red queen review

"Red Queen" by Christina Henry is the second in the Chronicles of Alice series.  I have not read the first and clearly this is one of those books where you need to.  I only read about a third of it before I gave up.  So let me tell you what it is about.  'Queen' borrows the names of the characters from "Alice in Wonderland" and it is told in the same phsychedelic style but that is pretty much where the similarities end.  In the novel, Alice is being read to by Cheshire and is also running from an asylum with the mad Hatcher, a killer with an ax.  The book is dark and mysterious in a "what is going on?" kind of way.  I can see a lot of people liking this but, please, start at the beginning.