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Off With Their Heads: The Prequel To Alice In Deadland (2000)

by Mainak Dhar(Favorite Author)

3.72 of 5 Votes: 5

languge

English

genre

review 1: I read Alice in Deadland #1 and #2. I felt the first two books were sufficiently similar that my single review worked for both. Prequels are such an interesting beast, though, that I felt this book deserved its own review.First off, I will say that the author did not attempt to write a great many revelations. The characters you read about in the first two books turn out to be a little more connected than at first we thought, but it's plausible, and that's the important thing I wanted to get across here. While many authors try to make their prequels be the summation of the entire backstory they'd written for their characters, Dhar does not attempt that here. The characters from the first two novels were movers and shakers of the pre-Rising days, so you would expect their ... morepaths to have crossed. However, Dhar does not attempt to make Appleseed and Gladwell the best of friends, as it were. Sure, they encountered one another, but it was plausible, and seeing the rise of the Biter horde definitely helps you to understand the chaos of the world of Alice.The book doesn't add a TON of detail to the world, and considering the lack of value-added by writing this book, I WAS going to rate it a 3. However, the story of Bunny Ears was sufficiently touching that I decided to rate it an additional star. To my mind, the story of Bunny Ears is worth the price of admission and makes me hope that he might play a greater role in future books.
review 2: "Alice in Deadland" -triology can possibly only contribute with a view of contemporary India as a nation with democratic ambitions and a India in a geopolitical situation resulting in an India in danger of becoming a suburb or poor support society for the bullying dictator neighbour of China. The meta-political context and the plot line of the story is focused exactly on this relationship. The geopolitical situation becomes the backdrop for an exploration of aforementioned ideological topics. These are investigated cold-war style with no ambition of adding anything new to the issues of security, democracy or Indian-China relations.Exiting as it might seem to read Zombie-apocalypse novels not set in an American (or Western) setting, it seems disappointing that Mainak Dhar by no means make use of any attributes inherent to the books Indian scene.Even though Indian locations are visited (and referred to for context) throughout Dhar's novel it seems that the author does not grant post apocalyptic settings of India much interest besides it being a "rubble." There has been made no attempt from the author's side to set the scene, the dystopian survival culture or the pre-apocalyptic situation, specific to the locality of the story, a part from any scene, dystopian survival culture or pre-apocalyptic situation found in main stream pop zombie literature and pictures.There is no descriptions of the post apocalyptic India environment, nothing that sets the scene of a plundered and pillaged Delhi a part from a bomb-out, starved New York City. There is very little (all that comes to mind is a one sentence remark about most people giving up their religion) reference to different Indian cultural or subcultural dealing with the outbreak or the following survival and reorganising of society. In fact the Indian and the American sameness is even supported further in the story as American resistance and India establish a partnership based on a shares ideology rather than on a mutual goal.While the lack of difference - or the convergence of sameness between Zombie Apocalypse in India and zombie apocalypse in American could make an interesting point, it results an incapability of the author to make his tale stand out from the wast literature all ready out there. less

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