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.