Audiobook Review – The Collector’s Society (The Collector’s Society, Book 1) by Heather Lyons (4/5 stars)

Reading Level: Adult
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Length: 12 hours and 57 minutes (334 pages)
Publisher: Audible Studios
Release Date: June 14, 2017
ASIN: B072KJ412N
Stand Alone or Series: 1st book in the Collector’s Series
Source: Audiobook from Audible.com
Rating: 4/5 stars

“After years in Wonderland, Alice has returned to England as an adult, desperate to reclaim sanity and control over her life. An enigmatic gentleman with an intriguing job offer too tempting to resist changes her plans for a calm existence, though. Soon, she’s whisked to New York and initiated into the Collectors’ Society, a secret organization whose members confirm that famous stories are anything but straightforward and that what she knows about the world is only a fraction of the truth.

It’s there she discovers villains are afoot–ones who want to shelve the lives of countless beings. Assigned to work with the mysterious and alluring Finn, Alice and the rest of the Collectors’ Society race against a doomsday clock in order to prevent further destruction . . . but will they make it before all their endings are erased?”

This is the first book in The Collector’s Society series, there are four books total in this series. I borrowed this as an audiobook from Audible Escapes. I enjoyed this book, it starts out a bit slow, but the second half of the book really picks up pace.

Alice has returned to Wonderland and, upon finally being able to reclaim her sanity, she is offered a job. The job is with The Collector’s Society in modern New York City. There she will work with a group of fellow literary individuals to prevent timelines (books) and hence worlds from being obliterated. Unfortunately, this time the timeline to be deleted is Wonderland. Can Alice help to stop this deletion before Wonderland is gone forever?

In general I liked this book and it was a fun read. The first part is a bit slow with a lot of time spent with Alice trying to figure out how to navigate the modern world and with the reader learning about The Collector’s Society. The second half is a lot more fast-paced and fun, as we finally venture into Wonderland.

The story, world, and characters are all very well done. I do have some complaints about the plot, one of the reasons I have stopped reading a lot of time travel books is that they are just too hard for the author to keep straight and get confusing.

My main point of confusion here was the following: if Alice was brought from the 1800’s in England to modern New York and she had been out of Wonderland for 6 months prior to her trip to New York, then when did she return to Wonderland? The characters in Wonderland act like she returns there 6 months after she leaves, but in reality she was moved over 100 years forward in the future…at that point wouldn’t she be returning to Wonderland at least 100 years after she left? Or does time not run the same way in these worlds? I was very confused by the timing and in the end decided to just stop thinking about it and go with the flow.

I did enjoy how Lyons blended in original elements into from the Alice in Wonderland books into this story.

Overall this was a well done book and was very creative and engaging. I plan on continuing the series and would recommend to those who love Alice in Wonderland in particular. The original story is very well blended with this new extension to the tale. I also like the dark overtones to this story.