Bingo Update: This is for Not My Wheelhouse. I love fantasy, but I tend to skip Urban Fantasy. I read this specifically to challenge that about myself.
Bonus Note: I won a free copy of this from a contest on GoodReads, courtesy of Fierce Reads.
A quick summary with no spoilers. A Blade So Black is a contemporary reimagining of the Alice in Wonderland story. Sort of. Set in present day Atlanta, our heroine is Alice, this time portrayed by a badass black teen with a love of cosplay, an overprotective mom, and super powers to fight back the Nightmares that come to our world from Wonderland. In this telling, Wonderland exists because we do, a land created by our dreams and threatened by our Nightmares. Alice is mentored by the hot, English Addison Hatta, and their relationship is tested when things start getting really ugly down in Wonderland.
I’m going to try to tread lightly here because I know I’m in tough territory criticizing this particular book. I’m going to be honest, because that’s the point, but I understand that as a white woman, my opinion is going to be both different and less consequential, and I’m totally good with that. For the record, I understand how vital and important this book is from a representation standpoint. That cover is fucking amazeballs, and I love the idea of a badass black teen girl styled after Buffy and reimagining Alice from Alice in Wonderland. I think she’s important, and I think the variety of ethnicities, skin colors, and sexual orientations represented in this book are powerful and vital in the fantasy genre. I might have given it two stars if I didn’t acknowledge the good it does on that front.
That said? I don’t really love it. I read a lot of YA fantasy, and this feels like it’s written for younger people more than most of what I read in the genre. Part of this may be due to the inexperience of the author; my understanding is that this is her first novel, and she’s taken on one hell of an ambitious concept. I applaud the effort, if not the execution. The prose is very simple and often repetitive, and many of the characters lacked the depth and nuance I wanted from them. Alice in particular was frustrating for me because she spent so much time feeling guilty and articulating that in the text. I get where the guilt comes from, and I think that flaw is important to her character, but you hit a point where you get tired of hearing it from her. I wanted her to take more time to embrace her other qualities, like her strength, her compassion, her loyalty, and spend less time engaged in a martyrdom complex.
I thought the relationship between Courtney, Alice’s best friend, and Alice was well realized. That felt like a lived in friendship with a history behind it. On the other hand, I didn’t feel the supposed chemistry between Alice and Hatta. It’s not a spoiler to say the author wants you to ship them. Courtney even says it at one point. The problem is that I don’t feel it. He works reasonably well as a mentor (though, quibble – no one has ever said “luv” as often as this character does). I even get Alice’s attraction, as that’s a super common trend between mentors and mentees, a misplaced affection from the sense of connection established between them. My issue is with the fact that I’m supposed to think there’s ever anything felt on his end, and I don’t. I can’t get there. I got the sparks between Chess and Alice, even if Chess is not given more than an outline as a character. That was a romantic connection I could feel. The one with Hatta felt like the author found it necessary more than it organically came from the characters on the page.
The plot and world building are fine. I didn’t find them terribly engaging, but it’s also the first book in a proposed series, so there are holes in the story that will likely be filled in later. The fights are generally well articulated, which I appreciate as a fight choreographer. The book just left me wishing it were a little better than it is. I think maybe it was a few drafts away from being something that could really set the world on fire. I went in hoping for a desire to read the whole series, and finished knowing I wasn’t going to.
I’ll definitely be keeping an eye on McKinney. She has a lot of promise as an author and I really admire the way she swings for the fences. This one just stayed solidly infield for me.