Book 30 of 2010: Wonderland 4: King of Clubs by Cheyenne McCray

Book 25 of 2010: Wonderland 3: King of Diamonds by Cheyenne McCray

First off, the cover art pictured here is absolutely great for the book as I vividly had this scene in my mind when it came up in the book. Of course, if I recall correctly, the girl was without the lower fabric... LOL!!! Can't put that on the cover though. *grin* Anyway... this book may have been my favorite in the series so far as it was dealing with Karn, the King of Diamonds, battling with his inner self and trying to avoid falling in love due to events that have happened in his past. Also, Annie, the main girl in the story, is dealing with learning about her sexual side as she is taken to Wonderland as a virgin. So both characters have a lot of "waking up" to do and watching both characters change throughout the book is a beautiful process.

Book 24 of 2010: Wonderland: King of Spades by Cheyenne McCray

King of Spades is the 2nd book in Cheyenne McCray's Wondland series. The main character featured in this novel is Alice's sister, Alexi. Unlike Alice from King of Hearts, Alexi is not so willing to become the submissive to the king of this new world she has been taken to. I loved Alexi's fiery spirit and thought the nickname, "firecat", that Darronn gave her was more than appropriate. It is obvious who the female "victims" will be in the next two books in this series, but I'm curious to see what happens in them.

Book 17 of 2010: Wonderland 1: King of Hearts by Cheyenne McCray

Book Description:

After being cheated on yet again, full-figured Alice O'Brien resolves to enjoy men sexually, refusing to involve her heart. When she tumbles down a rabbit hole, she lands in a beautiful, erotic world, surrounded by gorgeous men who relish her voluptuous curves… Men who want to tie her up and play sex games--talk about a dream come true!

Only King Jarronn deliberately lured Alice to his kingdom to be his mate. He has every intention of capturing her for himself and making her his Queen of Hearts.

My Opinion:

After having just read Alice in Wonderland and Alice in Zombieland, reading King of Hearts was a very good change of pace... I'm used to having hot sex scenes in the majority of the books I read and this one balanced it out a bit for all three titles. King of Hearts is filled to the brim with Alice's sexual adventures in Wonderland as the King of Hearts becomes her Dom and trains her as sub in preparation for her to become his Queen. Even with all the sex scenes though, there was still plenty of plot within the book to not make it so overly ridiculous. Also, there were several references throughout to the original Alice in Wonderland story for readers to make the connections between the two. Such a fun first book in this series... I'm looking forward to reading the remainder of McCray's Wonderland adventures.

Book 15 of 2010: Alice in Zombieland by Lewis Carroll & Nickolas Cook

Alice in Zombieland is a parody of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Unlike the original, Alice doesn't fall down a rabbit hole, but rather into a grave in a graveyard where she enjoys spending her time. While in Zombieland, Alice deals with her own flesh rotting as well as hair loss. She can't quite comprehend what is going on with her and as she runs into the inhabitants of Zombieland (including the Dead Hare, the Corpse Turtle, and the Black Rat who takes the place of the White Rabbit from Wonderland) she grows even more disturbed by her surroundings and just wants to find a way to return home.

Since I had just read the original, I was able to compare the two pretty closely. Unfortunately, I felt like I was just reading the same books back to back. Cook takes Carroll's classic story and changes a few passages here and there, but overall it's not that different from the original story. There were some added scenes, however, that were very good. One that sticks out in my mind is the game of zombie croquet, where instead of the flamingos and hedgehogs that were used as the tools of the croquet game in Wonderland, this version was played with dismembered legs for mallets and zombie heads for balls. It's a grotesquely fun scene that zombie fans should eat up! Alice in Zombieland, though an interesting concept, just didn't blow me away. Had the story been re-written completely with general references to the original telling of the story, I think it could have been a cult classic. Still, I think zombie fanatics will at least want to give this a read to check out the croquet game as well as some of the other intriguing scenes.

Review also posted at MonsterLibrarian.com

Book 14 of 2010: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll

Read this in anticipation to the new Alice in Wonderland movie coming out by Tim Burton. I had never read this, though have seen a few movie versions and while reading it I kept picturing scenes from one particular TV version that I've since found on YouTube (thanks to BardandQueen for that!) chopped into snippets and have been watching over the course of several days. With the book however, I was a little disappointed as I had kept hearing that the book was so much darker than the Disney movie that was released way back when, but when reading it... I didn't really find it to be so dark. I am curious now to find out what Tim Burton does with things though, however I have since read that his movie isn't based on the book itself, but on the adventures of Alice as a teenager when she goes BACK to Wonderland. Still glad that I took the time to read it though just to familiarize myself with the story once again and in more detail and have started reading other Alice spin-off books to prepare me even more for the movie release.