By: Liz Braswell
“Hands she has but does not hold; teeth she has but does not bite; feet she has but they are cold; eyes she has but without sight.”
Unbirthday
Unbirthday comes from the anthology series Twisted Tales (or A Twisted Tale). This series is a What If? scenario for classic Disney tales. If you are not familiar with this concept it is something that Marvel used in their comics as stories that explore alternate realities of well known characters.
This book’s What If? question is:
What if Wonderland was in peril and Alice was very, very late?
It is important to keep in mind that these books are based on Disney properties and not the classic stories that the movies are based off of. Someone could argue that the Disney stories are the more known versions but if you are more literarily inclined then you may be looking for certain characters and scenes that won’t appear.
*This post contains spoilers for Unbirthday
Overview:
Alice is different than other eighteen-year-old ladies in Kexford, which is perfectly fine with her. She’d rather spend golden afternoons with her trusty camera or in her aunt Vivian’s lively salon, ignoring her sister’s wishes that she stop all that “nonsense” and become a “respectable” member of society. Alice is happy to meander to Miss. Yao’s teashop or to visit the children playing in the Square. She’s also interested in learning more about the young lawyer she met there, but just because she’s curious, of course, not because he was sweet and charming.
Unbirthday
But when Alice develops photographs she has recently taken about town, familiar faces of old suddenly appear in the place of her actual subjects—the Queen of Hearts, the Mad Hatter, the Caterpillar. There’s something eerily off about them, even for Wonderland creatures. And as Alice develops a self-portrait, she finds the most disturbing image of all—a badly-injured dark-haired girl asking for Alice’s help. Mary Ann.
Returning to the place of nonsense from her childhood, Alice finds herself on a mission to stop the Queen of Hearts’ tyrannical rule and to find her place in both worlds. But will she able to do so . . . before the End of Time?
It is never a good sign to me when the book’s description starts by saying that the main character is “not like other girls”. This usually leads to a character that is insufferably perfect and better than anyone else (who are usually chastised for being regular flawed individuals). However, this was the one case where I think they stayed true to the Alice character.
She was “different” due to her curiosity of the world. This is what leads her to Wonderland in the original story. The author does not force an new traits onto a character that we are already so familiar with.
The What If? Factor
I have not read any of the other books in this series so I don’t know if the twisted-ness of the Twisted Tales are normally more interesting. It is interesting to see Alice getting back to Wonderland after becoming and adult, but it feels so obvious. I was hoping for something a little more creative with the rich world and story line that the Wonderland universe could bring.
Perhaps it suffers some because it is made for younger readers and needs to follow the Disney story. Had they not had these constraints, it could have been far more twisted of a tale.
Whoever Has the Most Toys at the End Wins
“The girl who has the most toys when she dies wins.”
Unbirthday
The motive of the Queen of Hearts is discovered to be simply that she wants to win once and for all. The only way to do this is to bring up on the end of time and be in the possession of more toys than anyone else. It is just like everything in Wonderland, nonsensical. The Queen intends on ending the world so no one can ever beat her again. Meaning that everyone one and everything including her, will die.
This concept seems silly once placed into the setting of Wonderland. However, if you take the concept to the real world, billionaires and politicians are working off of this same concept. Even if the world burns at least they had more money or power than everyone else.
It can be boiled down simpler to the everyday person as well. Society teaches us that we are only worth was we accumulate throughout our life. Constantly striving for more and more. I don’t think it is a coincidence that the Queen of Hearts needs to have the most “toys” to win. “Toys” of course, is colloquially used to describe luxury goods.
Overall,
It is a cute story and plays into the nostalgia of Alice in Wonderland very well. I wished that it added something to the Alice in Wonderland story or spun it on it’s head. In the end, it’s just Alice going through Wonderland interacting with mostly the same characters in similar ways to the original source material.
Rating: 3/5 stars
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