Book Review: Alice Takes Back Wonderland

So, we all know Alice fell down a rabbit hole where things became curiouser and curiouser, but what happened once Alice went home? After her adventures in Wonderland were finished, where did Alice's story lead? In his book, Alice Takes Back Wonderland, David D. Hammons tells us that Alice's parents medicated her to help quell her delusions of Wonderland, and Alice did her best to live a normal life. Except Alice lives in the United States, and it's present day, and she catches the white rabbit robbing her house and follows him back to Wonderland, where nothing is as she remembers it.

The Ace of Spades is sucking the wonder out of Wonderland. He wants it to be more like Alice's world. Alice decides to do everything she can to depose Ace as the ruler of Wonderland and return the wonder to the world she has such fond memories of. The fact that Ace wants her dead proves to be a bit of a challenge.

The Mad Hatter tells Alice she must amass an army and wake the Sleeping Beauty to save Wonderland, and launches her to a new land, where Alice encounters characters from fairy tales, and discovers she may be a fairy tale character herself.

I wasn't immediately drawn into this story. The first chapter is a rushed flight from Neverland when Alice was a young child, and is filled with the nonsensical wisdom of the Cheshire Cat. Alice's mother made me want to throw my Kindle into the wall because she was so unsupportive and indifferent to Alice's discomfort with the medication.

However, once Alice returned to Wonderland, I couldn't help but be drawn into Hammons' story. I love the way that he intertwines the tales of so many characters. So many people make appearances, from Jack the Giantslayer to Tinkerbelle, to Pinocchio, and none of them are the characters you expect. Fairy tales are only echoes of the truth, and the stories have been told through rose-colored glasses for many of these characters. Happy endings are a bit harder to find than our storybooks led us to believe.

I dislike that so many authors have begun to draw their stories out into trilogies. I miss the days when a good adventure could begin and end within the covers of one book. That being said, I actually find myself wishing Hammons had extended this into a second novel. There are so many wonderful characters and settings, that I wish we had more time with some of them.

Overall, I found this to be an enjoyable read, and fans of the original Alice might find this dystopian Wonderland an interesting contrast to the one with which they are familiar.