(re)Visions: Alice
Jan. 29th, 2012 02:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckro(re)Visions: Alice is an anthology containing Carroll's classic and four "retellings" by new authors. Though really, they aren't retellings or revisions.
What Aeliester Found Here is Victorian dark fantasy with similar themes and gender-swapped characters, but a completely different sequence of events and meaning. I would have enjoyed it quite a lot even without the Alice connection.
House of Cards is a dark, more adult prequel/interquel to Alice with a bit of horror to it. It's less my thing, but I thought it was well-written.
Knave is a parody retelling of Alice as a gangster story, which works really well and is my favorite of the lot.
The World in a Thimble is a modern-day sequel featuring a bunch of good ideas but an overall weak execution. It was trying to be too many things and the pacing was problematic.
Overall: A fun read, and it's good that it includes the original, especially if you haven't read it in a while. In retrospect, it probably should have included Through the Looking-Glass also, which would have made a bunch of the references clearer to an unaware reader. I'd call it overall worth the money, though personally, I was looking for more stories like Knave.
Disclosure: I'm friends with the publisher and two of the authors. I may be biased.
What Aeliester Found Here is Victorian dark fantasy with similar themes and gender-swapped characters, but a completely different sequence of events and meaning. I would have enjoyed it quite a lot even without the Alice connection.
House of Cards is a dark, more adult prequel/interquel to Alice with a bit of horror to it. It's less my thing, but I thought it was well-written.
Knave is a parody retelling of Alice as a gangster story, which works really well and is my favorite of the lot.
The World in a Thimble is a modern-day sequel featuring a bunch of good ideas but an overall weak execution. It was trying to be too many things and the pacing was problematic.
Overall: A fun read, and it's good that it includes the original, especially if you haven't read it in a while. In retrospect, it probably should have included Through the Looking-Glass also, which would have made a bunch of the references clearer to an unaware reader. I'd call it overall worth the money, though personally, I was looking for more stories like Knave.
Disclosure: I'm friends with the publisher and two of the authors. I may be biased.
