The Splintered series is a trilogy of novels written by A.G. Howard, and comprises the titular Splintered, followed by Unhinged and Ensnared. The series is inspired by Lewis Carroll’s Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, being a modern-day adaption of the two that follows the teenage descendant of the original Alice.
Alyssa Gardner is the great-great-great-granddaughter of Alice Liddell, the inspiration behind Alice in Wonderland, and suffers from a family curse that forces her to listen to the incessant chatter of bugs and plants. This has caused her mother to be institutionalized in a mental hospital and Alyssa fears that she may meet the same fate too, but has managed to keep everything together so far.One day, her mother's mental health takes a turn for the worse and Alyssa must find and jump down the rabbit hole her ancestor supposedly once entered in order to save her. And she quickly learns that the real Wonderland is nothing like Carroll ever depicted. There she must pass a series of tests and make her way through a Wonderland that's much, much darker she ever could have imagined...
This series provides examples of:
- Alice Allusion:
- The female descendants of the Liddell family all have similar names to the original Alice. There's Alyssa, her mother Alison, and her grandmather, Alicia.
- In one of the short stories from Untamed, the granddaughter closest to Alyssa in appearance and behavior is named Alisia.
- Electroconvulsive Therapy Is Torture: What kicks off Alyssa's journey is discovering that her dad scheduled electroshock therapy for her mother Alison, after she had a sanity lapse and attacked Alyssa during their weekly visit.
- In Love with the Mark: Morpheus began visiting Alyssa as a child to secretly start training her for the sole purpose of becoming the Red Queen. He ending up falling in love with her along the way.
- Immortality Begins at Twenty: When Alyssa becomes the Red Queen permanently, she reverts to being sixteen since that's the age that she was when she first fell into Wonderland.
- Kids Are Cruel: It's established that Alyssa has been bullied for a long time due to her relations to the original Alice Liddell.
- Mad Artist: When the series begins, Alyssa's main medium for her mosaics are dead insects. By the time Unhinged has rolled around, she can incorporate drops of her blood into them in order to get glimpses into Wonderland. Jeb has become this in Ensnared.
- Magic Genetics: The female members of the Liddell family all have netherling traits and abilities due to their heritage.
- Muggle and Magical Love Triangle: Alyssa is caught between her human best friend, Jeb, and the netherling, Morpheus.
- Red Pill, Blue Pill: As the series progresses, Alyssa finds her self caught between two worlds; as part of her loves the human world with her friends and family, but the other side of her yearns for the weird and wild Wonderland.
- Secret Test of Character: In Splintered, Alyssa discovers that every achievement she's done in Wonderland is this, since completing them all means that she qualifies to be the Red Queen.
- Speaks Fluent Animal: Alyssa can hear the thoughts of insects and flowers, and communicate with them.
- Voluntary Shapeshifting: Several of the humanoid netherlings have an alternate animal form they can shift into, such as Morpheus's moth or Ivory's swan. Alyssa doesn't have one since her human form is her alternate form.
