GoodRead - After Alice

I'm going through a bit of a reading slump. There, I said it. I seem to have hit a bit of a wall. I was meant to be reading Magnus Chase from my lovely pals from the Bookish Brits. I was so excited to read it - and 100 pages in, I hit a wall. I just went "Nope", put the book down and not touched it since. Which is sad.

In the mist of this, Midas PR asked if I wanted to review some audiobooks. They gave me one/two credits and I went looking for something to grab my attention. ANYTHING to grab my attention for longer than a few minutes. For a while, nothing grabbed me. Then I stumbled onto After Alice and went "Let's risk it.". It was this or Playing with Fire by Tess Gerritsen (which I have been approved to read via NetGalley hence why why After Alice won this contest).

If you have read my blog for a while, you would know I have had a real bad run of audiobooks of late. No idea why, but there we go. I just hoped I was going to make it to the end of chapter 15 without wanting to throw my iPod across the room.

What happened to Alice's family when she fell down that rabbit hole and into Wonderland? What happened to Alice's friend, Ada, who fell down that rabbit hole a moment too late?

There's not much else I can say on how to describe this book without fear of spoiling. But I feel the same way about this as I did when I read Gregory Maguire's Wicked (review for that here). It's a fickle thing, this story. I got to the end and there were moments in this audiobook I really liked. But there are moments when I found it hard work or grating.

I really enjoyed Gregory's take on Wonderland and the characters from Wonderland. And I liked the fact that he tried to show us what happened in Oxford when Alice and Ada was in Wonderland. How people worried. I like this as we haven't seen this happen in a Wonderland retelling before.

However, I didn't like any of the human characters. If they were human & from our world, I found them very selfish. No one was likeable. I believe I had this problem with Wicked. I never connected with anyone - maybe expect for, up to a point, Ada. How are we meant to root for characters if we can't connect with them?

Another problem I had with the audiobook is the writing style - Gregory Maguire tried to write this in a style that fitted with Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and, while it worked up to a point, it's didn't work completely. There would me words, phrases, even whole chapters, that were just jarring and threw me out of the story. There was one very short chapter that described Oxford, its sky and how it was slowly changing - why is that here? How does this effect the story? It doesn't so why is it here?

The narrator of this audiobook is Katherine Kellgren. While her voice fits the time period this story is set in, it comes across quite harsh at certain moments and that, too, would throw me out of the story.

I tried again with Gregory Maguire and again, this wasn't my cup of tea. I don't enjoy Gregory's writing style so, while I won't be reading any more of this works in future, at least I tried and, if you do like him, you might enjoy this take of Alice. But it wasn't for me.

GoodRead - Wicked

I know I should be sitting down and talking to about the new book by JK Rowling, The Casual Vacancy. But at the time of writing this, I don't have my copy. And by the time you'll probably be reading this, I will be either waiting by my front door for my copy or I will be in London, listening to JK Rowling speaking (I CAN NOT EFF-ING WAIT!) or I will be reading this into the wee hours of the morning.

So, while you wait, let me give you a review of Wicked, the first book in The Wicked Years series, written by Gregory Maguire. Now, before you ask, when I bought this, I knew this was the inspiration behind the West End & Broadway musicals and I knew that the book would be much darker, dealing with sex and politics. So, I went into read this eBook with my eyes open.

So, we all know the story of The Wizard of Oz, don't we? So, what happened before Dorothy arrived in Oz? In truth, what made the Wicked Witch of the West - Elphaba - be called wicked? And what is the true nature of evil?

I am in two minds over this book. I am. I haven't seen the musical and I'm pretty sure that, if I did, I would love it. But this book... it's a fickle creature. There were times over the month I read it when I enjoyed reading it, and other times, I grew more and more frustrated over the characters and their reactions. Or the things that were mentioned and then never discussed in depth again.

It's an OK read. And, to me, that's it. It was OK. Out of the five parts this book was split into, I was expecting to enjoy the final part where the Elphaba came face to face with Dorothy, but actually, I found the third part of the book most gripping. The part where Elphaba has an affair with a married man - but not out of spite, but because they both fell in love with each other and needed each other.

But I did find this book taxing at times. I think this is because I like all the book I read to have a feeling of reality to them. Even in the most magical world as Oz, I want there to be a feeling of reality in it and its characters, who have emotions, flaws, fears, etc. But with this book... I never felt that. I never felt a connection to the characters and their reasonings/reactions.

Not only that but they would do things or lines would be said that grated on me. For example, a child went missing for several days and, yet no one notices. And when he is discovered and everyone is trying to save him by trying to tear off his wet clothes and smear him with lard to keep him warm, this line pops up in reference to one of the other child: "This gave the children a case of the giggles, and made Irji feel very funny in his trousers, for the first time in his life." For some reason, this whole sentence just grates of me. For an adult read, to take the issue of a young boy maybe getting his first erection in this slightly trivial way is a bit unnerving.

Maybe I am reading too much into this one sentence. Maybe Gregory is doing something quite clever and writes it as if from the child, Irji, point of view. Something funny happened in his trousers, yet he has no idea what or why. But still, it bothers me so.

This was written to be a standalone, yet several years later, Gregory Maguire made it the first in a four book series with the sequels: Son of the Witch, A Lion Among Men and Out of Oz. But after what I've read in Wicked, would I go buy the rest of the series? Not really, no. I know there are fans of this series and they are probably going to hunt me down as I speak, but this wasn't my reading of tea as I hoped. Sorry.

Maybe I should just go watch the musical up the West End... Anyone fancy coming with me?