A brilliant and amusing reinvention.
A day before she’s off to college, Alice revisits Wonderland, where she unravels dark secrets in this spin on the Lewis Carroll classic.
As the story opens, Alice feels down because she must leave the “innocence of childhood” for college in London. However, her thoughts are disrupted when she spots a tiny train floating on a nearby river. She soon finds herself shrunken down and pulled onto the train, where she eventually falls over a waterfall (cleverly dubbed “Alice Falls”). Lost in a forest, she realizes that she’s back in Wonderland. Now older and wiser, Alice discovers newfound horrors in this world, including elder abuse, poverty, and government corruption. As she tries to make her way back home, she repeatedly hears about a Mayor Jackson MacDonald, who could be the cause of all these problems; she fears that he’s somehow connected to a monster called a Jabberwocky (another Carroll allusion). Soon, Alice realizes that she might be the key to saving Wonderland from its dystopian state. Debut author Stoneham does a stellar job of re-creating Carroll’s beloved world while also adding his own twists. Familiar characters return or are referenced—most notably, the Cheshire Cat; however, Stoneham’s new players feel just as creative and nonsensical. There’s Jack Door (a play on “jackdaw”), a half-bird boy who briefly acts as Alice’s love interest; and Mary (nicknamed “Bow Peep”), a Janus-faced girl who has an unsettling presence, and these two characters help differentiate Stoneham’s darker world from Carroll’s. The prose style pays tribute to the original’s in the best way possible, as Stoneham incorporates many silly puns, riddles, and nursery rhymes that truly capture the spirit of Carroll’s writing. For example, Alice communicates with the Cheshire Cat via a mobile telephone—literally a phone with arms and legs. With these kinds of jokes, Stoneham’s wit and cleverness tie the novel together.
A brilliant and amusing reinvention.Pub Date: Nov. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5462-9988-2
Page Count: 234
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: Jan. 10, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Too much puzzle-solving, not enough suspense.
Video-game players embrace the quest of a lifetime in a virtual world; screenwriter Cline’s first novel is old wine in new bottles.
The real world, in 2045, is the usual dystopian horror story. So who can blame Wade, our narrator, if he spends most of his time in a virtual world? The 18-year-old, orphaned at 11, has no friends in his vertical trailer park in Oklahoma City, while the OASIS has captivating bells and whistles, and it’s free. Its creator, the legendary billionaire James Halliday, left a curious will. He had devised an elaborate online game, a hunt for a hidden Easter egg. The finder would inherit his estate. Old-fashioned riddles lead to three keys and three gates. Wade, or rather his avatar Parzival, is the first gunter (egg-hunter) to win the Copper Key, first of three. Halliday was obsessed with the pop culture of the 1980s, primarily the arcade games, so the novel is as much retro as futurist. Parzival’s great strength is that he has absorbed all Halliday’s obsessions; he knows by heart three essential movies, crossing the line from geek to freak. His most formidable competitors are the Sixers, contract gunters working for the evil conglomerate IOI, whose goal is to acquire the OASIS. Cline’s narrative is straightforward but loaded with exposition. It takes a while to reach a scene that crackles with excitement: the meeting between Parzival (now world famous as the lead contender) and Sorrento, the head of IOI. The latter tries to recruit Parzival; when he fails, he issues and executes a death threat. Wade’s trailer is demolished, his relatives killed; luckily Wade was not at home. Too bad this is the dramatic high point. Parzival threads his way between more ’80s games and movies to gain the other keys; it’s clever but not exciting. Even a romance with another avatar and the ultimate “epic throwdown” fail to stir the blood.
Too much puzzle-solving, not enough suspense.Pub Date: Aug. 16, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-307-88743-6
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: April 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
Suspenseful and snarky with surprising emotional depths.
This debut novel, the first of a projected trilogy, blends science fiction, fantasy, gothic chiller, and classic house-party mystery.
Gideon Nav, a foundling of mysterious antecedents, was not so much adopted as indentured by the Ninth House, a nearly extinct noble necromantic house. Trained to fight, she wants nothing more than to leave the place where everyone despises her and join the Cohort, the imperial military. But after her most recent escape attempt fails, she finally gets the opportunity to depart the planet. The heir and secret ruler of the Ninth House, the ruthless and prodigiously talented bone adept Harrowhark Nonagesimus, chooses Gideon to serve her as cavalier primary, a sworn bodyguard and aide de camp, when the undying Emperor summons Harrow to compete for a position as a Lyctor, an elite, near-immortal adviser. The decaying Canaan House on the planet of the absent Emperor holds dark secrets and deadly puzzles as well as a cheerfully enigmatic priest who provides only scant details about the nature of the competition...and at least one person dedicated to brutally slaughtering the competitors. Unsure of how to mix with the necromancers and cavaliers from the other Houses, Gideon must decide whom among them she can trust—and her doubts include her own necromancer, Harrow, whom she’s loathed since childhood. This intriguing genre stew works surprisingly well. The limited locations and narrow focus mean that the author doesn’t really have to explain how people not directly attached to a necromantic House or the military actually conduct daily life in the Empire; hopefully future installments will open up the author’s creative universe a bit more. The most interesting aspect of the novel turns out to be the prickly but intimate relationship between Gideon and Harrow, bound together by what appears at first to be simple hatred. But the challenges of Canaan House expose other layers, beginning with a peculiar but compelling mutual loyalty and continuing on to other, more complex feelings, ties, and shared fraught experiences.
Suspenseful and snarky with surprising emotional depths.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-31319-5
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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