Continuation of how shit Alice is: there is a woman who had previously found Hazel Wood and spent a day or two there, her companion dies, and the whole experience aged her by a decade and broke her mentally. This wouldn't normally be a problem, except: Alice manipulates the ever-living crud out of him won't let him speak and shuts him down if he starts puts his life in threatening situations makes it clear that he is rich and thus invulnerable to any wrong that might come during a situation where she pisses off a cop and Finch makes it clear that he fears cops due to his skin color, but Alice practically scoffs at him as if it wasn't even remotely a possibility (this actually pissed me off so much) and at one point they are speaking and the author thought it okay to have Alice tell Finch, who was pointing out how dangerous and reckless and awful she was behaving, to "get a liberal arts degree." Saaaaaayyyy whaaaaat?Ĥ. Finch is the only POC in the entire book. He is rich, he has connections, he has read Tales from the Hinterland, and he is a young man who happens to have a smidgen of romantic interest in her.ģ. He is a fan of Tales from the Hinterland, and Alice normally shies from anyone who calls themselves an Althea fan, since they tend to err toward dangerous and mad-yet she lets him in. Alice befriends Finch, who had always had a fascination in her due to her connection to Althea. I get it, I understand it, but Alice was shitty. The author has explained her origin and made an homage to Alice in Wonderland. Okay, got it, she has anger issues because of the story character she truly is. Alice turns out to be Alice-Three-Times, stolen from her story by Althea's daughter Ella. If this book had been nothing but Althea's fairytales, I most likely would have loved this book. There is also mention of other tales, but we only get a tidbit here or there and nothing whole. There are two complete fairytales in the entire book, and even those are told secondhand from what the character Finch can remember. The fairytales that Althea Prosperpine wrote are mesmerizing and I wanted more of them.
Her descriptions were so vividly appealing, and I could picture exactly what the unfolding scenes looked like. Melissa Albert proved to me quickly that she is capable of writing a fairy-tale and bringing that fairy-tale alive. The writing in the first third or so of the book entranced me. I am the latter because I was so greatly misled to believe that this was going to be a dark, creepy fairy-tale and what I got instead was an unfulfilling tale and concerning remarks against the sole black character, the wealthy Finch that Alice ends up using for his money and his interest in her grandmother Althea Proserpine, and a woman broken by her experience finding Hazel Wood.īefore I delve into everything disappointing, let me give you what I did like: I am the former because the story spiraled out of control somewhere around halfway and the writing lessened in the lyricism and visual that was found in the beginning. I am disappointed and a bit disturbed by what I read.