by Liz Braswell
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
With the abundance of Alice spin-offs, re-tellings, misappropriations and more I went into Unbirthday with relatively low expectations. The nice thing about that is that it doesn’t take too much to impress in the end when this happens.
Plot
Unbirthday is a clever continuation of the classic Lewis Carroll Alice series. All of what you know from the original two Carroll books has happened. In fact having read the original Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass (or at least having seen the animated Disney movie) will greatly increase your understanding of the story. Liz Braswell returns Alice to Wonderland as a teen whom is close to losing her ability to be 'mad'. Right alongside her the Mad Hatter and others are losing their whimsy that makes them so critical to Wonderland. The entire story is about saving Wonderland from too much logic (and a Queen you might know...).
Overall
I was quite impressed with this given how bad most of the Alice retellings or spin-offs I've read have been over the years. This is a story that has been 'done' to death. But as my husband is the biggest Alice fan ever (two arm sleeves of tattoos with Alice; one the good characters and the other the bad characters, Cheshire is on both arms) I decided to read this to let him know if it was worth a read. While it's clearly YA it's still well written and I liked the treatment of Hatter enough to recommend this to him if he wants a take on Wonderland and Alice post Carroll's story.
Please note: I received an eARC of this book from the publisher via NetGalley. This is an honest and unbiased review.
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My rating: 4 of 5 stars
With the abundance of Alice spin-offs, re-tellings, misappropriations and more I went into Unbirthday with relatively low expectations. The nice thing about that is that it doesn’t take too much to impress in the end when this happens.
Plot
Unbirthday is a clever continuation of the classic Lewis Carroll Alice series. All of what you know from the original two Carroll books has happened. In fact having read the original Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass (or at least having seen the animated Disney movie) will greatly increase your understanding of the story. Liz Braswell returns Alice to Wonderland as a teen whom is close to losing her ability to be 'mad'. Right alongside her the Mad Hatter and others are losing their whimsy that makes them so critical to Wonderland. The entire story is about saving Wonderland from too much logic (and a Queen you might know...).
Overall
I was quite impressed with this given how bad most of the Alice retellings or spin-offs I've read have been over the years. This is a story that has been 'done' to death. But as my husband is the biggest Alice fan ever (two arm sleeves of tattoos with Alice; one the good characters and the other the bad characters, Cheshire is on both arms) I decided to read this to let him know if it was worth a read. While it's clearly YA it's still well written and I liked the treatment of Hatter enough to recommend this to him if he wants a take on Wonderland and Alice post Carroll's story.
Please note: I received an eARC of this book from the publisher via NetGalley. This is an honest and unbiased review.
Follow me on Goodreads
1 comment:
Oh, I've been meaning to get into the Twisted Tales! Some of them sound really interesting.
Now I wonder whether we've been reading different Alice retellings/spin offs, or just had very different takeaways from them. I loved both 'Heartless' by Marissa Meyer and 'Alice' by Christina Henry (also the sequel, 'Red Queen'. Haven't read her 'Looking Glass' Anthology yet.)
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