Heartless

 

The tale of the Queen of Hearts. 

Catherine is the daughter of nobility, but she'd prefer to make cakes. She doesn't care for the parties and courtly appointments, she prefers to get her hands, dress, and the backs of her ears covered in flour. But that is not what her mother wants, not what the King wants. Suddenly she is nearly engaged to the King of Hearts who loves her creations and finds her just as delicious. As she tries to escape the proposal, the Jabberwaky attacks and she is saved during a corset affiliated fainting spell by the new court Joker. Now with her eyes locked on lemon colored Joker eyes, she even less interest in the King and being his Queen of Hearts, because hers heart is already taken. 

It was a charming story, read well by Rebecca Soler who did all the voices superbly! One with many loved characters from Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventure in Wonderland. The Hatter before he's mad, the March Hare, the White Rabbit, flamingos and hedgehogs for crochet, and all the other outrageous characters that is part of the land of Hearts. The world is very comically odd as the way Wonderland is supposed to be. It is fabulously portrayed and written, just as Marissa Meyer's Lunar Chronicles did with Cinder(ella) and the rest. 

It is also a love story between the Joker and Catherine. He has a mission and she has dreams. They both have tricks and are bound to lose their hearts, but to each other? They are fun characters with interesting adventures. 

(Spoiler!!) Sadly, though, we know the story of the Queen of Hearts from Alice's Adventure in Wonderland. The Queen is not a happy person. She is heartless and, oh, so willing to take off a person's head. This story is not a happy one. It is a fragility with a comic as it's star. You hope and you read on because "Maybe it's different" "Maybe there is a change" "Maybe she's not that Queen" "Maybe..." But her's is not a happy tale. And this, I think will be the only time I read it. 

I can't give it five stars because it didn't end how I wanted it too!! Written well, yes! Mastered beautifully, yes! But I wanted it different. And what happens to Jest was so quick it almost didn't seem real. Well done, but I didn't want to be sad with this book. 

Alice in the Country of Hearts

Alice in the Country of Hearts was just something that I picked up at my local library. There are often a lot of little treasures hidden there that you'll actually very much love.

This particular  manga was alright in my book. Partially because I was set for a two volume series that ended up being a lot longer. Not only does Alice visit the Country of Hearts, but further on in the story she goes to the Country of Clovers and Diamond. My library didn't have those soooo this is part one of my Alice report to you all. I will have to wait to get the rest of the series at my library before I can tell you more.

This, of course, is a retelling of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. As in that book, there are many strange things that happen; this being a manga means that even more odd things happen. Here, Alice follows the White Rabbit, Peter White, down the rabbit hole and turns human with bunny ears. He kisses her, making her drink some kind of "medicine" (no tag that says "Drink Me" on it though) that magically forces her to stay in the Country of Hearts. He wants her to desperately fall in love with her and of course it backfires on him and she hates him passionately.

She finds that the land has four boundaries: the Palace (where Peter White and the Queen of Hearts lives), The Amusement Park (where the Cheshire Cat and his boss lives), The Mafia mansion (the mafia run by the Mad Hatter and March Hare, and guarded by Tweedle-Dee/Dum), then in the center of it all is the clock tower where the Clockmaker lives and repairs clocks.

Not everything is as nice as the Lewis Carroll novel. Life is not considered precious. The residents of the land magically turn pretty much anything into guns and constantly try to kill each other. When people die, their body dissolves and all that is left are clocks. The Clockmaker repairs them and they get formed into humans again. There is also a segregation between "those with duties" and those who don't. Those who do have duties have differential faces while those who don't, don't have a face at all. Which can make taking life that much easier. Another problem Alice discovers is that everyone, who has a duty, is falling in love with her. Not romantically all the time, but they love her like a curse or something because she is an "outsider." And slowly she is forgetting that she wants to go home. The end of this particular set of books ends with her playing a game and probably heading to the Land of Clover (as the next set of books is titled).

Overall, it was alright. The adaptations for the novel is intriguing and the characters are different enough to be mostly new while still sticking to the names and likes of the original characters they were based on. I was hoping for a contained novel, which wasn't what this was. If I'd known there was more when I first started it and wasn't left hanging like I am, I would have enjoyed it more. I will ask my library to get the next volumes and I'll finish the series, because there is hope for it. But right now I'm put off. :/

I really like Cheshire, though. He is genuinely caring and kind to her. The Clockmaker has his cuteness. The other characters have their own personalities which you will have to discover for yourself, but I really like the Cheshire Cat. I mean, he has a piercing in his tail of a dead fish. Sounds slightly gross, but it's quirky and give him a fun personality.