Fabulous reads – Not enough ‘heart’ in Wonderland prequel
Book review - Heartless by Marissa Meyer.
Heartless, Marissa Meyer, Pan Macmillan, ISBN: 9781 5098 18020
This book was set before she became the Queen of Hearts,
Where Lady Pinkerton, as she is generally known, spent her time making tarts.
This whole book was set before Alice, you see.
There is no Tweedledum, and no Tweedledee.
There is, however, the dastardly Cheshire Cat,
And the mad fellow who can make a great hat.
It was a time of great balls and splendour,
But nary a character ever hits a drunken bender.
But along comes the evil Jabberwock,
A creature so evil it even has the king cringing under his frock.
Okay, enough with the rhymes. The online hype around this book had me quite excited to give it a read and the author, Marissa Meyer, received some high praise from a few of my close friends.
As much as I would love to say I zipped through this book like a kid with an ice cream, it was not so. There is a strangely slow tempo to the book and even when a possible love interest is introduced, it only moved at a slightly faster than glacial pace.
Catherine, or Lady Pinkerton, may have the graces of the court but she dreams of a much simpler life.
All she hopes for is to open up her own bakery. But this is not something to be taken lightly when she is confronted with her overbearing mother and seemingly reserved father. Jest, the newly-appointed court jester, and the rhyming Raven enter Cath’s life at the most inopportune time, creating a world of adventures, or maybe in hindsight, misadventures?
Meyer has some extraordinary ideas and her writing is impeccable but a lot could have been cut out to move the book along.
It wasn’t until the final quarter of the book that the pages seemed to start racing by.
The ending also made the entire read through worth it.
Kudos to Meyer for being gutsy enough to pick up and embrace the magical world created by Carroll. Not only did she interpret his characters to perfection but she also introduced a few of her own into the mix and it all blends together really well.
