Book review - "Alice: The Wanderland Chronicles"

Here is my Goodreads review of "Alice: The Wanderland Chronicles" by J.M. Sullivan.

This was a wonderful book, and highly recommended.

That said, I have discussed my ratings philosophy before - how I reserve five stars for those books exceptional in their field, the best of the best.  On this scale, "Alice" is four stars - which is very high praise from me.

Like every book ever written, there are problems with it.  And further, there are things about it that I didn't connect with (but are not necessarily inherent problems with the text).  Overall, though, this was a great book, an easy read, and I expect most people would get the same high level of enjoyment out of it that I did.

So what is it?

Ostensibly a retelling of Lewis Carroll's "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland", this book recasts Alice as a young woman in the midst of a world post-zombie-apocalypse, forced to venture out into Phoenix (now called "Wanderland") in search of a cure for her sister.

Pairing "Alice in Wonderland" with zombies is not unique.  I'm not sure where it started - Alice vs the Red Queen in Resident Evil perhaps?  Regardless, we have since (of course) had the successful "White Rabbit Chronicles" series by Gena Showalter (which I really enjoy) starting with "Alice in Zombieland".

This book is different, though.  Those stories use some symbolism or iconography from "Alice" to reflect certain themes or motifs in the work.  "Alice: The Wanderland Chronicles" is explicitly using the story of Lewis Carroll's book - the characters, the ideas, the general progression - to tell a zombie story.  And that is something that "Alice in Zombieland" does not do.

(For that matter, the 'zombies' in "Alice in Zombieland" aren't even that - more like ghosts - so there is little common ground between that series and this one, have no fear.)

As with Carroll's novel, this one begins with Alice leaving both her sister and Dinah (here one and the same person) behind to follow a white rabbit into a frightening world.  Wanderland, of course, is not a separate universe, but its nature as a place abandoned to the Momerath (zombies) and the foreign agencies aggressively pursuing their agendas make it a far cry from Alice's little town where one can at least live one's life only occasionally interrupted by the 'Rath.

And the white rabbit she follows is a man - burdened with the only failed reference to the original novel
as a name.  Most of the references in this book work amazingly well, but "Dr Waite R Abbott" is torturous.  (I would have gone with something more obscure and less instantly recognizable like "Dr Albin Lapin" - but then there's a reason I do not pen runaway successes and JM Sullivan does.)

Why does Alice follow Dr Abbott into Wanderland?  Rumor has it that he has secretly devised a cure for the Momerath virus, which Alice needs to save her sister.  This leads her into a series of encounters with various individuals that will help or hinder (or both!) her quest.

"Alice: The Wanderland Chronicles" is a fast, breezy read.  It is always entertaining, sometimes intriguing, and presents us with many fascinating characters.

Are they all well-rounded and deep?  No, not at all.  Nor, quite frankly, are they intended to be.  There is a great deal more subtlety and depth to the characters here than in Lewis Carroll's source text, but this is still a fast-moving "road movie"-type story which cannot pause for lengthy character interaction.  It is all about moving forward - onto the next event, the next location, the next revelation.

Like the original, there is so much to see and do that we cannot dwell on anything long enough for the people to present themselves as fully three-dimensional (barring a few of the leads).  This is a feature and not a bug.  The characters are as fantastical and hyper-realized as Carroll's were, a bizarre menagerie for Alice to freak out over as she progresses along her path.

They are designed to be colorful and frightening, rather than realistic and recognizable.  Again, where the author intends otherwise, the characters do indeed show levels of reality to themselves.  This is a very well-constructed book, and everything it does is obviously purposeful.

As much as this book draws from the original, however, it is equally indebted to both popular Disney movie adaptations.  A famous exchange between Alice and the Mad Hatter in Tim Burton's movie (for example) is referenced twice (one more... hidden than the other).  Like that movie, this one also chooses to conflate the Queen of Hearts with the Red Queen from the sequel book.  And the appearance of the Mome Raths as dangerous creatures (rather than nonsensical words in a poem) appears first in the animated movie.  (For that matter, the term doesn't appear in the original book at all, only surfacing in "Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There".)

This is quite right, as the pop-culture vision of "Alice in Wonderland" is at least as important to any retelling as the actual text of the book ("Alice's Adventures in Wonderland") is.  Sullivan knows when to use the book's ideas, and when to draw on our cultural consciousness' ideas about the story for proper effect.

So does this all mean that there is nothing original in "The Wanderland Chronicles"?  Goodness me, of course not.  I have described it as a "nominal retelling" in part because, as much as it strives to follow a certain template and include many analogs and references, this is a wholly original story being told.

Alice's predicament and what she is forced to do to resolve it bears no resemblance whatsoever to Lewis Carroll's heroine, who merely glides through Wonderland as a curious observer with no real agency.  (It was, after all, only a dream.)  Here, Alice is driven by her need to cure her sick sister, and her own abilities & innate nature define her actions, her choice of path.

Along the way are intense events, dramatic revelations, and exciting encounters that I will not spoil in the slightest way here.  You won't want to put the book down, as it all unspools swiftly and entertainingly, driving to a specific end that is indeed reached by the time the book is closed.

Of course, this is the first in a series, so the situation is not "resolved" as such.  But the narrative drive of the novel concludes in a satisfactory manner.  There is much left to cover in further volumes, but the story being told in this one is fully complete.  If the story ended here, it would be far from satisfactory - but as sequels have been promised, the resolution in this book works 100%.

I mentioned earlier that characters can be somewhat shallow.  As I stated then, this is deliberate due to the colorful and exaggerated nature of the "Alice" story.  The most prominent characters, however, are well-shaded and we get to know them as well as can be expected for such a story as this one.

Some will balk at the supposed "love triangle" (which is a staple of fiction, but has become a mandate for YA) but really there is nothing of the sort here.  Are there two young men Alice is even vaguely romantically interested in, or at least finds attractive?  Yes, indeed there are.

But not only is this not a focus, it's not in any way "content".  A young woman would find interesting and good-looking boys and men of an age similar to hers attractive.  This is just the way people work.  This book gives no more attention to that aspect than that, merely describing the ways in which Alice happens to find more than one person appealing.

No love triangle - no love whatsoever, in point of fact.  There's no time for such things here.  Anyone put off by Alice happening to be attracted to more than one handsome man in her travels is being affected by other (lower quality) novels and not engaging with what is actually being presented in this book.

In summary, then, "Alice: The Wanderland Chronicles" is a very successful book that accomplishes its goals almost flawlessly.  It does not dwell on the action and gore inherent in zombie stories, but neither does it shy away from them.  It presents simple characters, colorful and variegated, but ones with enough depth where it counts to come across as fully complete.

It is fun, engaging, easy to read, and always entertaining.  If it doesn't hit five stars for me, that is mostly a consequence of its aiming for a lower bar.  The book easily clears the standard it sets for itself, which is more than good enough for me.

"Alice" is not aiming to be a literary classic.  It accomplishes its goals and then some.

Strongly recommended for... let's face it, just about everyone, really.

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