A Blade So Black (Nightmare-Verse, #1)

by L L McKinney

The first time the Nightmares came, it nearly cost Alice her life. Now she's trained to battle monstrous creatures in the dark dream realm known as Wonderland with magic weapons and hardcore fighting skills. Yet even warriors have a curfew.

Life in real-world Atlanta isn't always so simple, as Alice juggles an overprotective mom, a high maintenance best friend, and school. Keeping the Nightmares at bay is turning into a full-time job. But when Alice's handsome and mysterious mentor is poisoned, she has to find the antidote by venturing deeper into Wonderland than she's ever gone before. And she'll need to use everything she's learned in both worlds to keep from losing her head...literally.

• ISBN10: 1250211662
• ISBN13: 9781250211668
• Publish Date: 24 September 2019 (first published 25 September 2018)
• Publish Status: Active
• Imprint: Square Fish
• Format: Paperback (US Trade)
• Pages: 400
• Language: English

Reviews

[stressedrach]

What can I say? I absolutely loved this from start to finish. A retelling of Alice in Wonderland but in a darker way. I liked the characters, every single one of them, well apart from one, I am not mentioning his name.
This is an adventure like no other, Alice can travel from her home town to Wonderland and is assigned to fighting off nightmares and fiends in Wonderland and protecting the Earth from them.
The story is fast-paced and kept me gripped from the very first page. Then ending though, WOW, guess I will have to preorder the next book in the series as I need to know what happens!

[Linda]

A Blade So Black is a very smart retelling of Alice in Wonderland, and I truly enjoyed how it mixed current troubles with the actual troubles of the original story. Alice was strong, but she had to go through some hard times to get that way. And more things happened during the story to make her strengthen more.
I enjoyed how she was able to chase the nightmares, first alone, then with help of friends - both in Wonderland and in the real world.
The story was well written, and I look forward to reading more in the series!

COYER Summer 2019 Treasure Hunt: Read a book that retells a fairytale - 1 POINT.

[tweetybugshouse]

really enjoyed this book, i listened to it as an audiobook and the person who read it totally made the story. The mom character reminded me of Nick mom from Sherrilyn Kenyon Chronicles of Nick series. The same concept happen in that one our main character is still in high school living with their parents but on the side they are out kicking demon but. The mom is sassy and tends to try to be understanding while majority of the story has no clue that their kid is out killing of nightmares/demons to save the world.

The added twist of the Alice in Wonderland theme to the story really cinched it for me. The main issue that did grate at me that i saw right at the beginning at the story was the race descriptions. I not sure if that was because of how the main character saw people or lack of descriptions for race from the author. Hatter is a great character and that ending is heart wrenching and i eager to read the rest of the series.

[empressbrooke]

With this being billed as a Buffy vs Alice in Wonderland mashup, the only thing I was able to say was, "Yes, please." This one started off being 3-stars for me up until about the halfway mark. The beginning had some things that made me a little concerned - it took way too long for me to figure out how old the main character Alice was, for one. I had to keep going back and revising her in my mind until the author actually mentioned it, and then I realized she was much older than she was being written. Around the halfway mark, things started falling apart.

The worldbuilding is super mushy and uneven, and that probably sunk the star-count for me more than anything. For one, at the beginning, Alice is picked to train to fight monsters from Wonderland because she can see her mentor and a monster, and this is presented as being unusual. It takes until around page 100 to mention that her particular mentor isn't the only mentor-figure that exists, and it takes until page 320 to mention specifically that there are 4 mentors, covering north, south, east, and west. And despite the dire peril the world is in, there is no explanation for why Alice is only getting an assist from one of the other mentors and her trainees. There's a throwaway line around page 320 that the others exist and that Alice has never met them. Why has she met some of them but not all? Who needs explanations? Later on, the whole bit about humans not usually being able to see the mentor and the monsters goes out the window when every other human in the book does. Shrug.

There is a whole plotline about time passing differently in Wonderland and the real world, and there is a bunch of angst and worry about Alice getting back from a quest in Wonderland before her mom notices she's gone. Despite all the words spilled on this worry, when she's communicating through magical mirrors with other people in the real world, does she ask, "Hey, how long have I been gone?" Of course not, that would be logical.

The ongoing conflict between Alice and her mom also feels like artificial conflict. Her mom forbids her from going out. She goes out anyways. Her mom forbids her from going out again. She goes out again anyways. Rinse and repeat. Aside from adding some angsty conversations, this conflict doesn't ever actually set up any real roadblocks to the plot or cause any changes in the main character's behavior. It felt like a pointless merry-go-round.

Another example of conflict created for conflict's sake regardless of whether it made sense - at the beginning of the book, Alice is thinking of dropping her whole Buffy gig. Her best friend tells her she shouldn't and convinces her to stick it out. Then when Alice misses the best friend's birthday party because of it, the BFF does a total 180 and sulks and freezes her out. This could have worked more successfully if the BFF said something like, "I thought I was okay with it until it affected me" or something along those lines, but instead it just felt out of the blue and inconsistent and artificial.

There is some very clumsy withholding of backstory that was done to try to make a character's surprise identity a surprise, but it was so clumsy that I hadn't realized it was supposed to be a surprise until the reveal. Instead of being shocked, I was just confused that it was being presented as shocking.

Finally, the plot really takes a nosedive with the convoluted fetch quest for a magic item that is supposed to save the Mad Hatter from a magic illness. Hatter doesn't want to tell Alice where it is because he wants to keep it safe, even though he might die if they don't find it. Then he agrees to tell her. But then it seems like the author forgot that he agreed, because then Alice and her cadre troop outside to recite a very silly rhyme to make a glowing path to the artifact (how anyone knows this silly rhyme will lead to this artifact is very fuzzy). Then Alice remembers that she actually has this artifact already and that it's in her locker, which was very firmly established at the beginning of the book, and I'm not sure why she zoned out and didn't remember she had it (again needing an artificially created conflict?)? So instead of waiting for school the next day so she can get to her locker, they stage a nighttime heist that is super complicated? It's just so convoluted and silly that I'm pretty sure no editor touched this part.

The main character isn't the only one whose age was a shock after I spent a good chunk of the book thinking they were younger - there's a Wonderland princess who I honestly thought was a single-digit-aged child until she started making out with her adult bodyguard and everyone started cheering instead of beating the bodyguard for inappropriately touching a child.

And then it totally ended on a cliffhanger. Not a "This first part has wrapped up but there are totally threads for where this could continue" ending, but an "I ran out of time and it's not done so not a single thing has been resolved yet" ending. It didn't earn this abrupt, incomplete end at all and I noped right out of putting book #2 on my "to read when it comes out" list.

[Amber (The Literary Phoenix)]

I’ve got to be honest, I wasn’t in love with A Blade So Black. The more I learned about the book, the less excited I was to be going into it. There were areas near the beginning where I almost DNF’d it – but I am glad I didn’t. As far as Alice in Wonderland retellings go, it wasn’t the worst! There’s a lot of different aspects here I’d like to talk about, so I’m going to try and hit them one by one.

First of all, as if my photo doesn’t scream it, I’m white. My family came from Canada three generations before I was born, and before that we were in England, Ireland, and France. White, white, white. This book was not written for me. And that’s okay. Better than okay, actually, that’s good. There should be more books not written for me, or people that look like me. Do I enjoy it when I see myself in a book? Of course. But I have lots of options, and other people don’t. There were definitely some moments in the dialogue, where I had to step back and re-read bits because I had gotten lost in the dialect that wasn’t culturally mine.

Again. Cannot emphasize enough. This is all OKAY. It’s good. L.L. McKinney has worked so hard to create a book where black girls will be able to find themselves. I am have no right to judge whether or not she has been successful in this, but I genuinely hope she has.

In as far as this is an Alice In Wonderland retelling, I see more similarities than in a lot of other retellings. I actually liked the overall setting of Wonderland, with its darkness and the Glow, Nightmares coming from the muck and the next generation of people moving on in. Wonderland tends to be timeless in retellings, with all the characters that the child Alice ran into. This was a creative, different take on the story, and I appreciate that.

Otherwise, I found the plot generally … uninteresting, I guess? It’s not that there wasn’t a plot, but I wasn’t invested in it. I also wasn’t convinced by some of the authority Alice had over others? She easily sways people to see her point of view without building a rapport. The side characters were pretty flat, which was frustrating because the plot relied on them. Hatta and Chess – as Alice’s love interests – were her motivations, but I felt absolutely no emotion involving them. I think if the story had revolved more around her inner strength and her father, it would have been more successful. The romantic relationships were hollow and boring to me.

McKinney also lost me in the last third of the book, while the action was ramping up, because I just didn’t care what happened to anyone by that point. There were interesting characters who hadn’t been expanded, and a whole history that was told instead of shown. Her action sequences were over too quickly, and the ending was very open, so I wouldn’t be too surprised to see a book two on the horizon.

All in all – I appreciated the idea, but I would have liked to see things unfold more gradually and with greater care. McKinney was so focused on making a strong, fantastic main character that a lot of other things felt dull and unfinished beside her. I do think that this book has great potential with audiences, and could be very successful with those who fall in love with her writing style. Personally, it wasn’t my cup of tea, but I’m glad I read it through to the end.

[layawaydragon]

I had such a hard time reviewing this one! I really enjoyed it and can't wait for the sequel, but damn, I just cannot get the words together. I think the description of "Buffy falling down the rabbit hole" is a bit misleading. It's more like if Buffy got attacked by nightmares from Wonderland than vampires. We do spend days in Wonderland, and I'm sure we'll spend far more in the next books, but it's more about damage control with the nightmares, the new baddie on the block jamming them up and setting up the epic quest.

I can't believe I've inflicted such torture upon myself with waiting for the next book. Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy.

>>OMFG cliffhanger twist ending!
>>Love Alice's mom. Having her be in the dark but an involved parent is an awesome addition that amps up the tension. Reminds me of the @_jakeezus tweet: "Rugrats is a prime example that white people don't watch their kids. You barely saw Susie cause her mama had that black ass on lock."
>>Love love LOVE the Sailor Moon inspired aesthetics & shit.
>>This feels way more like Urban Paranormal books than other paranormal YA titles. Lots of action and danger but romance is a PG 13 back burner affair.
>>Love all the side characters. Totally memorable and unique.
>>There is a confirmed w/w romance on the side toooo!!!!
>>Even with all the magic and nonsense, still brings the social justice realness like The Hate U Give. I did not think that mash up was possible but DAMN. #blackgirlmagic.

Confession time: I hated Buffy the character. She was fucking annoying. I haven't watched all of Buffy because of her. I loved Faith. She was a BADASS who didn't have it all cushy and while she fucked up, she owned it. Her redemption arc in Angel is a-ma-zing. I was heartbroken there was no spin off for her.

I think Blade So Black is more for people who preferred Faith over Buffy and loved Angel but wanted to flirt with Spike. Or maybe I just really hated Buffy so much that it pains me that I have to keep using her as a comparison instead of Faith -__-

(Of course, it must be said, Whedon is an asshat and the fake woke feminist shit he writes doesn't cut it now that I'm not an ignorant tween/teen.)

[cornerfolds]

Read more of my reviews at Cornerfolds.com!

DNF

*Review to come!*