Alice is reflecting, trying to understand: why does she seem not to live indeed? Isn’t she already dead? It is an interesting trick of the author to turn reality over, presenting the illusory one neither like a dream, nor like death, but vice versa…
Does any creation of the Creator have freedom of choice, or is the scenario rigidly fixed? Where do the glitches in the Matrix come from and how to surprise it? Does Love always defeat Death? And an almost rhetorical question with a reference to the World of Ideas of the philosopher Plato… Can a thought-form die? Can it be the Co-Creator of all things? Isn’t the independent life of a thought-form a heresy, a rebellion against the Creator?
In the mysterious interweaving of realities, Alexandra Kryuchkova, as usual, in an accessible and concise way talks about the complex, but each reader will find in the book exactly what he is ready to discover…
Any fairy tale pays tribute to reality. In the «Trap» there is a mysterious, quite thinking, huge talkative Cat, a kind of Bulgakov’s one. I saw him in the Bulgakov House, and I confirm, the Honorable Mister the Puss is really huge! And the Portal to the Other World, which is the fireplace, awakened in me the image of a Russian stove! Maybe the Guardian of the Portal is the Baba Yaga?
The final scene on the bridge of Eternity with the possibility of choosing the future is associated with a fork in the road, «If you go to the left, you will lose your horse; if you go to the right, you will lose your life; if you go straight, you will be alive and forget yourself.»
However, the scary fairy tale is actually non-scary – no matter how much I tried to get frightened in the course of the story, I couldn’t! And not just because the book is in the «Playing (!) Another Reality» series. The very flow of the narrative screamed with every letter in every line: everything is going to be okay!
There is also a smell of Cinderella: dresses, the anticipation of a miracle at the Ball, etc. However, Alice is in search not so much of a prince as of answers to everybody’s basic questions.
And yet, «A Trap for a Thought-Form» is closer to «Alice in Wonderland» by L. Carroll. Alice and the Cheshire Cat, also speaking and fabulous, like Bulgakov’s Cat, wise in his madness and uttering, «Life is serious. But not much…»
If to be very serious, the «Trap», the winner of the competitions «Master» after M. Bulgakov (the Moscow City Organization of the Union of Writers of Russia, 2020) and «The Looking Glass» after L. Carroll (Open Literary Club, 2022), is hunting for those who lack magic in their lives. It is light, kind, fabulous. Written by the Master of the Word. It’s so nice to spend time with this book over a cup of tea, wrapped in a cozy blanket and smiling at the Cat, that always smiles you back!
Tatyana Trubnikova,
member of the Union of Writers of Russia,
laureate of literary awards
The magazine «ZINZIVER» No.1 (127), 2022
Magazines’ Hall «Gorky media»
https://magazines.gorky.media/zin/2022/1/vzglyad-2.html
https://reading-hall.ru/publication.php?id=30244
Благодарности / Thanks!
Автор выражает сердечную благодарность
всем персонажам и прототипам романа,
в том числе:
The author expresses her great gratitude
to all the characters and prototypes of the novel,
including: