Pandora Hearts: Volume 2

by Jun Mochizuki, 180 pages

Oz Vessalius had been looking forward to his coming-of-age party. But when the party is crashed, his faithful valet and best friend Gilbert is magically manipulated into attacking him, and Oz is spirited away to the Abyss (often seen as a prison world of twisted reality), it just reinforces the boy's conviction that it is not his lot to have things easy. But that doesn't mean he's going to get down about it. Instead, he quickly makes a contract with a strange, violently tempered girl named Alice who has lost her memories and contains a chain (a scary stitched-up-stuffed-animal-looking spirit in the Abyss) called the B Black Rabbit. The two use the contract to escape back to Oz's world, but when they get there they find a few things have changed (and a few, oddly, have not).

One thing that has not changed is the rivalry among Oz's and the other prominent families who each control a door to the Abyss. Another is Pandora, the secretive organization that studies the Abyss and polices elements that escape from it into this world. Oz doesn't really trust any of them, not even his own family, except maybe for Uncle Oscar. He does, however, trust Alice, even though he knows next to nothing about her. And he trusts Raven, the man in charge of his care since his return and who reminds him so much of his friend Gilbert.... Because of the unsanctioned nature of Oz's contract with Alice, the boy's time in this world is running out. If they don't get to the bottom of all the mysteries before the tattooed clock on his chest has completed a full turn, he'll be flung into the deepest depths of the Abyss, and no one's quite sure what happens after that, since no one's ever come back. As part of their investigation, Oz, Alice, and Raven return to Oz's family mansion, the scene of his disastrous party-- and find the same enemy lying in wait, happy now that the principal players have returned to re-enact the events of that day...ten years ago!

Alice in Wonderland lends its weirdness and a few of its characters to this vaguely late-Victorian-styled world of magic and intrigue. There's a lot going on, with more plot complications than I care to try to understand enough to describe, but the story is interesting, the characters pleasantly mysterious and funny and scary, and the art attractive.