Heartless, by Marissa Meyer
Heartless - the origin story of the Queen of Hearts from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - is a brilliant adventure. Despite the fact that we know the unhappy fate of the Queen of Hearts, readers will be swept away by the vibrancy of the world and its populace, the protagonist's sheer joy in her calling as a baker, the plentiful wordplay, and the mischievous and mysterious court joker, Jest. While remaining true to her source material, Meyer has created a more cohesive world than Carroll's own, and it's one this reader didn't want to leave: I tore through this book in less than two days, and then, that same night, started over again, this time only allowing myself the ration of one chapter a night. It was still over too soon, and this book has left me hungry for tarts and mad tea parties. I highly recommend it to devotees of wit and whimsy, and of course to those who have enjoyed previous incarnations of Wonderland stories, as well as readers of the author's Lunar Chronicles series.
