Nightmare agrees to stop reading Alice's mind in the hope that she will agree to marry him. Then he takes kampo medicine that gives him tons of energy but takes away his telepathic powers, leaving him unable to defend himself and Alice from attackers. Fortunately, he gets his powers back just in time.

This also includes several extra shorts: two Alice in the Country of Clover (I assume) shorts and three Crimson Empire. The first Alice short features Peter taking too much mushroom-based aphrodisiac. The second Alice short features Alice, Dee, and Dum getting caught in a pit of Dee and Dum's own making. The first Crimson Empire short features Prince Edvard trying to make Sheila (his bodyguard) smile. In the second short, Sheila and Bryon ride horses. In the third, Prince Justin tells Sheila that she is his treasure.

As you can probably tell, the main story in this volume was goofy fluff. If I were a Nightmare/Alice shipper, I'd have been so disappointed, because it was terrible. And sadly, this volume's story was still more coherent than the other Nightmare-focused subseries I read, Alice in the Country of Joker: The Nightmare Trilogy. Most of Nightmare's main story was played for laughs, and yet it wasn't really all that funny. And most of the shorts managed to be sweeter.

I honestly think Nightmare and Gray make a better couple than Nightmare and Alice.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.) ( )