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Curiosity Quills Press released David D. Hammons new fractured fairytale, Alice Takes Back Wonderland, on September 28. While the story is unique in its combination of myths, the writing style didn’t feel as professional as many book releases from a major press.
The story follows a teenage Alice as she recruits various characters from other fairy tale worlds to help her save Wonderland from the Ace of Spades. The Ace of Spades has found a way to take the wonder out of the creatures he kidnaps, making them more human. Alice fights back to save her friends.
Hammons combines various stories and characters in his book, but none of them are quite what they are in human fairy tales. Everything is a little bit different and stories are combined in odd ways. In some instances, this makes the story unique and interesting. In others, the mix of characters gets confusing, especially when one character is actually a character from three separate tales. It seems a little bit overdone.
The story has the potential to be really creative, and in some ways it is, but it reads like an amateur writing attempt. It isn’t as wondrous as it should be, and it feels like characters only died because the author wanted to make the story darker. There didn’t seem to be any real reason behind it.
If you like Alice in Wonderland tales, this one might be worth reading just to engage with a new version, but if you’re not a collector of such tales, this one probably isn’t worth your time.