In Short
An incredibly fun read for those who are familiar with the X-Men comics of the 90s. If you remember, and enjoyed, the old What If? comics from Marvel then you'll definitely like this.
The Physical Thing
Exiles: Down The Rabbit Hole includes the first four issues of the series. At 112 pages for $12.95, the TPB (Trade Paper Back) is average for it's value. This softcover book has high quality paper and incredibly good, fully color art. On the whole the product values are very high.
The Ideas
The basic idea is that there are many parallel Marvel Universes. In some of them the universe has become destabalized and is going to be rearranged. A mysterious figure called the Time Broker has pulled various X-Men from their universes in order to help fix the unstable realities. Their motivation is that if they don't, their worlds are those that will be rearranged which will result in terrible outcomes for them.
If you've ever wanted to see an evil Charles Xavier, a Dark Phoenix out of control, or a world where the humans have won the war on mutants then you're in for a treat. Every world the group visits is an alternate reality where just a few things are different. On each of them they have an objective. Fix this, rescue this person, make sure this person dies, etc. Once they meet their objective they move on to the next world.
The series is fairly dark, and the team doesn't always do the right thing. I'd say it's average for an X series, which always tended to be slightly on the darker side with their backdrop of prejudice and intolerance. The authors are also more than willing to kill off these What If? X-Men, so unlike the comics we're all used to there is suspense in every battle.
My Take
I hadn't touched any X books since the Age of Apocalypse, so it's been a while. All of the characters and ideas were easy for me to pick up on. I wouldn't go so far as to say having read X-Men comics around the Age of Apocalypse is necessary to enjoy this series, but it would certainly help. A person who is unfamiliar with the expanded X-Men universe just wont get as much out of it.
If you like the X-Men comics, good art, and the idea of sliding through parallel Marvel universes then you'll love this book.
Review Summary