A Blade So Black by L.L. McKinney (Review)

      Alice in wonderland meets monster hunting with a dash of unnecessary dislike of white people, A Blade So Black tells the story of a young American woman named Alice as she fights the evils in Wonderland, and tries to live on normal life the rest of the time. This book has a partial cast from the original, like the white queen and an adaptation of the Mad Hatter, but not everybody makes an appearance in this story. It also introduces new characters that spice things up in wonderland.
      To set the stage for this review there is something I want to say off the bat, I have a lot of get off of my chest about this book. I review books for story quality and enjoyability. I love retellings and wonderland, so those things attracted me to A Blade So Black. I couldn't care less that the main character was black instead of white, I thought it might even be interesting. It shouldn't have been a big deal, but this book reeaaalllly wanted to make one of it. Ok, I'm going to jump straight into my many problems with this book. First off, this book is highly prejudiced and I would go as far to say slightly racist. It twisted my gut to constantly see parts trashing "white people" and stereotyping them to the max. It was showing a clear animosity towards whiteness and in a conversation between two characters, generalized all white people to being racists and then said the line of the book "Shit with your mom. Racism. F*cking white people."(The censorship was not in the book, but I don't curse and won't start now). This line was in the context of things that the characters hate and that suck; listing family problems, racism and the entire caucasian race. That is messed up. For context, if you took the use of white people and pumpkin spice in this book and replaced it with black people and chicken wings, asians and rice or Mexicans and tacos, it would be just as gross and should make your skin crawl; but the author seems to disagree with that, and is okay with nasty generalizing and harsh stereotyping of millions of people based on the colour of their skin, as long as that colour is a specific shade. I'm shocked that got by editors. My next biggest problem was Alice herself. When she was in the real world, it felt like she was a black stereotype instead of the nuanced and rounded character she deserved to be. Her interests and likes were boiled down to stereotypical foods and movies like Black Panther, and whole chunks of her dialogue were dedicated to making fun of white people. It ruined the whole reading experiance.
        Now, there were parts of the novel not racially charged, and those are the parts that shone. The time in wonderland was awesome, race didn't matter, and the main character was pretty kick-butt. If the parts outside of wonderland were different, this book would probably have been pretty darn good, but those moments of race-baiting and stereotyping really ruined the story for me. I can't see this book gaining good traction because of it. If I had one recommendation to the author, or the publisher, cut the "F*cking white people" crap before official publication, and just tell an awesome story of a strong woman who kicks-butt in wonderland. That's were there strength in the story lies. All in all, in its current state, I strongly do not recommend A Blade So Black, and give it TWO STARS OUT OF FIVE!!!

*Advanced Readers Copy Review*