Författarbild

David D. Hammons

Författare till Alice Takes Back Wonderland

4 verk 57 medlemmar 9 recensioner

Verk av David D. Hammons

Alice Takes Back Wonderland (2015) 43 exemplar
The Code of Magic (2016) 5 exemplar

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Originally posted on Book for Thought.

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This pretty much sums up my thoughts on this book. I simply LOVED it!! If you've been here before, you'll have probably realised by now that I love fairytales and retellings with a passion. So this mashup of all the major fairytales was right up my alley. And boy, did I enjoy reading it!

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Ok, so you probably don't want to hear me go on and on rambling incoherently about all the things I liked about this book, so I'll try to keep it short and make some sense.

The premise is very interesting: after Alice left Wonderland, the Ace of Spades took power for himself, and started taking the wonder away from Wonderland in order to make it a more logical and rational world. When things start taking a terribly dark turn, the White Rabbit decides to go fetch Alice again, so that she may bring back everything that Ace has taken away. Of course, this isn't all too easy for poor Alice, who in the meantime has been labelled as crazy in her own world and had just managed to stop believing in Wonderland. And things take an even crazier turn when she discovers that the only way to defeat Ace is to journey to other mysterious lands where all the fairy tales she grew up reading are very real indeed, and very different too.

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I really enjoyed journeying with Alice. I especially liked to see her develop so greatly throughout the book. She starts out being very insecure, constantly questioning herself and her ability to distinguish between reality and fantasy, and feeling like she isn't up to the task that she's been entrusted with. But as she journeys on and makes new friends, Alice grows to be the leader she is supposed to become, a strong-willed woman who's not afraid of doing whatever it takes to save the ones she loves.

It's okay to be scared. You just can't let it keep you from doing what you need to do

The other characters were great, too! I particularly liked the new spin the author gave on old stories, and I had a great time trying to recognise the characters from the little hints to their identities spread throughout the story before they were fully revealed. It was really great to see all my favourite stories come together, Peter Pan with Pinocchio, Snow White with Robin Hood, all coming together in one great story. I really liked the romance as well, how it developed slowly and didn't take over the whole book, but was still cute enough to have me root for my ship until the very end. My only complaint (because I really should have at least one) is that I would have like to see more of the villains. I mean, there were several and they all had their role to play, but they weren't quite as villanous as I would have expected them to be. That being said, it did still all work very well within the story as a whole.

Overall, this was definitely one of my favourite reads this year, and one of the best retellings/mashups I have read! Really relatable characters, great world building and an adventurous quest make it a must read for all fairytale lovers out there.

And if you've already read this, you'll certainly understand why we must say goodbye like this...
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I received an e-arc of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. This did not affect my opinion of the book in any way.
… (mer)
 
Flaggad
bookforthought | 5 andra recensioner | Nov 7, 2023 |
This was a truly great book! This has actually been one of my favorite retellings! So in this book, the Ace of Spades has taken over Wonderland and he is removing all the wonder from everything including the creatures. Ace wants to make Wonderland more like the world where Alice is from and he sends the White Rabbit into Alice's world to collect weapons and such. While the White Rabbit is there, he brings Alice back to Wonderland in hopes that she can stop Ace. After Alice's first trip to Wonderland as a child, her parents, doctors, and school counselors spend years convincing Alice that Wonderland was just a dream and that it was ADHD complicated by a serious case of schizophrenia that caused her to see Wonderland in the first place. Eventually Alice begins to believe them, so when the White Rabbit takes her back to Wonderland, she thinks she is going crazy and having an episode. She very quickly realizes that Wonderland is actually real and she isn't crazy after all, but she doesn't like what is happening to Wonderland and wants to help. The Mad Hatter sends her off in a flying machine to go and gather an army to defeat Ace. Along her way, she meets all kinds of different fairy tale (also mythological and folk tale) people and creatures like the Gingerbread Man, Snow White, Cinderella, Peter Pan, Davy Crockett, and so on. I really loved how all of these stories wove together and how certain characters were parts of multiple fairy tales. (If you watch the show Once Upon A Time, it works a lot like how Rumpelstiltskin was also the Beast from Beauty and the Beast and was also the crocodile from Peter Pan.) It wasn't all happy endings though because in war people die and in this fairy tale world that was no exception. While I was reading this book, it was totally playing out in my head as a movie, but the style of movie kept changing in my head. There were times that I saw this playing out as the original Disney animated characters. Other times I saw it playing out in my head as live action characters, and other times it was more CGI like Shrek! I highly recommend this book!… (mer)
 
Flaggad
Completely_Melanie | 5 andra recensioner | Sep 10, 2021 |
All the while I was reading this novel, I kept trying to imagine how it could be funnier.

While our itinerant food reviewer tasted the delicacies across a fallout wasteland, I couldn't help but imagine him playing as one of the cast from Monty Python's Flying Circus. Probably Eric Idle.

Once he teams up with Lewis and Zoe, I had this strange desire to see the whole novel done on stage. With singing. And dancing zombies. I thought it would be so cool.

In the end though, it was amusing, mostly mildly so, and it made me really want to fire up my Fallout New Vegas on Wild Wasteland settings and grin my way through the strangeness.

And eat Tamales. Even if it's rat stew, it'll now always be Tamales in my heart.

It was very nice to see a light-hearted take on a nuclear wasteland. The travelogue was a very nice touch.

Thanks to Netgalley!
… (mer)
 
Flaggad
bradleyhorner | 1 annan recension | Jun 1, 2020 |
Read all my reviews on http://urlphantomhive.booklikes.com

Sound advice, I wouldn't eat them either.

I think from the title it is clear that this is not the most serious book and that you will have to let reason go at times in order for it to make sense (if it makes sense at all, that is). In this case, what you see is what you get, because it is exactly that kind of book.

Henry Rosetta for some reason is a food critique reviewing the places he eats while looking for the answer to one question: why did the bombs fell? All of this is of course set in a post nuclear war zone Texas with some strange inhabitants, including dancing (some of them riverdancing) zombies.

If you like this absurd weirdness from time to time, this is the book for you. I liked, but only when reading relatively short fragments at a time. Is this a book I would finish in a single sitting? Probably not, but spread over a few days I quite enjoyed myself.

Thanks to the publisher for providing me with a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!
… (mer)
 
Flaggad
Floratina | 1 annan recension | Dec 7, 2019 |

Statistik

Verk
4
Medlemmar
57
Popularitet
#287,973
Betyg
½ 3.7
Recensioner
9
ISBN
10

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