Review: Jabberwocky by Daniel Coleman

Image from dcolemanbooks.com

Jabberwocky by Daniel Coleman

I chose to read Jabberwocky because when I was picking out the book for H, I saw Hatter by the same author.  Jabberwocky was written first, and thus that’s what I knew I had to read so that I could read Hatter at some point in the future.  It didn’t hurt that I really enjoy Alice and Wonderland, and this book, based off of Lewis Carroll’s poem bearing the same name, is set in the same world many years before Alice arrives.  The Cheshire cat makes a brief appearance, which I thought was a nice touch.

I definitely enjoyed this book.  I found the the characters relatable and wish the book had been slightly longer so that I could have had more time with them.  Overall, Tjaden’s best friend Ollie was my favorite.  Given my propensity for book hangovers, where I live in the world for sometime after the book has ended, I found the book believable.  No, I’m not expecting a Jabberwocky to come flying overhead or to be threatened by a Bandersnatch, but in the world that was created, I believed that these things could happen.  That’s important to me.

Jabberwocky stays true to the original poem while providing a believable back story for the characters in the poem and the world created by it.   I think it a wonderful idea to create stories for poems such as this one.  What other poems could be made into good books with creative storytelling to elaborate upon what was already created?

Hats off to you Daniel Coleman, I look forward to reading Hatter when the Walrus tells me that the time has come.

Both Jabberwocky and Hatter will be rereleased soon by TM Publishing, and the third book in the series will be published for the first time.