Queen of Hearts

This is another of the books that falls into the category of having characters like Alice in Wonderland or characters with the same names but not really having anything to do with the original Wonderland at all. Often those types of books of of low quality but this one, despite just using the names, is still pretty good.

Dinah (Alice's cat's name) is in long for the throne of Wonderland. Cheshire is a man who is an advisor to the king. There is a young boy named Hatter who is quite mad but makes beautiful hats. There are Hearts and Spades but they are humans and not cards. There is also one that is patterned loosely after the White Rabbit.

In this case the king and the Cheshire both have something up their sleeves. The king is extremely nasty to Dinah (who is his child by her mother, the Queen who is now dead) but he brings in a girl (who is his child by adultery) and makes her a Duchess. There are loads of executions (heads cut off), croquet (with mallets in the shape of flamingos) and things not found in the original story like torture and an evil plant of some kind.

Things go from bad to worse for Dinah as people start dying and a strange person warns her to forget about being the queen and get out of the palace and run for her life. The story itself is good but the thing is that the Wonderland-based names are not really necessary. This could have been done with people having different names and no references to Wonderland at all and it still would have made a good book.

My own guess is that the authors who use this approach and using the Wonderland tag to draw readers in, the readers thinking that it might be based on the traditional Wonderland. This is one reason why people should always read the description of the book and look at the comments section. Since I collect Alice-related books I go ahead and buy this kind but for some people it might prove to be a disappointment.

Main Index

Main Alice in Wonderland index page