"The Looking-Glass Illusion" by Sara Ella

Behold, the sequel to The Wonderland Trials. Actually, it's the second in a duology, so I'm not sure if it counts as a sequel.

While the last one was focused on the first three Wonderland Trials (the Club, Spade, and Diamond Trials), this one is solely focused on the final Wonderland Trial, the Heart Trial. It mostly does away with the "team competition" aspect of the first one, instead moving more toward a "survive the weirdly chess-themed and dangerous trial" aspect.

Speaking of which, this one seems to be more inspired by Through the Looking-Glass, what with the chess motifs and all. And the |mirrors that turn to liquid when Alice, and only Alice, touches them|. Those bits were described in a rather surreal manner, and it reminded me of Superliminal.

My main quibble with this book is that the Ivory King, the book's MacGuffin, |isn't actually a person. It's hyped up to be a person, but it's actually sort of like a codeword for Wonderland itself|. That kind of annoyed me.

You may (but probably won't) notice this post isn't tagged "Dystopian"; that's because the book spends pretty much no time in dystopian England. Most of it is in Wonderland, which is appropriately weird and confusing.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: T for scenes of peril.

4 stars.

(Endnote: The Queen of Hearts analogue in this duology is named Queen Scarlet. My brain, in a lovely moment of word association, came up with the crossover idea "What if Queen Scarlet (from The Curious Realities) met Queen Scarlet (from Wings of Fire)?" I will probably never write that, but I have it stored in my document of fanfic ideas.)