Clockwork Wonderland edited by Emerian Rich – A Book Review

Blurb:

Clockwork Wonderland contains stories from authors that see Wonderland as a place of horror where anything can happen and time runs amok. In this book you’ll find tales of murderous clockworks, insane creations, serial killers, zombies, and a blood thirsty jabberclocky. Prepare to see Wonderland as a place where all your worst nightmares come true. You may never look at classic children’s literature the same way again.

 

Author: Various

Editor: Emerian Rich

Publisher: HorrorAddicts.net

Release Date: 24/05/2017

Genre: Horror

Pages: 253

My Chosen Format: Kindle

My Rating for ‘Clockwork Wonderland’: 4 out of 5

Purchase: Amazon UK, Amazon US

 

Review:

I received this book for free in return for an honest review.

Clockwork Wonderland is an incredibly fun and incredibly quirky short story anthology where every story is set in Wonderland or, at the very least, heavily features the characters from Wonderland. Each story also features clocks/time in a predominant fashion.

I won’t lie, I went into this sitting on the fence, not expecting great things. After all, how many stories about time and Wonderland can you read before it all starts to feel quite ‘samey’? Apparently lots and lots, as it never felt ‘samey’ to me. There was a pretty wide variety on offer from ‘The Jabberclocky’ to ‘The Midnight Dance’ (the latter being my personal favourite from the entire collection. Gotta love a Wonderland version of Groundhog day … with zombies).

One thing that was incredibly strong through 95% of the stories were the endings. They were some of the best endings I have read in short stories. Ever. Heck, one even managed to tie into a very well-known fairy tale. That one had me grinning from ear to ear like a loon. Some seriously clever writing on show.

As with all short story collections; there were one or two I didn’t enjoy. Some were down to the author’s writing style and a couple were simply far too insane for me to understand what was going on, let alone have a chance of keeping up.

All in all, though, Horroraddicts.net have put together a pretty impressive little collection that is sure to have horror fans and Wonderland fans alike curious. If you fall into either category and would like to see the Wonderland characters you know and love in a hugely different light, I’d highly recommend getting Clockwork Wonderland.