“Of Roses and Kings” by Melissa Marr

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Story can be read on-line: https://www.tor.com/2020/04/27/of-roses-and-kings-melissa-marr/

Rating: 3/5 Stars

Definitely not your usual “Alice in Wonderland” tale. Or rather, this is a tale of what happens after Alice goes to wonderland, becomes the Red Queen, and never returns. She rules with a Red King (of course) and various other people from both Wonderland and our land serve under her.

But being the Red Queen comes with Duties and, Wonderland being Wonderland, those duties, as told through the eyes of the Queen’s servant in this story, involves rather a lot of people losing their heads for breaking the rules. Through it all, the servant has managed to keep her head; until she does something to get Alice our of her Regular Duty with the Red King.

Tied up in this story is the servant’s unusual Duty she has with the Queen and which would turn out to be the unusual solution to the her problem of not losing her head while keeping the Queen satisfied with the solution.

Story read from 2020/05/28 to 2020/05/28