REVIEW: Alice in the Country of Diamonds, Wonderful Wonder World: Official Visual Fan Book (book) translation by Alexis Eckerman

For such a skinny volume, this was jam-packed with stuff. I'll be going over each section individually. First, the more general stuff:

This book was lovely, and I liked a lot of things about it, but as an English-language release it had problems. The biggest one was that, as far as I can tell, none of the games are currently available in English, and this was clearly written for people with access to Alice in the Country of Diamonds: Wonderful Wonder World. Several sections were either useless or overly confusing without the game.

Although my experience with the franchise is limited to the English-language translations of the manga (which I still haven't completely finished reading) and the Alice in the Country of Diamonds light novel, I still got a lot out of this book. I'm not clamoring to own a copy of my very own (I checked this out via interlibrary loan), but I'm glad I requested it and got to read it.

I would like to mention one thing, though. I've seen this tagged as an artbook, and I'd hesitate to call it that. The artwork is a big reason for English-language folks to buy this, but the only section that's really devoted to the game's artwork is the "Illustration Gallery." That section has nice, large images, even when they're not full-page. Every other section has images that are maybe 1-4 inches wide. It's sort of a combination artbook, game guide, and promotional extras collection.

Now for the various sections.

Alice in the Country of Diamonds: Bet On My Heart (book) story by Sana Shirakawa, concept by QuinRose, illustrations by Nana Fumitsuki

Alice in the Country of Diamonds: Bet On My Heart is a novel based on Japanese visual novel/otome game. I decided not to include any read-alikes.

Review:

In this book, Alice experiences a “move” and ends up in the Country of Diamonds. Although many of the people are familiar, no one seems to know who she is. The very first people she sees are Elliot and the twins, all of whom try to kill her. Even Blood is suspicious of her, and only starts to unbend a tiny bit after she saves the life of one of his Faceless employees. Alice gradually comes to the conclusion that the Country of Diamonds is Wonderland's past.

Alice settles into the Hatter Mansion as best she can, arranging books in the Hatter family library, attending Survey Meetings, and getting to know this unsettlingly different Blood. Diamonds Blood is a little rougher around the edges than the Blood Alice remembers being friends with in Hearts and Clover, less composed and secure in his position. Part of her wonders if it would have been better for her to stay in someone else's territory, but part of her kind of likes this version of Blood. Still, is it a good idea to get too close to him, or anyone in Diamonds for that matter, when she doesn't have a clue how long she'll get to stay before the next move?