightly - this book is not for the faint-hearted. If you are put off by scenes of rape, torture and misery, please stay away - Christina Henry just piles it on.

Then why did I give it four stars? Well, as a horror novel, it is just one dark rollercoaster ride. Once you mount, there is no way to get down - you shriek, scream, hold on for dear life, maybe piss in your pants - but you stay on, till the ride is finished.

And what a ride!

The original Alice followed a white rabbit, fell down a rabbit hole, had all those weird yet pleasant adventures, and woke up from an afternoon nap in the end. For the Alice in this story, the rabbit hole is the Old City, the den of iniquity which borders the New City, where the nice folks live - but it is a nightmare she enters: raped and mutilated, she wakes up to madness in an asylum. Escaping from there during a fire in the company of "Hatcher", an axe-murderer, her assignment in life is to find the magical talisman required to kill "The Jabberwock", a monster which was incarcerated along with them in the madhouse.

The original characters from Alice are here, but twisted beyond recognition. The Jabberwock, from a nonsense poem in Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There, becomes the book's frightening arch-nemesis. The Carpenter, the Walrus, the Rabbit, the Caterpillar and the Cheshire Cat are all gangland bosses who control the Old City. Most of them deal in girls - and it is in the description of these dens of "pleasure" that the author outdoes herself.

Psychiatrists say that pain and pleasure are separated by a very narrow boundary in the brain. Maybe therein lies the fascination of BDSM and torture porn - I have mentioned elsewhere the horrifying fascination the posters of hell exercised on me, with all those naked souls shown being cut, impaled and burnt. In this book, Christina has plumbed those depths to the utmost. The Caterpillar mutilates and keeps girls in cages for his "collection"; the Walrus eats the girls as he rapes them - the book is full of such things, described in graphically precise imagery. As the author expertly skirts the pain-pleasure boundary, we are forced to follow along, wishing for the end but still willing it to go on.

A must-read for avid horror fans - but for others, read it at your own risk. ...more

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Jun 01, 2018 Katie.dorny rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2018

I enjoyed this; I’m interested to see how Hatcher and Alice’s relationship plays out in the second book.

The horror was not as much as you would think for this book but it definitely had gothic elements.

But it was the most imaginative Alice in wonderland retelling I have ever read. Alice and Hatcher meet in an Asylum, with the Jabberwocky trapped with them. Each classic character comes into play in different ways - it’s a very interesting and modern take and one I really enjoyed.

It was a creepy t ...more

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Aug 10, 2015 ♛Tash rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: horror, fairytale-retelling

I haven’t read Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland.

I have watched several movie versions of it though, and I have to say that I am not a fan of Alice in Wonderland in general. It has always come off to me as the bad side of trippy, so needless to say I was wary of this Alice in Wonderland retelling.

“That was the trouble with not being right in the head. You couldn’t always tell if your eyes were telling the truth.”

Our Alice is in this story is not a pre-teen, but a woman in her late twentie ...more

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Jan 07, 2017 Natalie Monroe rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: blood-guts-n-gore, possible-creepers, great-but-not-quite-there-yet

3.75 stars

"Do not go seeking the Rabbit, else you wish for more death and madness."

Are you ready for the darkest, most fucked up retelling of Alice in Wonderland yet?

Like The Child Thief, Alice has all the elements of the original classic, but dusts off the powdered sugar and lets you see the darkness underneath.

Madness isn't whimsical—it's horrifying.

Years ago, Alice (the character) went down the rabbit hole and came back mad. Blood slicked her thighs as a result of rape. She resides in a ...more

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May 30, 2017 Kainat 《HUFFLEPUFF & PROUD》 rated it really liked it · review of another edition

"Alice, what are you doing?"
"Following the white rabbit, of course."

Well well well what a wonderful surprise this was. Might review it in future sometimes. ...more

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Nov 07, 2018 Auntie Terror rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fantasy-gaslamp

4.4 stars. How could you not love a broken heroine who, on the brink of desperation with the horrors of her past and present, goes "nah - crying won't help" - and then gets on with tormenting and killing bad guys instead? [Prtf] ...more

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Oct 11, 2017 BAM Endlessly Booked rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: audiobooks, fantasy, series-have-read, fairy-tale-retellings, own, ya

I wavered in my rating. I think the author completely missed her niche with this. The book is full of gore. Violence and bloodshed , cannibalism-it’s all there. But what is introduced and barely touched upon is the sex. We are told the various male offenders (the Walrus, the Rabbit, etc) kidnap and rape young women, often entrapping them and maiming them. But NONE of that is described. Why? The fighting and killing is detailed. This series could have pushed an erotic envelope.
As it is it reache ...more

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Apr 24, 2017 Phrynne rated it really liked it · review of another edition

I would probably have never read this but it was suggested for a Challenge ( thanks Teneal) and I have to say I liked it!
It is quite a remarkable book actually and Alice in Wonderland will never look the same again. In this rewrite Alice has been placed in an insane asylum due to her belief that she went down a rabbit hole and met a talking rabbit. From there we descend into what is really a horror story as Alice meets again the Rabbit, the Walrus, Cheshire and others only in quite different fo ...more

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Feb 08, 2016 destini rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Recommended to destini by: Lola

"Alice! What are you doing?"
"Following the white rabbit, of course."

(x)

Instead, we'll just have to settle for 4 stars.

How exceptionally creepy this story was! It's been a really long time since I last read a horror novel and I hadn't realize how much I missed it until I picked up Alice. You're led by the hand, thinking you're going to encounter a fairytale and instead wake up in a nightmare.

Christina Henry got really creative with this retelling. I had always been a fan of the orig ...more

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Aug 13, 2015 Ellen Gail rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Recommends it for: People who like their fairy tales on the dark side

Shelves: kindle, read-in-a-day, horror, retellings

I feel the night crawling up all around, blotting out the moon. I feel blood running down the walls, rivers of it in the streets below. And I feel his teeth closing around me.

All the best people are crazy

Y'all, this is the story that Alice in Wonderland always wanted to be. It was bloody, strange, violent, engrossing, and just overall fabulous in its inescapable trippy weirdness. It's a twisty soft pretzel, salty and deliciously satisfying. It'll fill you up.

To help out with my review today, we ...more

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Jun 26, 2020 Lisann rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fantasy

"There is more to you than you know. Remember that."

Actual rating: 3.5 stars

After playing Alice: Madness Returns a few years ago, I was curious about this version of Alice in Wonderland. It is just as dark and has nothing in common with the original fairy tale.

Violence and cruelty are no rarity in this story of Alice's life. Fortunately she has Hatcher and his axe at her side, who protects her in his not-so-shining armor.

It took a while until I could establish a connection to Alice and I wo ...more

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Mar 30, 2018 Crystal rated it really liked it · review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Mar 22, 2017 Argona rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: age-gap, dark, mystery, favorite-fantasy-series, retellings, romance, reviewed, fantasy, all-time-favorites, magic

Buddy-Read with my amazing friends, Charlie and Nermin! Thank you so much for this wonderful and enjoyable experience, my dears!*Hugs*

Tell you the truth, I used to dislike "Alice in Wonderland" when I was a child. I was very young when my mother bought me the Disney version of this story, to watch during a very hard illness. She was under the impression that I would love all the colors and the interesting characters that danced around. Well, I did not. I was having a fever while watching it and ...more

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Jul 22, 2015 Mogsy (MMOGC) rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: review-copy, horror, retellings, fantasy, dystopia, fairy-tales-and-folklore

3.5 of 5 stars at The BiblioSanctum http://bibliosanctum.com/2015/08/25/b...

It recently occurred to me that over the years I’ve consumed a fair number of movies, games, comics, television shows etc. featuring retellings or re-imaginings of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – but never a novel. Huh. Suffice to say I was pretty shocked by this realization; after all, there are quite a few high-profile titles out there.

Christina Henry’s Alice therefore had the distinction of being my first “Alice re 3.5 of 5 stars at The BiblioSanctum http://bibliosanctum.com/2015/08/25/b...

It recently occurred to me that over the years I’ve consumed a fair number of movies, games, comics, television shows etc. featuring retellings or re-imaginings of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – but never a novel. Huh. Suffice to say I was pretty shocked by this realization; after all, there are quite a few high-profile titles out there.

Christina Henry’s Alice therefore had the distinction of being my first “Alice retelling novel”, and I’m actually quite happy about that. Of the many different versions of Lewis Carroll’s classic that I have experienced, my favorite ones were typically those considered “dark” or “twisted” – and to be honest, those are the types I’m mostly interested in. There’s just something about the original tale that lends itself to the creepy or macabre treatment.

In any case, dark was what I wanted and dark was what I got. Henry’s retelling is definitely not for the faint of heart, and readers should also beware that themes of sexual violence and abuse feature heavily in this novel. This is Alice’s Adventures told through a horror lens, as vicious and sharp as a butcher’s knife wielded unflinchingly in your face, and all the whimsy and magical light-heartedness is warped here into a horrible nightmare of savagery and pain. If you enjoy close adaptations or would prefer to see the fanciful nature of the original story preserved, this book is not for you. But if, on the other hand, you know what you’ll be getting into and would like to see a refreshing new take on creative retellings, then this one could very well be right up your alley.

Alice begins with an introduction to our eponymous protagonist, a young woman who has spent the last ten years in a hospital ward for the insane along with the city’s other undesirables. She can’t remember the events that precipitated her imprisonment, and only knows what she’s been told – that as a girl she went missing, and then was later found again beaten and broken, one cheek slashed open and blood running down between her legs, gibbering nonsensically about “the Rabbit”. Now Alice finds herself mostly forgotten by the world, and her only friend is another prisoner called Hatcher, a multiple murderer who talks to her through a mouse hole in the wall connecting their cells.

One night, a fire breaks out in the hospital allowing Alice and Hatcher to escape, but the two of them are far from free. A shadowy monster known as the Jabberwocky is on the hunt, and it has their scent. The only way to be rid of the beast is to slay him with a magical blade, forcing Alice and Hatcher to seek it out in the heart of Old City where they will face monsters of a different sort – for this is where the magician crime lords rule, feeding off the fear and misery of the populace. Within their ranks are the men known as Cheshire, Caterpillar, the Walrus…and to Alice’s dismay, her old enemy the Rabbit.

As I was saying, if you like your Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland retellings dark and twisted, you’ve come to the right place. Christina Henry doesn’t pull any punches when it comes to filling her world with brutal violence and death. Her protagonists are troubled and broken people, haunted by traumatic pasts and memories. It’s not a happy book. And yet, beneath all the horror and disturbing themes, I’m impressed by the author’s sheer imagination and creativity. I like how she’s taken the familiar elements from the original story and reworked them into her version, making Alice one of the most unique retellings I’ve ever read.

Still, as much as I enjoyed this novel, I couldn’t help but feel like it was missing something vital. In spite of its relatively short length, Alice took me an inordinate amount of time to finish due to the numerous occasions where I got distracted or drifted off while reading. I liked the book a lot, but it just didn’t grip me the way it ought to have, even though the characters had purpose and the plot maintained a steady momentum. I wanted to stay connected but at times it was a struggle, almost like the darkness in the story was a massive black hole that sucked all life from its surroundings. To be clear though, it wasn’t the brutal nature of the story that affected me, but rather the hollowing effect it had on the characters. Both Alice and Hatcher felt distant to me, and whether or not this is by design, it had an impact on my experience.

Nevertheless, I’m still a fan. Alice is unconventional and rather fascinating in its uniqueness. This book is certainly not for everyone, but I can see it scoring a hit with readers who enjoy strange and dark retellings. Themes like sexual abuse and psychological trauma makes this one a disturbing read, but I feel they are handled with a complexity that’s not just there for shock value and cheap thrills. While Alice features a self-contained story, the end does leaves things somewhat open for a future installment. If that’s the case, I definitely wouldn’t mind reading more! ...more

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Aug 12, 2015 Christopher rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: great-cover, fiction, fantasy, 2015, library-has-ebook, magic

After reading a bunch of the reviews here, I realize that we need to set expectations.

Alice is not a horror novel, at least not in the common sense. It is not scary. You will not jump or find yourself unable to sleep waiting for some monster to come for you. This is only horror in that it tells of a horrible world populated with horrible people. It is horrific, but do not come into this looking to be scared.

Second, this book is filled with rape, torture, and slavery. It is very dark, though I d ...more

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Oct 06, 2017 Elena Salvatore rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Recommended to Elena by: Irene Sim

Shelves: 2017, disappointed, secret-society, favorite-of-the-series, non-ya, royalty, authors-i-own-all-the-books, supernatural-beeings, insta-love, downhill-series

“If you go chasing your freedom your fate will only follow you there and force you back.”

Alice doesn't remember how she got here or what sent her here, all she knows is that she's a patient in an insane asylum and the voice of the person next to her room.
Even when he tells her crazy things, she doesn't have any choice but to listen to him. He's the only person that talks to her and she isn't even sure that he's a person.
That is until the asylum is up in flames and with the help from him she f

...more

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Discuss This Book

topics	posts	views	last activity
Thoughts on reimagined stories?	3	8	Jan 21, 2021 01:05PM
2021 Reading Chal...: Alice (The Chronicles of Alice #1)	11	26	Oct 20, 2020 08:07AM
YA Buddy Readers'...: Alice (The Chronicles of Alice #1) by Christina Henry - Restarting August 12th, 2020	12	124	Aug 31, 2020 02:58PM
You'll love this ...: February 2018 - Alice	113	61	Feb 28, 2018 01:47PM

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About Christina Henry

Christina Henry

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CHRISTINA HENRY is the author of the CHRONICLES OF ALICE duology, ALICE and RED QUEEN, a dark and twisted take on Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, as well as LOST BOY: THE TRUE STORY OF CAPTAIN HOOK, an origin story of Captain Hook from Peter Pan.

She is also the author of the national bestselling BLACK WINGS series (BLACK WINGS, BLACK NIGHT, BLACK HOWL, BLACK LAMENT, BLACK CITY, BLACK HEART and B ...more