Peter saves Alice from being beheaded by Vivaldi, and Elliot takes Alice back to the mansion. Alice and Elliot are suddenly a lovey dovey couple, but things take a turn for the worse when Alice spends time with Ace and Julius. She learns about the clocks, and that Elliot

This started off as a mediocre series, featuring one of my least favorite Alice in the Country of pairings, and then took a turn for the much worse. First we have attempted rape on Elliot's part -

Then we have Nightmare's emotional manipulation of her.

Not only that, the way the story was told was choppy and just plain bad - it went from Elliot taking Alice back to the mansion to them being a couple in the space of a page or so. I also felt that the artwork took a bit of a nosedive, becoming scratchier and less appealing.

If this were a horror series, it'd be one thing, but these stories are supposed to be romances, albeit occasionally kind of dark ones. This was garbage.

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

Alice decides to stay at the Hatter mansion, even going so far as to get a job there. She slowly becomes closer to Elliot, until the day she witnesses him doing his job (killing people for Blood). That awakens doubts in her, which deepen when

I'm really not a fan of the Alice and Elliot pairing. It's either too goofy and focused on Alice's love of Elliot's ears (it often feels like she enjoys tugging Elliot's ears more than she likes him as a person) or too focused in Elliot's violent nature. In this case it's more of the latter. Elliot announcing that he'd

was horrifying, and a good reminder that the people in Wonderland have a very different and far more violent way of approaching the world than Alice is used to (that said, there are non-killers in Wonderland - it's one of the reasons why I like the Julius and Alice pairing so much).

This volume also had a bit of the ear-tugging stuff that I hate. Alice tugged Elliot's ears until it hurt him, and readers were supposed to think this was cute. I do not. He makes it pretty clear that he doesn't like it, and yet she doesn't stop. Volumes that pair off Elliot and Alice really do tend to highlight the worst in both of the characters.

There's a bit in this volume where Nightmare tells Alice "Anyone who meets you will take an interest in you and eventually fall in love with you." I think this is probably supposed to be good and comforting - Alice has gone from a place where the people she loves keep inadvertently hurting her to one where they are guaranteed to love her - but instead it strikes me as being both horrifying and depressing. It probably doesn't help that I played Doki Doki Literature Club! not long before reading this. It

The artwork was at least relatively nice, although the use of screentone was a bit odd.

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