Wonderland is a strange place where nothing works the way it does in our world. People have clocks for hearts, day and night happen at random, only a select few people have faces, and nearly everyone is armed to the teeth. Alice has become accustomed to it, for the most part, but she's still surprised to wake up and discover that the Country of Hearts has somehow moved and become the Country of Clover. She's relieved that the twins, Dee and Dum, are still around and as happy to spend time with her as ever, but a new ability they've acquired since moving to Clover leaves her feeling disconcerted: they can now instantly transform their kid selves into adults and back again.

Alice felt comfortable around them when they were children. Being around them when they're adults feels weird. She finds herself feeling emotions she doesn't want to, which brings her face to face with her secret fear, that the twins will find someone else they like more and abandon her.

This was similar enough to what I remembered of Alice in the Country of Clover: Twin Lovers that I initially thought I'd read it before. This is part of the reason why I write reviews - I was able to confirm that what I was remembering was a completely different volume and that, yes, their overall storylines were incredibly similar. In both volumes, Alice was embarrassed by her attraction to the twins in their adult forms and worried that they'd ask her to choose between them. If I remember right, Twin Lovers was more focused on the twins vying for Alice's affections. In Bloody Twins, the primary focus was on Alice's internal conflict and the twins were more instantly willing to share Alice.

I'm just not that wild about Dee and Dum as romantic partners for Alice. Yes, they're hot, but they're very childish, and the whole "twins in love with the same person and willing to share" thing is a bit squicky for me. Also, they're not terribly interesting as characters, either on their own or in terms of what they bring out in Alice. I can't imagine Alice choosing between them because there's nothing that sets Dee apart from Dum, aside from their hairstyles when they're in adult form.

Still, there wasn't anything really bad about this, and Fujimaru's artwork was attractive. I love the slightly metallic cover art - the colors look fabulous. Story-wise, I particularly liked the scene where Alice tried to put a stop to the twins' teasing by turning the tables and becoming the more sexually aggressive one for once (as expected, this backfired on her, although the twins' briefly flustered reactions were great).

I was somewhat disappointed and confused when I reached the last third of this volume and the story switched from Alice, Dee, and Dum to four different very short stories featuring Alice and other Wonderland characters. They weren't even all in the Country of Clover.

The first, "I Love You," was set back in the Country of Hearts and featured Alice fretting over Gowland and whether he really saw her and loved her as she was. The second, "Where Are You Going?," was back in Clover and starred Boris and Alice. Boris wanted to live together with Alice, while Alice resisted out of worry that he'd leave her if he really got to know her for who she was (Alice's fear of abandonment and worry that others wouldn't love her if they really knew her crops up a lot in the series). Of all of these shorts, this one was probably my most favorite. Boris was a sweetheart. The third, "Twilight," starred Alice and Vivaldi and was as yuri as this series ever gets, with Alice worrying about Vivaldi and feeling jealous of her king. It's too bad that there are no longer storylines devoted to an Alice x Vivaldi pairing. The fourth, "Egoism," starred Alice and Blood. Blood was his usual heavily flirty self.

All in all, the explanations about how the Country of Hearts and the Country of Clover work would make this a decent starting point for anyone wanting to try a Country of Clover title (if you're entirely new to this franchise, I highly recommend reading Yen Press's Alice in the Country of Hearts omnibus volumes first), and Dee and Dum lovers should definitely check it out, but it's not the best Country of Clover title out there.

Extras:

Four full-color pages at the start of the volume, two one-page bonus comics, an Alice in the County of Clover "fun facts" page that includes some extra info about the characters in Clover, and an 11-page preview of Young Miss Holmes. Also, the back of the volume includes a 4-panel comic.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)

Depending on how complete the LibraryThing data for QuinRose is, I only have 15 or so more Alice in the Country of... volumes to read and review before I'm finally done with this seemingly infinite series. This particular volume is gorgeous (artwork by my favorite artist in the series, Mamenosuke Fujiwara, and slightly metallic cover art), but so far it offers nothing I haven't already seen in the Twin Lovers Country of Clover volume.

In the Country of Hearts, Alice thought of Dee and Dum as rambunctious little brothers. In the Country of Clover, however, they spend most of their time in their adult forms, and Alice is confused and embarrassed by her budding feelings for them. She's also worried that, at some point, they'll want her to choose between them. She likes them both equally and doesn't know how she could possibly do that.

The twins are fairly low on my list of favorite lover interests for Alice, for a lot of reasons. One, I'm not a fan of relationships involving a main character and twins – it comes too close to twincest, which I also dislike. Two, the twins are gleefully violent. Yes, a lot of the Wonderland guys are violent, but they don't all revel in that violence quite as much as the twins. And three, the twins are usually very child-like, even in their adult forms. I'd argue that it's actually a little worse in their adult forms, because the disconnect between their appearance and their behavior is so jarring.

As in The March Hare's Revolution, Alice once again finds herself saddled with love interests who say threatening things that are supposed to be romantic. At one point, one of the twins says “If you leave us, big sis, we might do something bad.” Of course, they're likely to do “something bad” whether she leaves them or not, because killing random people who try to enter the Hatter Mansion is their job.

Alice's internal conflicts about being attracted to the twins apparently weren't enough, so the story included Dee and Dum competing for Alice's love. It was a little odd, since, despite Alice's worries about having to choose between them, the twins themselves had previously seemed perfectly fine with sharing Alice. Their effort to get the best gift for Alice was still amusing, however, and worked out pretty much the way I expected.

This would probably have worked better for me if it had been more about friendship/family-building than romance, since that would have significantly reduced the squick factor. Parts of the story were actually pretty sweet. The artwork was also good, although I noticed that Shichiri's interpretation of Vivaldi was a little different.

Rating Note:

Why did The March Hare's Revolution only get 2 stars while this got 3? No idea. I just like the twins more than Elliot, I guess. They can be a fun pair sometimes, whereas with Elliot it's just him and his carrots and his extreme loyalty to Blood.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)

In this Alice in the Country of Clover one-shot, Alice finds herself torn between dreams of home, in which her sister is disappointed in her for staying in Wonderland, and her budding feelings for Elliot. On the one hand, the violence Elliot is capable of when carrying out his work for the Hatter family scares her. On the other hand, she loves the side of him that's protective, goofy, and sweet. She doesn't know if he feels the same for her or if he's like her tutor back in the real world, just humoring her.

Elliot has always been pretty low on my list of favorite love interests for Alice, and this volume didn't change my mind. Her attraction to him in the franchise seems to mostly be based on her fascination with his rabbit ears. His personality, ranging from childish and joyful when with Alice and cold-blooded when working for Blood, has never really appealed to me. For some reason, even Dee and Dum, who are the most similar in personality to Elliot, appeal to me more.

There were a few lines I didn't like. For example, at one point Elliot told Alice: “Look. I'm not telling you to fall in love with me. But if you tell me you've fallen for some other guy, I might kill him.” Um...that's not romantic. Alice also described Elliot as "Violence mixed with aching sweetness." Blergh.

Alice's dreams of her sister hint at some of the things that were better-covered in other volumes in the franchise. This volume never revealed what it was that Alice had forgotten, something that might disappoint some readers. If I remember correctly, other volumes indicated that

All in all, this was mediocre. It glorified some of the franchise's problematic elements a bit too much for my tastes, but beyond that it was more forgettable than anything, adding absolutely nothing to the mystery of Alice's past. I did at least like Ryo Kazuki's art, however.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)