This is another play on the Alice in Wonderland book and when I realized that I immediately rolled my eyes, because it seems quite overdone; however, I was pleasantly surprised by this book. In this re-imagining, Alice is a black teen from Atlanta who is conscripted into fighting Nightmares that come from Wonderland. While I found the premise interesting and the character remodels to be quaint, the writing was choppy at times and jumped around more than I would have liked. The early days when Alice first becomes a Dreamwalker are mostly glossed over and you jump right into her fighting the Nightmares; I felt it would have been great if the story and characters had been developed more.

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.)

Absolutely spectacular! My only wish is that it hadn't ended on such an epic cliffhanger. By the power of the Moon, I demand at least three more books in this series right now, please.

A Blade So Black is a very loose retelling of Alice in Wonderland. Alice, a Dreamwalker can travel the Veil, the window between our world and Wonderland. She has been trained by Addison Hatta to fight the Nightmares that come from Wonderland to feed on people’s fears.

Although this started a little shaky for me with being thrown into the action right up front and then the story jumping months ahead and then a full year ahead, it quickly became addicting. I read the vast majority of this all in one day because I just couldn’t get enough. I loved all of the action and I was always on the edge of my seat, especially wondering if/when Alice’s mother would finally catch her. There were even a couple times that my jaw dropped at a plot twist that I was blown away by. I can’t wait for a sequel because that cliffhanger 😱

I wanted to like this book... I really did. And even though I wanted to give up about a quarter of the way through, I stuck with it to the end WANTING the story to get better... maybe even hoping the writing style would change? 🤦🏽‍♀️ A Blade So Black had all of the elements to make it an amazing book: Alice in Wonderland (probably my most favorite story growing up), a strong POC female lead character, a fantastic book cover (I’m shallow with my books, I know). Man, was this a cumbersome book to finish. I didn’t feel like there was any of the magic that usually comes with tales from Wonderland, not even a dark and twisty version since things were not well in Wonderland in this story. It was like a half-assed fantasy, and half-assed romance. I don’t think I’ll be giving the next book in this series a shot.

This book is too good for this world and we don;t deserve it. First of look how powerful that cover is! Alice is one bada$$ you know what in this novel! I love the change on the normal blonde haired, white girl Alice! This book is perfect and I love it! I'm really hoping that the author gets lots of recognition for this book because it well written and the female is tough. not only that but she wrote a book that challenges what we normally perceive to be the stereotyped Alice and does an amazing job at it!

First of all I would like to say how much I loved this book and how this book went above and beyond my expectations for it! It was just EVERYTHING! No words for it!

I'm going to keep this review short because otherwise I will literally be here for hours telling you what I loved about this book, line by line!

Alice is the main character and she is followed by some amazing characters who are just incredible to read about and Elle just takes a whole different take on all the characters you thought you new from the originals story. you could not love the way she explored these characters!

After reading this book I think I can honestly say that I prefer this adaptation to the original it was just something about the writing that drew me in and never let me go.

The ending is just INCREDIBLE and Elle if you read this please tell me there's more because I NEED MORE!

I would highly pick up this book whoever you are because it will honestly blow you off your seat!

When I read the book, to be honest, I was curious because of the image. There is a fierce African-American female ready to fight, with a blade, superimposed in a space with flowers. How beautiful is that?! The novel is a retelling of Alice in Wonderland in Atlanta, Georgia. How intriguing.... so my curiosity led me to a wonderfully written novel. I fell in love with the main character, Alice. She is a fierce female who has to weather the death of her father, and then, the feelings she has for two of the guys in her life has her heart split. She also has to fight these creatures derived from nightmares (in the dream world). I loved it! The characters are relatable. L.L. McKinney did a wonderful job. Check it out :-)

I give the novel four stars. I loved it, but the cliffhanger and the feeling that there could be so much more development in the story had me wanting more.

I wanted to like this a whole lot more than I did. I really like McKinney so I was hoping this would be stellar, but parts of it just fell flat to me. But here's the good & not-as-good (for me.) I would totally recommend reading it if the description sounds like your thing.

Good:
1-McKinney really captures that conundrum of teenager-who-has-to-save-the-world-and-still-be-home-by-curfew, while also realistically handling the extra nuance of Alice being Black and what that means in our world (e.g. why her mom might be especially worried when she's not home.)
2-It's instantly recognizable as Alice but the spin really makes it fresh & new (parts of it reminded me of American McGee's Alice with the creepy/corrupted Wonderland)
3- Great friendships & relationships
4-Alice kicks butt!

Not-as-good
4- Some of the plotting with what's going on in Wonderland felt rushed. I would have loved more detail on this.
5 - This is 100% a personal thing but there's a but of a love triangle which I'm not a fan of. But ymmv on this so *shrugs*
6 - Just in general the pacing felt rushed. There's so much cool stuff there esp with the relationships between the real world and Wonderland and I just wish there had been more detail.

I have so many great thoughts about this book. McKinney is able to balance very real challenges of racism with this contemporary Alice in Wonderland re-imagination. I adored each of the different parts for different reasons. I appreciated the honesty and the way that her mother’s fear of Alice not coming home at night is grounded in the incident of another black girl dying. At the same time, her time in Wonderland is also balanced by her PTSD symptoms of her father’s death and her own questioning self-confidence.

This book has so many different aspects merged into one. And it works seamlessly. Whether we’re reading an off hand comment about the hours Alice spends on her hair or the visceral fear of Alice’s mother. At the same time, Alice is wondering about the fairness of war, and what it’s like to learn from your mistakes. All while dealing with the grief of her father’s death.

It was OK. I wanted more world building, more back story, and more character development. The story was ok, but the lack of depth bothered me. I wanted the story to go deeper. For all the hype, this was a little disappointing.

An Alice in Wonderland retelling with a black representation for Alice? I couldn’t resist – I had to have it! Combined with that cover, there was no way I wasn’t going to be able to read this one. I signed up for the tour straight away and don’t regret it at all. I breezed through this book this summer and I’m so happy to finally have read an Alice in Wonderland retelling that I liked. Because this one actually made sense!

Having said that, I have to admit, the prologue did confuse me a little bit. The book jumps right into the action and because we don’t have a clear grip on the world yet, so it left me a little stranded. But don’t pay much mind to the prologue, and soon even that gets explained. After that the story gets ironed out and explained. My main problem with the original classic is that the story jumps around a lot and is entirely too whimsical. However, that is not the case in this one. There is a steady and sure plot with goals the characters need to achieve on their journey. Because it was so straightforward and simple I was able to enjoy reading this one more than the original classic itself.

This one also totally skips the training montage of when the main character is slowly learning their powers and getting used to fighting monsters. I love fantasy, and sometimes it really is helpful to see them learning their magic or powers. But I’ve read a lot of fantasy now, and to be honest, this book didn’t need it. So, if you don’t mind or actually want to skip the training montage (like me!) then this a good book for you.

As for the black main character rep that I was looking forward to, it was okay. Alice does have some elements to her character which show her as an African-American such as dealing with her hair and a few other things. And yes, there is some discussion of unfair police brutality and racist crime as evil tends to breed monsters. But I have to be honest – it doesn’t go into too much discussion of this and at times it seems a bit like the black rep was made to be a selling point for the book and hastily included? It needed more development for it to truly feel diverse. But otherwise, it was a good inclusion! I can’t find anything particularly wrong with the rep, only that I wanted a bit more from it.

The world building was done really well and I loved getting to explore this different Wonderland. It was unique, creative and easy to follow. The nightmares sounded terrifying, but what intrigued me most were the places she went – like the bubbles – and the magic system, like the potions a friend of hers makes. It made this Wonderland so alluring. I know I would like to visit at some point.

The writing was simply okay. It was terrible, but it wasn’t amazing either. This book is definitely a plot driven one because I didn’t particularly care for the characters much. I wasn’t a huge fan of the romance situation and the forced love triangle. It didn’t work for me. But there were some characters that intrigued me, like Maddy and the twins. The secondary characters were ones I wanted to know more about and I loved every scene where they were included!

All in all, this one was a bit of a mixed bag for me. You can definitely tell it’s the beginning of a series, so I’m not sure if I am going to read on. But it was nice to go out of my comfort zone with an Alice in Wonderland retelling and see what I thought of it.

Relevance to today: I think the friendships in this book were the best things. The friends in this one have to trust and rely on each other. They always have each other’s’ back. I really loved seeing such a close bond, and even when the friendships went through difficulties and struggles it is apparent that they all care for each other deep down.

This review can be found on Olivia's Catastrophe.

A Blade So Black is a highly-imaginative retelling (think Alice in Wonderland meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer) set in modern-day Atlanta. I love books with a bad-ass female character, but sometimes feel they fall flat. Not so in this instance, the characters and storyline are richly-developed, tightly plotted and engaging.
Alice is a smart, engaging young lady, just trying to get along with her mom, live life, and succeed in school…oh, and save humanity from the threat of Nightmares.
A Blade So Black is a richly detailed, quick moving novel with plenty of sass and adventure. What a fun read!

I received an ARC from NetGalley and Imprint Publishing in exchange for an honest review of A Blade So Black

DNF at 19%

Just not feeling it.

Writing’s clunky, descriptions are not the best, Hatta and Courtney (aka, age is only a number—hard stop!) are annoying, and while I love a Black Alice in Wonderland, I’m not enjoying the super-special heroine aspect (although I’m really happy to see a Black woman get this treatment!).

Maybe I’ll pick this up later.

No rating because I didn’t get far enough to give it one.

I received this ARC from NetGalley for an honest review.

The first time the Nightmares came in A Blade so Black, 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 a slipping GPA. 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. (via Goodreads)

I received an eARC of A Blade So Black from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
I’ve followed author L.L. McKinney on Twitter for a long time, and I have learned so much from her as an activist. When I heard she was publishing a book, I knew I had to read it. My reaction to finding out that it was a badass Alice in Wonderland retelling? A lot of screaming.

Alice in Wonderland is a story that offers so many different options to make it your own story, so I was really excited. McKinney did not disappoint me. She built a Wonderland – and Atlanta – that felt real and wonderful, while keeping it strange in true Alice fashion.

I also really love this cover. It’s perfect for this story, for Alice, and for getting kids who don’t know anything about it to pick it up off the shelf.

A Blade So Black needs some trigger warnings for mentioned parent death, mentions of dementia in a grandparent, dealing with parent death, minor character falling ill, and the kidnapping and death of a Black boy.

I loved that Alice’s mom was actually a present parent as much as she could be. I’ll be interested to see how this plays out in future books, because I can only imagine how much worse the groundings are going to get when Alice keeps this up.

The combinations of the original cast that turned into McKinney’s cast was really intriguing for me. I really want to learn more about all of them, and look forward to spending more time in Wonderland.

A Blade So Black is action-packed and stunning. Pick up a copy for yourself on Amazon or Indiebound!

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Disclaimer: All links to Indiebound and Amazon are affiliate links. If you buy through those links, I will make a small amount of money off of the sale.

I really wanted to write a review of this book. Mainly because I'm a huge Slayer fan (Angel before Buffy but that's neither here nor there) but a huge Alice in Wonderland fan.

This however is a brilliant novel. The combination of the two set in an urban setting with a teenage girl with teenage problems is definitely connected to Buffy with the best parts of Alice in Wonderland weaved most intricately into the story.

There was one part that sent me back to one of the best lines of the show Fraiser where he snaps at his brother Niles... Why not just set a place for the March Hare and the Mad Hatter?? However, that would be more Sunnydale than the setting of A Spade so Black, which ultimately gives it the flare needed to make it an #ownvoice #poc story.

This is most definitely not set in Sunnydale witch characters like Cordelia Chase. The problems faced are more realistic to the urban plight faced but with characters that aren't the typical two dimensional stereotype. Nope. They are empowered. They are deep and richly portrayed. Harking back to Wakanda and Black Panther they don't need anyone to come save them, they are the ones saving.

Alice is empowered. She is the protagonist that is strong from the start, ready to fight and unyielding in her ability to do so. She is not in need of rescuing but will rescue others in need. She will slay the evil, fight for the eradication of evil, rather than need others to do it for her. This is what the world needs and this is what L.L Mckiney gives them. Young Adult novels are known for their sequels and I, for one, am drooling for one to Blade so Black.

PS to whoever ruined the Six of Crows duology? I will hunt you down and slay you. Ask Tiffany Jackson. I'm not playing.

I love me some Alice in Wonderland retellings, especially when the Hatters (or in this case "Hatta") are skinny British dudes with guyliner. This book did not disappoint.
I so appreciated that Alice was black. That she kicked serious booty, but at the same time was not ashamed to admit she was scared, and though she was often scared, still carried on kicking butt anyways.
I enjoyed the duel settings of Wonderland and the normal world, and the mechanics that played between the two. Interesting side characters. I was a little iffy on the plot, but the sassy characters more than made up for it. All in all it was a quick, fun read. Not my favorite retelling of Alice, but worth the hours.

Would you believe me if I said I started this book and finished it today? I totally forgot to read this book, even though I kept reminding myself. I have been so tired these days, but I'm not one to disappoint anyone so, you're going to hear all my thoughts about this book.

I was a bit confused at the opening chapter, I guess it's the reason why it took me so long to pick up the book and finish it, it's quite easy to breeze through when you finally focus.

The story has a lot of potential because I could see the direction the author was taking with it, just that there wasn't really anything spectacular about the writing style or the way the story was being narrated to us. Plus the storyline is one that you've probably read before.

It's meant to be an Alice in Wonderland retelling, but there aren't that many similarities and I don't have a fault with that, because I love how the author tried to create her own world. It takes guts and talent to write a story where you build your own world, and get it picked up by a publishing firm.

There's an inclusion of police unjust killing of a black kid, it's own take on black lives matters, which was good, as its aim was clearly to shine the light on this particular issue, in the American society.

Alison, popularly known as Alice is our main character, she's a young black lady, who not long into the story meets mysterious Addison Hatta. Yes, Hatta—Mad Hatter. Who is the hot protagonist, mentor because Hatta teaches and mentors Alice in slaying monsters in Wonderland. So this is meant to be an action-packed retelling, but I really didn't read much action, it was more narrated than shown, and like every other quest book, I was a bit miffed that it didn't make my blood speed up, my feelings were perfectly neutral throughout the whole story.

I enjoyed this book to an extent, it's a book to pick up when you have absolutely nothing to do or any other book to read, it's a good way to pass time.

I love Alice in Wonderland. I love fairytale retellings. This book is a combination of my two favorite things.
I really liked this book.
Alice is smart, sassy, strong, and has a beautiful heart. I loved her.
Alice loses her dad and the same day she loses him she’s attacked by a Nightmare and saved by Addison Hatta. Hatta is from Wonderland and protects the human world as one of four protectors from the Nightmares that cross over, he chooses Alice to train up into becoming a Dreamwalker, a human trained in taking out Nightmares and protecting the rest of the world from them. Hatta is mysterious and secretive and everything you’d expect out of someone coming from the world of Wonderland.
The story is fairly fast paced and has quite a few different time jumps at the beginning before you get into the meat of the story which is when Hatta gets poisoned shortly after Alice gets attacked by a mysterious man calling himself the Black Knight. Alice must race through Wonderland to find a cure and learn more about the world she’s involved herself with as she goes and teams up with many names you’ll recognize but in different forms you will come to enjoy (I did at least, I loved the twins so much.)
Great story, looking forward to seeing where it’s going to go in the next book.

The introduction was great for me; I love introductions that make you grip the book more for answers. And the vivid imagery of the action going on here got my attention at a 101%. I got my all-nighter face on. The constant need for a backstory is kind of my thing. That I got. A Blade So Black turned a different tone after three or so chapters. I tried really so hard to love it. It just wasn’t for me. The writing was choppy. Rather than feeling the story, it was something that felt something that was dumped on you. Does that make sense? Something felt off, certain scenes felt cringe-y to read on. Another thing I like the redemption kind of read. In other words, pushed to read on and finished it like the huge Curious Cat I am.

World Building. It was interesting. There are scenes that it painted the picture so great and vivid hence aforementioned introduction, there are times that it was as confusing as heck. Did I skip a chapter, a page? Or plainly uneven? And that where the haunt of a reader for that backstory goes.

Characters. The MC, Alice is an African American young adult girl who loves to kick monsters ass both in Wonderland and in the real world. She had struggles of her own in both realms. She is a great character to be represented by. But I love how that this book focuses more on the adventure side of a colored character rather than having to read struggles about race. I am not saying I am sick of it nor shouldn’t be addressed as a person of color I had my fair share of experience too. It was a fresh breath, going out protecting the human world from Wonderland no matter how suck-y we human can be. Addison Hatta, another character we have trains, Alice, to be a protector, her mentor, and friend. Courtney and Chess her friends outside Wonderland. The developments of the characters were not strongly overwhelming as I thought it’ll be.

The plot was okay, there were rich build up and action-packed outcomes but some were rather underwhelming. At some point, it was a bit monotonous. Not all the way, hence me finishing it.

Like I mentioned earlier what I liked most was the adventure reading those were scenes that excite me most. And the representation we are getting here, I love how the author has woven something this. Though the writing was not for my liking, maybe it is still subject to change until the book’s official release. I’d still be up to reread a finished copy of the book. And probably pick up the sequel.