Alice by Christina Henry

Author : Christina Henry
Title : Alice
Published : 2015
Publisher : Titian Books
Pages : 198
Genre :  Fantasy / horror

     In a warren of crumbling buildings and desperate people called the Old City, there stands a hospital with cinderblock walls which echo with the screams of the poor souls inside. In the hospital, there is a woman. Her hair, once blonde, hangs in tangles down her back. She doesn't remember why she's in such a terrible place-just a tea party long ago, and long ears, and blood...Then, one night, a fire at the hospital gives the woman a chance to escape, tumbling out of the hole that imprisoned her, leaving her free to uncover the truth about what happened to her all those years ago. Only something else has escaped with her. Something dark. Something powerful. And to find the truth, she will have to track this beast to the very heart of the Old City, where the rabbit waits for his Alice.

     I think there is something about the adventures of Alice that simply refuses to die. No matter how old she gets she will never fade away. If not in its original form or one of the ever-growing re-imaginings of her adventures.  I would think it is up there for one of the most rewritten books in all history. So when looking at this version you may think to your self why both with yet another version of a story I have read many times before. While Henry does stick to the very bones of the story, the flesh that encases them is a very different bread to ones I have read before. 

     For most versions of the Alice story, the author takes everything that has come before and transplants it to a new location or plays with the gender of the characters. But here the author looked to not only expand it into her own world but to pull other elements of Carole's work into her own. What she does is creates a very unique sandbox to play with her characters. The author pulls elements of the real world and mixes them up with a dark and foreboding cityscape. As our leads make their way along a path they must follow, it felt to me like the imminent death lurked around each corner and down every alley. This is a place that you would not want to place even a single foot upon its blood-soaked ground. It is a land that has been corrupted to its very core. 

     As for Alice her self, this is by no means a sweet and innocent girl getting lost in a world she doesn't understand.  Henry's Alice has been through a great deal by the time we come to meet her. Unsure of the thing she may have done to land her self in her current predicament, it makes for some interesting reading. She gave me a charter with more depth than I was expecting. Whilst I felt sorry for this incarnation there where times when I wasn't sure I could entirely trust her. Maybe, in fact, she was someone who had done a great deal of harm and as such my sympathy was ill-placed. Her traveling companion is defiantly no better, A man simply called Butcher. Had he to also darn harm to those ill-deserving of it. Was he, in fact, a mad man leading Alice down a blind alleyway to her eventual doom. What this author did give me was a lot of moral ground to play about with. Maybe these two are the perfect fit like a lock and key. A look at that sometimes bad people don't always do bad the whole time and not all good people run the righteous path. 

     The way the plot twists and turns gave me an adventure worthy of my time. For the most part, it really only touches on elements of the original plot. Much like a drunk walking home late at night, she veers of this way and that. This Wonderland is much more a darker shade, gone are the bright electric Ladyland. This is a place of dark rich colors, of perversions of the worst kind. Where the kink of the most darken mind can be catered to for a price. It is tough to tell if anything good can come to life in such a place. This is like Dante Alighieri took a walk on an LSD trip and found the void looking back. Overall, it's well-paced and she kept me on hooks as I sunk deeper into the murky waters of her world. As each piece of the puzzle came into view I started to understand better how our two leads not only came to be where they started but also how I could see some light in them. This is a dark horror fantasy but also a mystery that needs to be picked apart. 

     Henry's take on a classic book gave me fresh air to breathe with something I thought I knew very well. I believe that in transplanting more than just the location she made this very much her own. She expanded into place the Carroll would never have dreamed to tread. This is a book about broken people trying to make sense of the place they call home. It is also about coming to terms with what you may have done, and how the fight might just take every last ounce of sanity you have.