A BLADE SO BLACK - L. L. McKinney

Alice is trained to fight the monsters that appear in the dream world known as Wonderland. With her fighting skills and the magical weapons available to her she'll rip the Wonderland denizens to shreds ... if she's finished her homework.

Fighting off the Nightmares (as the Wonderland monsters are called) could be a full-time job and then some, but Alice also has more mundane things to keep her busy as well.  She's fighting to keep up her GPA and keep her over-protective mother at bay, and find a way to stay connected with her high-maintenance friend.

But the Nightmares are getting stronger and Alice's trainer, her mentor, has been poisoned. There is an antidote, but it's deep in Wonderland - deeper than she's ever been. Getting there and back again will be a challenge, and there's no room for being late.

I'm a sucker for anything based on Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland which on one hand makes sense because I like the Alice stories so much, but on the other hand I tend to think - "Do we need another Alice in Wonderland?"

This is a very dark adaptation with a rather typical YA fantasy flourish - a young girl has to face dangers that her parents couldn't even begin to fathom, then turn around and do the 'mundane' things in life (like homework) without letting on. It's just a little bit of a tired trope but there's clearly still a readership out there for this sort of story.

While I enjoyed making some of the Alice in Wonderland connections throughout the read, there's really no reason for this to be connected to the original Alice stories.  Change a couple of names and it stands alone as a dark, urban fantasy.

I like the grittiness of this story and it's difficult to not make the connection that if Alice from the original story were Black her adventures in Wonderland would have been darker and more dangerous, like this. I don't want to make this about race, but it's kind of there.

As for this being a dark take on the Alice story, I'm still inclined to favor Christina Henry's Alice, but I am curious to see how this plays out in the next volume.

Looking for a good book? A Blade So Black by L.L. McKinney is a modern, dark take on the Alice in Wonderland story. YA readers looking for something edgy will enjoy.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

3-1/2 stars

* * * * * *

A Blade So Black

author: L.L. McKinney

series: The Nightmare-Verse #1

publisher: Imprint

ISBN: 9781250153906

hardcover, 384 pages

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