Alice in the Country of Hearts: Volume 5

by Soumei Hoshino (art) and Quinrose (story), 141 pages

Alice and Blood come to verbal (and automatic weapon) blows at Vivaldi's ball. Can they work out their issues before somebody ends up dead? And why is Peter acting so weird (that is, serious)?

Secrets and suppressed memories are the focus of this volume. Also, the dangers of accidental binge drinking (or just of drinking with Ace).

Alice in the Country of Hearts: Volume 4

by Soumei Hoshino (art) and Quinrose (story), 189 pages

Alice is asked to choose where she'd like to live while in Wonderland: continue to stay at the clock tower with Julius, move to the amusement park with Boris and company, the castle with Vivaldi the Queen and that troublesome rabbit Peter, the Hatter's mansion with the scary twins and Baron Blood (who is, mysteriously, a murderous spitting image of her ex)? She feels safest with Julius (who at least hasn't tried to kill her yet, unlike some of the others), but is she in the clockmaker's way?

Alice's influence is causing some cracks to show in the strict rules of the "game" of Wonderland, but will they help her or hinder her as everyone is shaken up and increasingly out of their element? And will the boundary-erasing chaos of the Queen's upcoming ball only take Alice deeper into this world and farther from her own?

I don't know where this series is going, exactly. It likes to be a little convoluted and vague. But, I'm enjoying it anyway and find myself worrying over the characters' well-being and tenuously short life expectancies.

Alice in the Country of Hearts: Volume 3

by Soumei Hoshino (art) and Quinrose (story), 186 pages

When Alice follows the rabbit down the hole, she ends up in a Wonderland where everybody's armed and "life" means very little. If she ever wants to get home, she'll have to get to know her charming but frightening hosts and work a little magic of her own on their clockwork hearts. That is, if she lives long enough to get the chance.

Everybody loves Alice, but in Wonderland that's not necessarily a good thing, as its inhabitants don't have a good understanding of the emotion or how to express it--and some of them would just as soon kill you than bother to try and figure it out. They're a complicated lot and I'm enjoying the story so far as it bounces around from goofy to scary to sweet to unsettling. Alice has discovered a few startling secrets, but you get the feeling she's only scratched the surface of Wonderland's mysteries and her own role in the "game".