The author’s mastery of his material occasionally falters, in small ways. He renders the social and historical tensions of long-ago Oxford so well, in such compelling fashion, that Wonderland itself occasionally loses its luster...Still, it seems wrong to quibble when presented with such a tasty froth of incident and such a fine, unforced sense of play.
Maguire impressively channels Carroll’s penchant for humorous wordplay, literary nonsense, and logic games, though sometimes he overdoes the fancy and dialogue can get a bit tedious.
Only hardcore Alice devotees will have the stamina to push through its unevenly paced narrative, and even they may be disappointed by the oddly lifeless denouement. This is a case where an editor really should have said: 'You know what? Let’s lose that last chapter where Darwin just rambles on.'
