Title: Alice in vapors
Author: Francesco Dimitri
Publisher: Salani
ISBN: 9788862562423
Number of Pages: 280
Price: € 16.80 (hardcover edition with jacket)
rating : 1 to 5
Plot: Ben is a young Londoner who suffers from hallucinations. Business law manuscripts. One night there comes a book called Alice in the vapors.
We follow with him the story of Alice, an anthropologist who lives in a Victorian London that never was. Alice
Steamland traveling in a land filled with a gas that causes hallucinations and mutations. A land where reality changes every moment, in which 'right' and 'wrong' are just words, and in which the words themselves become smells and sensations.
Alice's part as a quest, but is immediately transformed into a struggle for life and death. Alice will have to survive in a dark land, where there is no difference between horror and wonder.
Ben read his story.
And something happens to him.
Review: This book would have to completely clear the steampunk genre in Italy, make it in all respects a gentleman general, also joined the nice implementation of the famous fairy tale of Alice in Wonderland. Not so.
There is a problem many writers stumble when approaching the steam, and is the most serious of all: to approach the facts in a very vague and justified by a "much is fantasy."
No, it does not work at all.
We start from the beginning, ignoring the parts where the protagonist is Ben (and his illness), which taken alone may also have an effect, we direct our attention directly to London, where Alice lives.
In my house steampunk is set in Victorian times or so (because then it was as in other forms), so if I say Queen Victoria (build more generation or not) we all know what I'm talking about, right?
Now, I want to understand why one jumps from a balloon and then wear a trench coat (a trench coat!) And smoking cigarettes. In London. Victorian.
Apart emancipation of Alice (and already here we would have to say), would increase the likelihood that our adventurer smoke cigars, pipe, if you really want to be crude could chew tobacco and then spit it out. But
cigarettes.
then meet the steam room, this mysterious gas-like steam, but steam is not, over which it can bounce as the clouds of whipped cream in the sky. The idea itself is good, but the author does not make it better, so eventually the protagonists appear as a series of men in the throes of a trip from LSD. We hope only that the effect is desired.
the walk, in Steamland, where Alice begins her journey and meet some new friends. At this point I will touch briefly on how much damage is sometimes used the opening words "steam" attached to other words to give them this steampunk patina that the author would like pouring out so much, but fails.
not just write "steam" because everything will be. The steamcomputer may become "computing systems steam" (Stop right, copyright! I made it this), as well as steamgusci were easily workable on some other form of expression.
said, the Steamland: this place where everyone seems to have stoned her because the evidence that must be overcome Alice also follow a logical thread (its growth as a warrior and as a person), but frankly, the vampire who cut other people with the scalpel, the monks and the warrior in cycling pants bear if they could really do without. The basilisk petrified that the mistress is the coup de grace was her clever use of special glasses to not see the look of the snake, do not tell "is not the point just petrified."
Chesy addition, the Cat (the only valid and true character of the book), never intervenes at all and none ... and then we see him frolicking happy to call for help to save Alice. It makes little sense.
The battles then end with the poor Zap exploding (and survives, making us wonder how) are the bottom of the barrel, never Deus Ex Machina was more evident.
When Alice reaches the scientist towards the end of the book, we have a confusing explanation of "Meat, Incanto Dream," which is technically the three principles that should govern reality. Not having read the signed "Pan", I can not sign up when put on the same subject written previously by Dimitri, but limited to Alice, the truth is you do not understand anything.
Final personally bland, but made more enjoyable by the presence of Chesy.
Final conclusions: you read in a couple of hours you can easily end up, but leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Dimitri is an excellent storyteller, but it just tells the scenes and describes them, losing many points to their romance, when in fact he had in his hands a great opportunity to become a benchmark for the genre.
The evaluation is therefore extremely negative.
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