Alice in the Country of Hearts: The Clockmaker’s Story

QuinRose / Mamenosuke Fujimaru – Seven Seas Entertainment – 2013 – 1 volume

Eh, I should have read Love Labyrinth of Thorns first (the other Julius spinoff), but this one was on top.  I bought it in a Barnes and Noble the other day.  Gasp!  How novel!

It’s been awhile since I’ve read a Hearts-series book.  Julius doesn’t appear in any of the other worlds (edit: except Joker, which is special), so he has to be in Hearts… if I’m not mistaken, the only spinoff books in English so far that are set in the Hearts world are the two Julius books, the Mad Hatter’s Late Night Tea Party, and My Fanatic Rabbit.  Clover tends to be the setting du jour.

Julius is one of the more likable characters in the series… which makes for a cute, non-creepy book, on the one hand.  On the other, the wackiness tends to be what makes these fun, so the straight-up love story here is a little uncharacteristic of the Alice series.  It is cute, though.  Alice hangs out a lot with Julius, and winds up storming out of Heart Castle after Peter is being a creep, and lives with Julius.

She finds out he doesn’t actually ever sleep or stop working, mainly because there is only one bed, and while they are meant to sleep in shifts (not actually sharing the bed), he never takes his.  Odd that there’s only one bed… I thought Alice stayed in the clock tower in the main series.  I could be wrong, I don’t have it with me to check and confirm.

The only conflict deals with Alice finding out what the clocks are for in the Country of Hearts, and how that affects her opinion of Julius.  I’m reading these too fast (I LOVE THEM TOO MUCH), because that one seems a little weak compared to some of the others.  Then again, it’s also very normal, which is nice.

There are Crimson Empire short stories in the back.  I wasn’t expecting that!  I’m disappointed, because I know nothing about Crimson Empire.  Seven Seas does a great job of putting character profiles and explanations before the story (these are possibly in the original book, I guess, I’m not sure), which helps, but it’s still hard to read a side story to a series I don’t know the main story of.  Having said that, both short stories (Tactics and Stay Here) were pretty great.  I didn’t realize Seven Seas also published Crimson Empire, so I just ordered all three volumes of that as well.  I’m having a QuinRose binge at the moment.

I hope the Peter Pan QuinRose books show up in English eventually… Peter Pan is my favorite.