Exclusive interview with author Christina Henry and a review of her new Alice in Wonderland novel
Rating: Three Stars
By Gabrielle Pantera
“I finished up writing my Black Wings series with the final book, Black Spring, about two years ago,” says Red Queen the Chronicles of Alice author Christina Henry. “I wanted to write something completely new and outside of my comfort zone. I thought doing about an Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland adaptation. I originally conceived of the story as a kind of steampunk adventure. It was going to be much closer to Carroll’s original story, just set in a different kind of world. As I was writing it the story took a darker turn.”
Red Queen the Chronicles of Alice is the second book in the series. Alice is on another adventure. This time Alice and Hatcher, a fellow inmate from the loony bin, are trying to find his daughter Jenny. She severed her connection to the Cheshire cat. He would invade her mind, by wishing it away she managed to stop his mental invasion. Along the way Alice needs to learn how to control her magic. Alice and Hatcher encounter the cruel Black King and search for the mad White Queen. Dark, twisted and loosely based on Lewis Carroll’s novel. Alice learns magic and who she can trust. A dark and broody novel. Definitely not for kids.
“I tried to maintain the linear, quest structure of the original story,” says Henry. “Alice travels for a while, meets somebody, something happens with that person and then she moves on. In the original she’s trying to find the rabbit that she followed down the hole because she’s curious. In my version of the story, she’s still trying to find the rabbit, but so that she can fill in the holes in her memory and put her life together again.”
Henry says she doesn’t generally do research. “I’d read Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland many times before, but I didn’t reread before writing my own version. I wanted it to be an inspiration but not a direct influence.”
Henry has written two Chronicles of Alice books and the seven-book Black Wings urban fantasy series for Ace books. That series is about an agent of Death named Madeline Black and her popcorn-loving gargoyle Beezle. Alice was an Amazon’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Book of 2015. It came in second in the Goodreads Choice Awards in Horror for 2015. Red Queen has yet to be optioned for film or TV.
Rebecca Brewer at Berkeley/Ace is Henry’s editor. “Rebecca inherited me when my previous editor left publishing,” says Henry. “She had worked closely with my previous editor and already liked my work.” Henry sends her finished manuscript to Rebecca, who reads it and sends a letter detailing the bigger changes she would like to see. Once those changes are made it goes to line edits, with comments on specific details in the manuscript.
Lucienne Diver of the Knight Agency is Henry’s agent. “I sold my first few books without an agent,” says Henry. “At the time Ace was accepting direct submissions. I met the lovely and amazing Chloe Neill, author of the Chicagoland Vampires and Devil’s Isle during an author event in Chicago. She recommended me to her agent, Lucienne Diver.
Lucienne said my first book, Black Wings, was already in her to-be-read pile so she moved it up in the queue. She’s a fantastic agent, really detail-driven, and such an incredible cheerleader for all her authors.”
Henry is currently working on Lostboy, an origin story of Captain Hook from Peter Pan. To be released by Ace Books in July of 2017.
Henry lives in Chicago, Illinois. She was born in the Hudson Valley in upstate New York.
You can find her at www.christinahenry.net or on twitter: @C_Henry_Author and facebook.com/authorChristinaHenry
Red Queen (The Chronicles of Alice) by Christina Henry Series: The Chronicles of Alice. Paperback: 304 pages, Publisher: Ace (July 12, 2016), Language: English, ISBN-13: 978-0425266809 $15.00
