Curiouser and Curiouser

Alice in Wonderland-related books can fall into several categories. There's the traditional Alice books with Alice as she appears in Wonderland. This can include fiction and fact books. Then there's the variations on that with books divided into two subsets, ones that feature a great deal of violence and ones that are sexually oriented.

The other form of books are those that are Alice-related but only use the name Alice (and perhaps other names from the original books) but have nothing to do with the actual Wonderland. These can also be divided into those that are violent and those that are erotic.

This book falls into the 'using the name only' category of books. The characters are all human, their names including Alice, the Caterpillar, Rabbit, Frog, the Jabberwocky and the Queen of Hearts. Alice in this book worked for the Jabberwocky who was basically a crime lord. She left that life but has to return to it to help William, who she is in love with.

The Queen of Hearts is a totally insane woman who does the same things that Elizabeth Bathory did, a woman who killed young girls in order to bathe in their blood, thinking she would be eternally beauttiful (which didn't work out to well for her.)

The book is also a steampunk novel with mechanical cats and other things.

It's extremely difficult to rate a book like this. To me using the names from Wonderland but not having anything remotely the same (other than the crazy Queen) lowers the value of the book considerably. You could rename the characters virtually anything (say Sharon for Alice, John for the Caterpillar and so on) and it would not change the book one iota.

If the book had been done that way I would give it either a 3 or 4 since the story was interesting. Using the Wonderland names without having anything to do with Wonderland, though, means, at least to me, that people are writing books like this to capitalize on the names, people thinking they will have something to do with the Wonderland mythos when they don't.

Thus, I'll give this book a 2 for that very reason.

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