The Looking Glass Wars

After reading the sample of this book, I just had to have it! Awsome, intense work. I look forward to finishing the book.
Best Wishes,
Becky Littrell
(BD Nelson author of: Abigail's Cries)Abigail's Cries

An excellent, easy read that transports you to a totally reimagined world you thought you knew: Wunderland. Not the sweet children's story we're used to, but a war-waged country and a misunderstood girl trying to find her way back to a home she began to feel she'd only imagined. I first read this book when I was 13, and again at 19. It's age appropriate for middle schoolers and up. If you are a fantasy lover, this is your next read.

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There are things that I really loved about this book. The author did such a great job creating his version of Wonderland, and it really comes alive with the descriptions and with the direction that he takes the plot. It is a fresh retelling of Alice (Alyss) in Wonderland. I loved the concept and the world building. The characters are also great, especially Hatter, General Doppleganger, Dodge, and Alyss but, they fell a little flat on the page. Some characters felt a little too cartoonish, like Jack Diamon and Redd, but they had such great potential. Clearly, the author can tell a great story and totally rebuild a world that you can see with your mind's eye as you read It just fell short in its reach of really having developed characters integrated into the story.

This book was definitely different. It's not something I'd normally pick up, but I am glad that I gave it a chance after my girlfriend recommended it to me.

+This is a really interesting.... Well, not retelling. More like a re-imagining of the tale we all know and love, Alice in Wonderland. The author combines the classic story with a bit of sci-fi, war, and even some dystopian motifs to make Wonderland a place that Disney definitely didn't dream up.

+I loved the Big Brother type elements of this story. The evil queen, Redd, forces her henchmen to change the history books full of her own genius (?) quotes and narratives. There are billboards all over the place that bear her face, a constant reminder of who is truly in charge. There are spies lurking everywhere, and layer upon layer of deceit and false loyalties.

+The Cheshire cat in this story isn't one that you'd want curled up by your feet at night. He's an assassin with sharp claws and nine lives. Good luck trying to take out all of them. He is stealthy and strong, and makes for a helluva villain.

+- This book has a lot of fight scenes in it. A lot. It makes sense, seeing that this is a story about a war versus good and evil. But, my regular followers know that I really don't follow fight scenes well. It's of no fault of the author, just my own personal hang up.

-I don't feel like a lot of the characters were narrated in depth. There are a large range of characters which are easy to separate from one another, but I feel like not enough time was paid to the "main" characters. I wanted to like Hatter (I mean, his top hat is a weapon. How cool is that?) But I didn't learn much about him. Even Alyss seemed kind of glossed over in order to talk about the broader story.

-Time is a wibbly wobbly motif in the classic tale. This book uses it as well, but in a slightly awkward way. In the course of a few paragraphs, five years pass, then 12. The increments were odd and quick, and it made the "chase" of Alyss seem rushed, and the battles seem (unnecessarily)longer.

-As girly as this sounds, I really missed the romance element. It's there for a while and then fizzles out. It frustrated me a bit, admittedly.

This isn't your mother's Alice in Wonderland. This is a Wonderland for the video game generation- full of ass kicking characters, imaginative weaponry, and trained killers. If you prefer your Alice in Wonderland full of singing flowers and cute little mome raths (like me), this might not be for you. If you want your dormice fried, your top hats full of knives, and your playing card soldiers armed to the teeth, check out this series.

Over all, I felt that the unique perspective on this tale outweighed the issues that I had with the story. I will be checking out the other books that follow, but with no sense of urgency. I'd like to see if the characters grow more complex, and if the romance picks back up.

Quick and fun.
A little chaotic at times, but what else would you expect in Wonderland.

This is a retelling of the classic Alice in Wonderland story. Takes a look at the origins of Alyss (different spelling in Wonderland) and what happens after Lewis Carroll writes his story. It brings in your favorite characters like Hatter, the card soldiers, the caterpillars, and the Redd Queen.

The telling does seem a bit jumbled at times, with it jumping from one persons story to the other without any indication, then back again. It might also have had to do with the format I read it in. We all are familiar with the small changes that you find when you read a book in digital. It just seemed jerky.

Overall an enjoyable read.

I love this re-telling of the Wonderland story. Alyce is a spoiled princess when we first meet her. Her mother is the queen of Wonderlandia, a place when imagination is basically magic. And just like magic there is white imagination (good and productive) and black imagination (bad and destructive.) White imagination rules the land since the elder sister of the queen, Redd, was banished. New and inventive creations are paraded through the streets and some are chosen to be sent into the Heart Crystal into the other realms (including earth.) Redd comes out of hiding with her army of card soldiers and her personal assassin, the Cat, and suddenly Alyce is on the run falling through the pool of tears into our world.

I'm always down for updated takes on classic fairy tales, especially when they involve serious action and violence. The Looking Glass Wars is chalk full of potential, fusing the Alice in Wonderland we know with the historical Alice Liddell. Beddar takes the Wonderlandian characters with which we're familiar and tells their real story, because, apparently, Carroll got it all wrong. But so did Beddar.

While I think the bare bones of the story were really clever, overall, the story was a bit childish for my liking. I sort of expected the silliness, because c'mon, it's Wonderland, but not to that degree. The book is highly imaginative so Beddar could've afforded to go a bit more futuristic with his tale. A steam-punk take on Alice would've been really appropriate here.

The Looking Glass Wars is a tad too long, cheesy and somewhat predictable but it's undoubtedly fun. The violence and lessons learned here is reminiscent of Harry Potter, only lacking that special something. Beddar does a lot of telling and not enough showing. It's not that this was a bad book, per say, it just wasn't my cup of tea and I'd recommend it to a much younger crowd.

Why is imagination important? How difficult it is to recover if lost? Why should we even care? All these questions ran through my mind as I fell under the spell of Frank Beddor's fractured Looking Glass Wars.

Based on reviews, I almost didn't read this book. Critics were condemning Bendor for how he had turned our beloved Alice in Wonderland into a story frothing with battles and so I feared his book might prove too adult to me. After all, I had quit reading the popular Wicked only a few chapters in, because the maturity level of its content robbed me of any joy in reading a book about my beloved Oz series. In contrast, Beddor's trilogy is now on my list of series to read. No, Looking Glass Wars is not the original Alice in Wonderland, but it is a clever fractured tale about imagination--and the crazy world on the other side of the looking glass.

During the first pages of Looking Glass Wars, my preconceptions were running high. Instead of ushering readers down a rabbit hole or through a looking glass, Beddor sends our betrayed heroine fleeing from an author and then delves into a rather lengthy description of the civic war plaguing Wonderland. Neither enticed me. I almost quit reading, but then Alyss bubbles onto the pages. This six-year-old used her imagination to cover court instruments with fur, fill her birthday cake with gwormmies, and transfer her mother's crown to her head so Alyss can play Queen for a day. I smiled: Beddor has a sense of fun.

Nowadays conventional wisdom to writers is to entice readers with an opening action scene. Beddor includes two, neither of which worked for me. Rather, he hoked me with a whimsical style and then reeled me in with his characters.They are as preposterous as the originals, but Beddor somehow makes them not only believable but also causes me to care about them.

In the original book Alice follows a rabbit into Wonderland. In Looking Glass Wars, the female lead's name is Alyss and is heir to the Wonderland throne. According to him, we only know about her in our world because she met Lewis Carroll (author of the original book) after fleeing her world to escape death and thereby accidentally splashing into our world. Then there's Tutor Bibwit. The rabbit that Alice followed into Wonderland shows up in Beddor's book as her tutor who, despite his smugness in considering himself the most learned, wins our admiration because of his intense loyalty to the Wonderland princess. On the opposing side is Redd, familiar to us as the red queen (and mind you really is a chess piece), along with some other surprising characters from Carroll's book. Some are good, others are evil, but all would no doubt satisfy Carroll's sense of the eccentric. Even the caterpillar makes a few appearances! What astounded me the most is how how real Beddor made his most preposterous characters: rabbits, cards, chess pieces, caterpillars, jabberwocky. They always felt as real as the human characters.

The one glaring flaw in Looking Glass Wars is how especially in the first half of the book, Beddor often defaults to non-descript depictions of clothes and buildings. For example, the fabric of the queenly clothes and the royal curtains are "more voluptuous than anything ever imagined". Are they made of satin, silk, or another fabric? Are they a royal color such as purple or silver? He never tells us. Beddor also relies on logical and unimaginative names for places: Boarderland, Volcanic Plains, and Wondertropolis. Surely, wonderland deserved more care the depiction of its landscape! In the latter half of the book, Beddor does provide some vivid portrayals of a decripit world, telling us that a corner was crowded with "smoky grills and crystal smugglers" or that "long-stemmed, flesh-eating roses slithered". Apparently, ugliness is easier to describe than beauty.

Since closing its pages, the book stuck in my mind. Not for its style, whimsical as it is. Not for its unique characters, captivating as they are. Not even for Beddor's ability to gracefully intertwine the original story with his fractured tale, astonishing as this is. What still runs through my mind months after my original read is the theme: Do we outgrow imagination? How can we recover it? And does imagination even matter?

"He'd transformed her memories of a world alive with hope and possibility and danger into make-believe, the foolish stuff of children."

So says Alice Liddell, or rather, Alyss, about Charles Dodgson's (Lewis Carroll's) new book, Alice in Wonderland. Dodgson has collected all of Alyss' shared recollections about a place from her earliest memories and turned them into...ptui!...popular fiction for young adults. He's even spelled her name wrong.

She's very upset about this.

In The Looking Glass Wars, Frank Beddor gives us the first installment of a series of tales about Wonderland, from the other side of the looking glass. His Wonderland is a real place, an alternate dimension from the Earth we know, where imagination is the power to create reality. Alyss is the presumptive heir to the throne, the next Queen of Hearts, until her fairytale future is shattered by a bloody coup engineered by her Aunt Redd, a seriously disturbed royal who didn't meet the sanity standard for queenship. Heads roll, and Alyss flees into exile, falling through a watery portal into Victorian England, where she's eventually adopted by the good Reverend Liddell and his family, her memories of Wonderland fading over the years.

After her altercation with Mr. Dodgson, Alyss spends another few years in limbo until she's discovered by a long-lost retainer from Wonderland who's been searching for her ever since they were separated during their flight from Redd. He arrives just in time to avert Alyss' impending marriage to a British royal. Together, they return to Wonderland to set things right, but Redd's firmly established on the throne, and unseating her won't be easy.

The Looking Glass Wars isn't a bad story. It's well-written and showcases Mr. Beddor's creativity in his vision of Wonderland. Unlike the original Alice in Wonderland, though, there's no poetry or profound feeling of strangeness that immerses the reader in a completely alien realm. If anything, this Wonderland might seem a little too familiar to anybody who's been to the movies in the last five or ten years. It tells a story with a beginning, middle, and end, but it never took hold of me. It was pleasant, but not compelling.

Yes, this is a "young adult" book, but I've still got enough kid in me to get wrapped up in a good kids' story, when I find one.

The Penguin Speak paperback copy I bought was a nice product. The cover had a coppery sheen to it, the backcover copy told me everything I needed to know about the story inside, and the artwork was attractive. Unfortunately, the depictions of the card soldiers, including the descriptive text within the story, painted a picture uncomfortably like the droid troopers from the Star Wars movies. I was waiting for one of them to sound off with a cheery, "Roger-roger," but they remained mercifully silent. There are interior color plates with more cool artwork, very pretty and creepy in an American McGee's Alice sort of way.

One of the reimaginings that I thought was fun and mostly worked was casting the Mad Hatter as a sort of covert agent/bodyguard, part of a network of agents known collectively as "The Millinery." Lots of sharp objects are tossed about, including hats that morph into nasty, razor-edged weapons ala Oddjob from the James Bond movies. Alyss picks up a personal bodyguard toward the end of the story by the name of Homburg Molly, who's a very focused apprentice spy and one of the few characters not cribbed from Alice in Wonderland, which may be one reason I found her so appealing. The poor Cheshire Cat appears as a humorless cybernetic assassin on Redd's team who loses his nine lives one-by-one, mostly at the hands of his homicidal mistress.

There are multiple Caterpillars in the story, and they're all mystic sages of some sort (nobody who plays around with the Alice stories seems to be able to think of anything else to do with them), but as in the original, they're not much help. We still have no idea what's getting smoked in that hookah.

Bottom Line: The Looking Glass Wars is an interesting "reimagining" of the Alice in Wonderland mythos, but it fell a little flat for me. There's some very creative worldbuilding. The secondary characters created by Beddor for this story are a bright spot, and I expect them to grow into star players by the end of this series. Not a bad read, especially for an older tween, but, for the love of all that's good and true, introduce them to Lewis Carroll's immortal works first.

As someone who loves fairytale retellings, I was thrilled to discover this new take on the story of Alice in Wonderland (though less thrilled to discover that there are already six books out).

In Book One of this new series, we learn that Alyss Heart is the young heir to the Wonderland throne. She is forced to run away when her Aunt Redd returns from exile to attack and kills Alyss's mother. Alyss finds her self in out world and unable to return so she confides her story to a priest in hopes that he will get her story out to the world so she can be found by someone who can take her home. But he ends up getting all the details wrong, thinking to take creative liberties and "make the story his own." Ultimately, Alyss must return to Wonderland to reclaim her throne.

One of the best elements to the book is the way it adjusts the characters we always knew. Mad Hatter becomes Hatter Maddigan, an agile bodyguard. The Cheshire Cat becomes deadly assassin The Cat. The White Rabbit becomes royal tutor Bibwit Harte (a good idea minus the fact that we now have two characters with the last names Heart and Harte). Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum become General Doppleganger...

The one area where the book is particularly lacking is in the actual magical aspect of it. Alyss's basic skill is that she has the strongest "imagination" of anyone in a long time. Ideas are created in Wonderland and then sent into the real world and Alyss is particularly skilled at making things up. What are the limits to a power like this? How do you really overpower someone in battle (we saw her battle the Redd Queen but I still found myself unclear on their actual abilities-why not just imagine your enemy dead? there's no coming back from that)?

This isn't my favorite series. I will probably buy the next book, but it's at the bottom of my list, which has grown too long to ever really catch up on.

Alyss Heart, princess of Wonderland and heir to the throne, must flee through the Pool of Tears to escape her murderous aunt Redd who has seized the kingdom. She finds herself in Victorian London. When she is befriended by an author, she tells him her story and hopes that he'll tell the truth so that someone will find her and bring her home. But he gets the story all wrong, even spelling her name incorrectly. but Royal Bodyguard Hatter Madigan has been searching for Alyss, and when she is twenty, he brings her back to take back her kingdom.

I liked this book a lot. It's obviously a play off of Alice in Wonderland and it had a great plot. I liked the way that Beddor made Alyss into a princess from Wonderland who gets lost in England and then returns to her home. There was great magic in this book, as well as wonderful characters. Especially Aunt Redd, the evil queen of hearts. She has this mad air about her that Beddor captured very well. Though the plot device was very familiar (banished princess must take back her queendom), I still really loved it. The Looking Glass Wars kept me reading, and I finished it in a few short hours. There is a sequel too, called Seeing Redd.

*You can read all of my reviews at my book review blog, novareviews.blogspot.com*

I really wanted to enjoy this book. I figured that the concept of Wonderland-as-reality is strong, and that surely Carroll's material would be a sturdy foundation for a trilogy of wonders.

Unfortunately, this book is more like the storyboard for a movie than a novel. Everything is described rather than experienced; events are driven by things that appear, rather than motivations.

For example, the various kinds of Evil Minions (Seekers, Glass Eyes, The Cut) have no point-of-view or reason to exist, except to attack our heros, who fight back and/or run away. Now this WORKS in a movie; visually you would understand the difference between a Seeker and a Glass Eye without any tedious explaining, but in a BOOK the author has to give us more than asserting that one critter flies and the other walks. There is no situation in the book in which one monster couldn't simply substitute for the other.

Likewise, the multiple chase scenes are tediously unmotivated. At one point, Dodge flees through the Crystal Continuum, chased by some Evil Minions (Glass Eyes? Card Soldiers? who cares?; nothing they do makes their identify matter.) It is a boring chase; all we really know is that he is being chased; we can't get emotionally involved and ultimately don't care that he escapes by a rather clever maneuver. Now in a movie, the visuals and music of the chase would supply plenty of emotion, but in the book, the author has to do more than was done here.

Another difficulty is that the Hero doesn't really do anything to deserve her ultimate victory, except to be born with super-powers and to follow directions. In the rather cloying ending, our Hero Alyss discovers a Valuable Lesson: that she can do anything if she has the imagination to do so. Or something. Visually, this might work in a made-for-children movie, but a book needs something of more substance, such as a sacrifice by the Hero to show she really does want and deserve her victory.

Perhaps the basic problem of the work is exposed by a running joke of no actual narrative consequence that would justify the space given it. The Evil Queen keeps forcing the hapless scholar to edit his book to suit her wishes, as he wrings his hands and reluctantly obeys. If only this book had had such an editor, it might have fulfilled its promise!

I really wanted to enjoy this book, and I hope it is made into the movie it carefully outlines, but for reading purposes, there are many novels of light fantasy better worth your time.

The Looking Glass Wars
By Frank Beddor

Publisher:Dial
# of Pages:384
Age Rating: 13+
My Rating: 4 Stars
Where I got it: Library

Synopsis:
The Myth: Alice was an ordinary girl who stepped through the looking glass and entered a fairy-tale world invented by Lewis Carroll in his famous storybook. The Truth: Wonderland is real. Alyss Heart is the heir to the throne, until her murderous aunt Redd steals the crown and kills Alyss' parents. To escape Redd, Alyss and her bodyguard, Hatter Madigan, must flee to our world through the Pool of Tears. But in the pool Alyss and Hatter are separated. Lost and alone in Victorian London, Alyss is befriended by an aspiring author to whom she tells the violent, heartbreaking story of her young life. Yet he gets the story all wrong. Hatter Madigan knows the truth only too well, and he is searching every corner of our world to find the lost princess and return her to Wonderland so she may battle Redd for her rightful place as the Queen of Hearts.

Review:
Put your hand up if you are one of those people who didn't enjoy "Alice in the Wonderland" that much.(I didn't enjoy that much too.) If you didn't ( or did) then check out this book out, The Looking Glass Wars. Sounds....weird, right? Well, this book was a original, engaging, adventure book and I thought that it was neat. And yes, the writing did kind of suck but it did seem vivid, it's like watching a movie. ( In fact, they are planing to make this into a movie!)
And the plot help made-up for the writing. The characters seem one-dimensional, neat and fresh but one-dimensional. My favorite character was the Mad Hatter, he was soooooo neat with his trench-coat, silver wristbands, and my favorite, the top-hat with throwing knives. He was the neatest, acrobatic and could throw his knives with deadly accuracy.
And Redd was wicked and neat but every time she open her mouth, she sounds like a inmature, brat girl who is yelling for everyone heads to roll.
Of Lewis Carroll or Frank Beddor view, I would have to say that Frank is the one that got Alyss's story right. One thing that I didn't really like was that there didn't really seem to be a time different, while Frank did write that it was 10 ( or something years) to me,it seem it happen all at the same time.
I really enjoy this book and if you didn't (or did) like "Alice in the Wonderland" book or if you like fantasy wars then you should read this book.
I give it 4 stars.

Enjoy! :D:D:D

Princess Alyss Heart is celebrating her seventh birthday with a grand party. Her mother Genevieve Heart, Queen of Wonderland, has invited all the suit families; the Lord and Lady of Spades, Diamonds and Clubs. Suddenly the palace is attacked by Redd, the Queen's sister, yelling "Off with their heads!" Redd usurps the throne and threatens Alyss. Hatter Madigan, Genevieve's bodyguard, grabs Alyss and they escape through the Pool of Tears. They are separated, Alyss reappearing in Victorian London and Hatter in Paris. While Redd terrorizes her citizens in Wonderland, Alyss lives on the streets of London with other orphaned children. Hatter must find Alyss and bring her home to Wonderland so she can defeat Redd and take her rightful place on the throne.

The main theme of this story is that if you believe in yourself you can over come any obstacle. Alyss looses faith in her powers of imagination, because in London no one believes her stories of Wonderland, so she stops believing that Wonderland exists. Once she returns to her home world, she must relearn how to use her imagination so she can reign as Queen of Wonderland.

This was a very predictable story, yet I really enjoyed reading it. If you are looking for a simple and fun twist on the story of Alice in Wonderland, this book is for you.

When I think of books with great potential that somehow manage to fall flat, I think of this book. I love retellings of old stories, especially when they are as twisted and dark as this premise is. In Beddor's retelling, Alyss is actually the princess of Wonderland and has the power to make her imagination a reality. Her aunt, the Queen of Hearts, stages a coup and kills her parents. Alyss's bodyguard, the Mad Hatter, rescues Alyss and takes her to our world, but then looses her. Fourteen years later, he finds her and brings her back to Wonderland to fight her aunt and retake the throne.

Sounds good, right? Yet somehow it doesn't pull through the way you hope it will.

First, let me explain what I did like about this book. I liked the Jack of Hearts, because he was not pure evil and you're not really sure which side he will choose to be on. There was plenty of action and battling. The author used details about the real Alice Liddell, whom Carroll based his character on. And I'll admit to being sappy and liking young Alyss's crush on her friend. They had a very cutsey scene right before all hell broke loose with the Queen of Hearts assassinating people.

Unfortunately, those good points weren't good enough to out-weigh the book's weaknesses. For one thing, he spends so much time setting up the inciting events in Wonderland that when Alyss comes to our world we have trouble believing that she's forgotten Wonderland. For another, the events that take place in our world don't have enough of an air of mundanity. Alyss gets engaged to a prince. I repeat: she almost becomes a princess in our world. She might as well have gone to Oz, the kingdom next door, rather than have ended up in our plain, ordinary world.

But that was all forgivable compared to the Piers Anthony-esque puns he worked into the story. The Queen of Heart's special military unit is a deck of cards known as The Cut (yes, the "T" is capitalized.) The Mad Hatter (whose name was now Hatter Madigan) trained at the Millinary and uses his hat as a throwing star. One other female character from the Millinary was named Homburg Molly and also used her hat as a weapon.

It was painful. It also gave an air of childishness to a story that was clearly very dark and not childish at all. I'm not sure if this was deliberately intended for the purpose of irony, or if the author really felt that the juxtaposition worked.

Reviewed by Debra Gaynor for Reader Views (9/06)

There was more to the "Story of Alice in Wonderland" than C.S. Lewis ever shared. Alice's name was Alyss, the cat was actually an assassin, and the Madd Hatter was Alyss' bodyguard. Frank Beddor has brought us the true story in the first book of his trilogy, "The Looking Glass Wars."

Alyss had been taunted for years. No one believed her story; they all thought it a childhood fantasy. When Reverend Charles Dodgson listened intently to her and requested to put her story to paper, Alyss was excited; finally someone was listening to her. People would know she was really a princess and had to escape her kingdom because wicked Aunt Redd had killed her parents in an attempt to gain the throne. But when Alyss opened the book and began to read, she was horrified. Dodgson had taken her story and twisted it into a fairy tale. No one would ever believe her now.

Frank Beddor has done a remarkable job rewriting a story many of us grew up on. He's managed to take a fairy tale and give it a whole new meaning. I was hooked from page one. I could hardly wait to turn the page; I couldn't put it down. The story became so real it was as though I were part of it, running with Alyss as she barely escapes with her life. All the characters you loved as a child are still here but their true roles have been revealed. Beddor reveals Dodge and a friend, Madd Hatter is the daring bodyguard sworn to protect Alyss, and the cat with the sneaky smile is really an assassin. True fans always knew there was more to that cat than just a smile. I truly enjoyed "The Looking Glass Wars" and highly recommend it to those who enjoy fantasy. But wait, is it fantasy or is it non-fiction?

Book received free of charge

Okay, let's get a few things straight. First, it's Alyss and NOT Alice - thank you very much. Second, Hatter Madigan is NOT some nutter who likes to throw nonsensical tea parties. Third, Wonderland is NOT some bizarre dream world invented by Charles Dodgson and written under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll....

Enter, The Looking Glass Wars.

Eleven year old Alyss Heart's world is thrown into chaos when her Aunt Redd attacks the peaceful city of Wonderland and establishes herself as Queen. After witnessing her mother's demise, Princess Alyss is forced to flee through a wormhole type portal called The Pool of Tears. Friendless and scared, she is transported to earth to begin a new life. Not surprisingly, no one believes the true tale of her past or the details of her homeland. Worse, she encounters the real life Lewis Carroll, who takes her story and patches it into a woefully inaccurate, yet highly successful line of fantasy books. The future appears rather bleak for young Alyss, yet for Wonderland to be restored to glory, she must embrace her destiny.

In a word: really impressive. The Looking Glass Wars is one of the most imaginative works of fantasy we've encountered in a while. The novel was fast paced and truly unique in its conception. We loved how the novel even addressed the motivation behind Lewis Carroll's original work. And while many of the characters remained consistent, they all received a makeover in awesomeness. The Mad Hatter is now Hatter Madigan: Imperial Bodyguard. The Cheshire Cat is now The Cat: Ninja Assassin. The Red Queen and The Queen of Hearts are merged into one super villain named Redd Heart: Black Imagination Extraordinaire.

The Looking Glass Wars also introduces many fascinating concepts, but most interesting was the idea of the imagination. The reader is introduced to White and Black imagination, and the power of imagination warfare. Yep, it's all that it sounds and more. Weapons and fighting techniques as vast as your imagination... Still, speaking from experience, it's not as easy as it sounds.

Many critics dislike reimaginings, parodies, and mash-ups of the "classics." I, not being much of a critic, am becoming rather fond of them and believe they can actually serve the greater purpose of exposing new generations of readers to the classics that they seem to make fun of. Most school children, especially teenagers, despise the books that they are forced to read. If they read them at all, it is with a closed mind and a determination that they are going to hate them simply because some adult at some point in time has hailed them as a classic. Books such as The Looking Glass Wars by Frank Beddor are good books not simply because they are enjoyable to read, but also because they bring an awareness of the classics that someone may never have considered before.

The Looking Glass Wars is a reinvention of Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. It is the first part of an intended trilogy which turns Carroll's works on their heads. Whereas Carroll's Alice lives in the "real world" of Victorian England and visits the make-believe world of Wonderland, Beddor's Alyss is the Princess of Wonderland who visits Victorian England (and almost marries Prince Leopold along the way.)

At the start of the novel, Beddor's Wonderland is a beautiful place full of White Imagination and ruled by Alyss's mother, Queen Genevieve. Very soon, however, the queen is attacked by her evil sister, Redd, who thinks that the throne is rightfully hers. Redd is consumed by jealousy, hate, and Black Imagination. She kills Queen Genevieve and gains control of Wonderland, but the seven-year-old Alyss escapes with the help of the queen's bodyguard, Hatter Madigan (a loose interpretation of the Mad Hatter). While Redd turns Wonderland into a place of darkness, fear, and ruins, Alyss (who has become separated from Hatter) finds herself growing up as an adopted orphan in Victorian England. While there, Alyss's imagination is almost killed and she finally convinces herself that surely, Wonderland must be the figment of her imagination that everyone insists it really is (even Lewis Carroll himself makes an appearance and writes his interpretation of "Alice's" fantastic story). Meanwhile, back in Wonderland, Redd continues destroying everything that was good and "wonderful," but she is thwarted at almost every turn by the Alyssians who hold on to their hope and belief in the power of White Imagination even though they believe Alyss is dead.

Eventually, Hatter finds Alyss and, with the help of her childhood friend Dodge, she is returned to Wonderland. Once there, she must undergo training and a test to rebuild the strength of her imagination which will eventually determine if she truly can defeat Redd and become Queen Alyss of Wonderland.

The Looking Glass Wars, which is the first part of a proposed trilogy of the same name, will definitely appeal to a young girl's sense of adventure and imagination, but I think that boys could enjoy it just as much. What boy doesn't enjoy battles that take place in strange lands, full of frightful creatures and fantastical weapons, creations that, at times, lend the book an almost Star Wars-like quality? It is also, however, a fantasy that adults can enjoy, especially those captivated by the early Harry Potter books. And while it is a good book in its own right, the best thing about it is its ability to spark an interest in the classics that inspired it. In fact, I think I will reread Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass in addition to reading Seeing Redd, the next installment in Beddor's series.

This book wasn't extremely deep or anything but it was entertaining. It wasn't what I expected as the author focused more on developing the environment and trying to make Wonderland seem as real as possible. There wasn't as much character development as I expected and no real relationship building between the characters. The development that does take place is very quick without a lot of explanations so it's kind of hard to really be vested in the characters and their lives.

That being said I did like how he changed the story of "Alice in Wonderland" and I liked what he did with the different parts of the story that were normally really childish and fantastical and made them more realistic with more reasoning behind it.

I would recommend this book as a surface entertainment but do not read it if your looking for something deep with rich and multifaceted characters.

The book, The Looking Glass Wars, by Frank Beddor was very enjoyable. He has re-imagined the story of Alice in Wonderland and took it to the next level. Beddor did an excellent job of sophisticating the characters of Wonderland which brought them to life, each seeming more real than a byproduct of a psychedelic trip. While some aspects of the story line are predictable, the plot is really great. For instance, something Beddor did that was simply genius was when Alyss meets up with Lewis Carroll (the author of the original Alice in Wonderland) and tells him about her memories of Wonderland which he compiles into a book. By doing this he makes his story seem more legitimate. Instead of just being fiction, it turns into the genre akin to legends which are stories considered to have originated from actual events. In my opinion, Frank Beddor could be the next brothers Grimm. I really liked Beddor’s version of Alice in Wonderland. Once you start reading it, you’re hooked. All in all I highly recommend you read this book if you enjoy fantasy fiction novels. In fact, I’d recommend it even if you did not, because in my opinion this book has a little bit to offer everyone.

The Looking Glass Wars

Alyss Heart is the heir to the Wonderland throne until her Aunt Redd comes and forces her to leave her home - the only place she has ever known. In The Looking Glass Wars by Frank Beddor, Alyss must jump through the Pool of Tears with Maddigan Hatter, her bodyguard, and come to a nineteenth century Earth. When Maddigan and Alyss get separated on their trip through the Pool of Tears, Alyss has to survive in a place she doesn’t know without any way of getting home, and with her aunt sending an assassin to kill her. Beddor describes a more gorey version of Lewis Carroll’s novel, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
Frank Beddor does a great job of keeping the novel in the time period of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventure in Wonderland. Beddor’s writing is incomparable in how much detail is given. The reader always knows all sides of the story, and never has to wonder about what happened to lead to a certain point in the book. Beddor made sure that no character was useless, and that every character had a part in the grand scheme of things. Protagonist, Alyss Heart, has to give the spotlight to other people to ensure the progression of the novel. The reader will be able to relate to Alyss because of her wanting to fit in on Earth and not feel different. Beddor’s changing character focus in the storyline is a strategy that makes the reader amazed that so many characters can be essential to progression in the story.
Any reviewer would probably say that this novel is for either a fan of Lewis Carroll’s classic novel or readers who love magical fiction. In The Looking Glass Wars, there are detailed fighting scenes and freaky imagery that are written out for the reader to picture. This book isn’t for a beginner reader, because it includes challenging vocabulary. This novel is an exquisitely written piece of literature and a fitting read for a range of people.

I picked this book up off the bookshelf because it has a terrific title, and then I read the prologue and got utterly hooked by it. What an intriguing premise! I was wild with curiosity by the time I bought my copy and brought it home. I opened the book, eager to read the whole thing in one sitting and enjoy it immensely.

And then I didn't.

The characters all start out interesting, but the things that make them interesting fall flat before around the middle point of the book. For instance, the main character starts out very young, has a string of traumatic experiences, and then the book almost completely skips over the next ten years of her life (as if they were irrelevant to the story, which I don't think they should have been), bringing her back as an adult. And a bitter, unimaginative, unlikeable adult to my mind, as well.

By the end of the book, it barely held my attention at all, as I found myself predicting every single plot point, groaning at each new cliche, and staring at the book in speechlessness at its unresolved, clearly-begging-to-hook-readers-in-for-a-sequel-instead-of-bothering-to-finish-the-story ending. It felt contrived, it felt cliche, and it felt like a cop out.

Now, I say this reluctantly, because the I thought the premise behind the book was brilliant. I'm also probably prejudiced, because I hate stories where main characters spend half or more of the book angsting, instead of doing something interesting about their problems. And I'm also prejudiced against stories where I can see every plot point coming, and yet the author still builds up to them for ages as if they were real plot twists.

I'm also a very picky reader, so there are probably lots of other people out there who will love this book. I know I thought the idea behind it was magnificent, which is why I was so crushed when I found its implementation disappointing.

(Although I will add that I thought Hatter was extremely cool, and stayed so all the way through the book. Go Frank Beddor, for including him!)

I have a confession to make. I have never particularly cared for Lewis Carroll's (aka the Reverend Charles Dodgson's) Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. Although I've read that story, once, it has never even come close to being one of my favorites. With Frank Beddor's THE LOOKING GLASS WARS, however, I can easily say that I was drawn into the story from the first page--and have found a new book to add to my list of favorites.

THE LOOKING GLASS WARS begins in 1863, in Oxford England, with eleven-year-old Alyss Heart having told her story to the Rev. Charles Dodgson over a matter of months. After four years of living in this world, Alyss is sure her story is about to be told. Unfortunately, the "liberties" that college scholar Dodgson took with her telling of her life in Wonderland have been turned into a parody, a fictional tale that resembles nothing like the life she had previously led. The events that led to her living in England have become nothing but a foolish story, something to be read to privileged children by their pampered parents.

Alyss's story actually begins long before that day she is given a bound copy of ALICE'S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND by Dodgson. While Alyss was celebrating her seventh birthday in Wonderland, plans were being put into action to overthrow the Queen, Genevieve, Alyss's mother. Genevieve's evil sister, Redd, has grown tired of being exiled from Wonderland--and her powers have grown strong. She stages a coup that begins with the death of the King, Genevieve's husband, Nolan. And it doesn't end until Genevieve is dead, as well, and Alyss is forced to escape through the Pool of Tears.

This is only the beginning of Alyss's toils, and the troubles and woes that come to all Wonderlanders who refuse to recognize the new queen. As the other houses (Spades, Diamonds, and Clubs) take sides, as battles are waged, Wonderland fades from the beautiful, prosperous city that it once was. And Alyss, who was destined to be Queen, is forced to live a life of lies in an alternate world.

Frank Beddor has come up with a wonderful story that draws upon Lewis Carroll's original characters and turns them around to bring them to vivid life. From the Chessboard Desert to the bodyguard Hatter Madigan, from the scholar Bibwit Harte to the young Dodge Anders, from the Generals Doppel and Ganger to The Cat and the Glass Eyes and The Cut, it's all there, in wonderful, splendid glory. This is definitely one story that will stay with you, and have you turning pages long into the night. If you're like me, you'll also be eagerly awaiting the second book in the series, Seeing Redd, which, unfortunately, is still being written. The good news, though, is that once you've finished THE LOOKING GLASS WARS, you'll be happy to start reading it all over again.

Reviewed by: Jennifer Wardrip, aka "The Genius"

I never write book reviews, but I enjoyed The Looking Glass Wars so much that I had to. I have been obsessed with anything Alice In Wonderland-related for the longest time, and I generally enjoy most adaptations. This book, in particular, fascinated me much more than the other adaptations. Beddor creates an incredible and believable Wondertropolis, and I wish he could have gone into more detail with the surrounding areas. The various inventions and weapons were well-described and easy to picture. I loved the characters. Each one is developed with his or her own personality and characteristics. A lot of it is rehashed tropes and plotlines, but all stories are, anyway. Overall, I loved this book. It is definitely in my Top 5 now!

"The Queendom had been enjoying a tentative peace ever since the time, twelve years earlier, when unbridled bloodshed spattered the doorstep of every Wonderlander."

So opens the first chapter of THE LOOKING GLASS WARS by Frank Beddor, putting to rest any claims to dismiss this thrilling new novel as little more than a "re-imagining" of the Lewis Carroll classic, ALICE IN WONDERLAND. In many ways, Beddor's book takes the whole notion of "re-imagining" (made especially popular these days with the success of Gregory Maguire's wonderful WICKED) and sets it on its ear. What emerges is not a slightly askew glance into this well-known world but a daring incursion, darker and bearing the hallmarks of a deeper agenda, into wholly new territory.

Beddor's opening gambit is the familiar "Everything you know is wrong" tactic, asserting that you only THINK you know the true story. It's been long established that Carroll created these stories for young Alice Liddell as an entertainment, and it was at Alice's behest that he wrote them down for other children. Beddor asserts instead that it was Alice telling the stories to record them for posterity, but Carroll, on writing them down, twists them to his own tastes. Alice is upset because what Carroll wrote isn't what really happened, and she wants the real story to get out.

Though Beddor starts with an oft-used tactic, nothing that follows is nearly as predictable. You see, Alice Liddell is actually Alyss Heart, destined to be queen of Wonderland before a bloody coup sent her into a London exile. In her absence, Wonderland becomes a viscous umbra of its former benevolent pallor, ruled over by Alyss's sinister aunt, known only as Redd. Carroll's characters are introduced in their "true" forms --- the crafty Hatter Madigan; the feline, shape-shifting assassin, Cat --- and the stage is set for a counterrevolution when, 12 years later, a grown-up Alyss returns to Wonderland to reclaim her place as rightful ruler.

To say much more about the story is to deprive readers of the surprises that permeate every page of the book. Even if you haven't read Carroll's original, you probably know enough about the premise to be entertained by this book (although I recommend picking up ALICE IN WONDERLAND to fully appreciate what Beddor is trying to do).

What may be missing from the text are shades of subtlety. There are good characters, there are bad characters. Good and evil is too easy, which make the characters a little flat. But the story is first rate, and most readers will appreciate the well-plotted action and insidious scheming that keep the pages turning.

An entertaining cross between Maguire's WICKED and Steven Spielberg's Peter Pan movie, Hook, THE LOOKING GLASS WARS launches a promised trilogy about Alyss's new adventures. Beddor grabs the imagination and refuses to let go until the reader is pulled as deeply into the adventure as Alyss herself. The worst part, of course, will be the wait for the next book.

--- Reviewed by Brian Farrey

Alyss Heart is the princess of Wonderland, destined someday to be its queen. But on her seventh birthday, her exiled aunt Redd slaughters her family and takes the throne as her own. Alyss flees Wonderland and ends up in our world, where she must struggle through mundane life until she has the strength and means to return and claim her throne. The Looking Glass Wars is written as the "true story" of Alyss/Alice and Wonderland--some of the aspects are familiar from Carroll's books, but characters are reimagined and the story is completely new. The novel is vivid and engaging, swiftly readable, and imaginative. However, Redd is a comically exaggerated antagonist, and this book pales against Carroll's original Wonderland novels. It's a swift and harmless book, but I don't particularly recommend it.

Beddor's novel is based on the premise that Alyss (called Alice by her adopted family) told Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) the story of her life in Wonderland--and then Carroll wrote a book about it and got it all wrong. The Looking Glass Wars, therefore, is the true account of Wonderland and Alyss's life. The white rabbit becomes Alyss's albino tutor Bibwit Harte, the Mad Hatter is actually bodyguard Hatter Madigan, and so other aspects from Carroll's books appear, reimagined and reformed. The plot of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is entirely replaced by the story of Redd's reign of terror and Alyss's journey to take back the throne. This premise is intriguing, and Beddor fills it with interesting inventions, steampunk-esque world building, and battles--many battles and a fair amount of violence, which aim to make Alyss's journey both difficult and important. With all of the action and new ideas, the book is intriguing, vivid, and swiftly paced.

Unfortunately, Beddor's inventions aren't as wonderful as they first seem. Queen Redd brings ruin to Wonderland, but she is merely evil for the sake of being evil: she is so brash, so loud, so over the top that she becomes a comically exaggerated antagonist. Her comic nature overwhelms the threat and danger that she poses and strips all subtlety from the book. Even worse, Beddor's Wonderland simply pales in comparison to Carroll's original books (ironic, considering how disrespectful he is to his source material). There are some quirky inventions, some vivid characters, and an interesting plot, but Beddor simply lacks the wonder and true absurdity that Carroll writes so well. The Looking Glass Wars is a weak homage at best, and it's not particularly meaningful or memorable. The reader would do far better simply to read Carroll's books.

I love Alice in Wonderland--the original books, retellings, and works inspired by it as well. I did not, however, love The Looking Glass Wars. It's an interesting concept with many promising aspects, and the book reads swiftly. But Beddor writes only a weak mimicry of the absurdity, word play, transformation, and above all the sense of true wonder that makes Alice in Wonderland such a delight. Nor is his new interpretation particularly meaningful (his new Wonderland isn't particularly memorable, and the books themes lack subtlety), and his only brave act is to decry Carroll's source material as foolishly weak and incorrect. There's no harm in checking this book out if you're interested, and it's a good book to borrow from the library. However, I wasn't impressed and I don't recommend it. I wish I'd just reread Carroll's original books instead.

Princess Alyss Heart will be queen of Wonderland some day. She is gifted with a powerful imagination that can make her imaginings come true. On the day of her 7th birthday, Princess Alyss's father is killed in an ambush while hurrying home for her birthday party. Despite the vigilence of Hatter Madigan and the elite hatter security forces Alyss's Aunt Redd and her card soldiers attack the castle and overthrow her mother, Queen Genevieve.

On orders from his queen, Hatter Madigan swears to protect the young princess and they flee from the murderous claws of Redd's grinning assassin in feline form, The Cat. With nowhere else to go, Hatter and Alyss plunge into the Pool of Tears.

Separated from Hatter, lost and alone, Alyss emerges from a puddle of water onto the streets of Victorian London and attempts to survive in a strange new world. The Liddell family adopts her and changes her name to Alice. The Liddells certainly do not believe her tales of her previous life and forbid her to talk about it. She confides her story to a family friend, the Reverend Charles Dodgson who rewrites her seemingly fanciful story as Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, using his pen name, Lewis Carroll.

The story is engrossing and satisfying as a fantasy read. Planned as a trilogy, I look forward to seeing what Beddor will do with the characters. Alyss's childhood friend, Dodge is haunted by his father's murder. The standout character of the story has to be Hatter Madigan. He is a superhero/assassin/protector with a hat weapon that can slice and dice. I want to know more about him.

Beddor does cover a great deal of ground as Alyss goes from age 7 to age 20 in the story though. He could have/should have started her out as a "tween" which would have fitted her character better. I had to go back and double check her age at the beginning of the story because in my mind she was much older than 7 years old at the beginning of the book. Alas, as a 20 year old character, she is less interesting than she was as a young child.

There are lots of battle scenes and I can see the CGI card soldiers on the big screen now.

The Looking Glass Wars, somewhat a reimagining of Alice in Wonderland, has its moments but is generally weak throughout. It's a "multi-platform" concept, which means along with the requisite trilogy (Seeing Redd is out currently as book two), there are graphic novels and a planned move and video game. What does all this mean? Perhaps a wonderfully immersive experience in the world if one buys all the stuff. But if you're like me and just want to enjoy a book, you're a bit out of luck.
I don't know if the author is saving material for the other platforms, or if they'll all have similar issues, but the big problem with LGW is its thinness. A thinness that permeates just about every aspect of the book.
Setting? Thin. Characters move across areas of land that we have no idea of how big they are or what they are like. I'd call them stage-set plains and forests but they don't even achieve that level. They just don't exist on the page. The same is true for the major city, the villain's fortress, even single rooms. Characters move effortlessly in and out whether they're crossing a doorway or a volcanic plain. It's almost like the author wrote "volcanic plain" and then is leaving it to the director or video game guy to actually draw a visual. So readers are left out. My guess is the story will work better in those more visual mediums where story is less paramount.
Characters? Thin. Evil characters are evil. Why? We don't know, really. How do we know they're evil? They kill people. Except when they don't. Or except when they do. Good people are good. Why? Because they're good. How do we know? They do good things--they're loyal for years for instance. "Years" of course being described over a few paragraphs. One character has the possibility of a grey area, but it's never realized. Another plays at amorality, but it's never taken seriously
Plot? Plot is serviceable in the long arc but it all happens too quickly and too arbitrarily and with little sense of context. Some characters can "imagine" things into reality, but again, it's too arbitrary, happens or doesn't happen too conveniently, and is explained in too little detail. Victories and defeats are anti-climactic and seem to have little to do with what is important.
I could go on but I have no desire to beat up on a book or author just to belabor a point. Suffice to say there just isn't much here to enjoy beyond the basic premise and few all-too-short and all-too-thinly-developed concepts.
I know some will say one shouldn't expect a certain level of depth or sophistication in YA literature, but there is just far too much YA out there that does offer those things to make this an excuse. The Gregor the Underlander series of recent vintage, Lloyd Alexander's Prydain series of classic vintage, and lots of other choices in between. They don't have multiple platforms--just moving stories with rich characters you care about. Not recommended as a book. You might try the other mediums.

This is a fascinating retelling of “Alice in Wonderland”. It does a great job of taking the elements of the story and completely turning it on its head. This is an exciting retelling with a wonderful new world created by the author. I highly recommend for anyone who likes fantasy retellings.

To the Carroll/Alice purists, don't read [...] as a tribute/spin-off/etc and you'll be fine. To the rest of you, enjoy.

That said, let me say that I loved this book. I read Alice (Wonderland and Looking Glass) this past semester for a children's lit class so it was cool to approach this book with those stories so recently re-impressed on my mind. However, you definitely don't NEED those books close at hand to enjoy this book. In fact, as many Carroll lovers vehemently point out, this book is very different from the original Alice books. But then, if you want to get down to it, Beddor and the publisher make that quite clear...this is NOT the Alice you know. Lewis Carroll got it all wrong.

That's not to say you won't find it interesting to have some Alice/Carroll knowledge hanging around. Beddor does a good job of showing us tidbits of "true" history in this story. He weaves in bits of Alice's and Carroll's history throughout the story. But it's not essential that you know what is "fact" and what is "fiction" in order to enjoy this.

So, approach this book like you would any good adventure-fantasy book and prepare to be amazed. While his concepts are not entirely unique, Beddor does a great way of weaving them together in new and intriguing ways to weave together a great story. Some of the characters familiar to you from the earlier Alice books will be present, but they will take on exciting and interesting new roles. The world of Wonderland is a complex place will interesting rules and methods not present in Carroll's Wonderland.

The thrust of the plot is a political power struggle and the war that results. Even then, the politics are fairly lightweight and don't detract from the other main plot. The other main plot is one that remains strangely true to the original Alice...the heart of that plot being Alyss' struggle for personal identity. Alyss is tossed into our non-wonderful world and finds herself mocked and misunderstood for her vivid imagination and wild stories about Wonderland. After a long time of struggling, her despair gets the better of her and she denies her previous self. (possible spoiler) When she gets back to Wonderland, she has to struggle with that identity of her past and rekindle her belief and sense of wonder in order to help win the war.

The characters were great. The introspection with Alyss, particularly as we approach and climax at the final battle, is exquisitely drawn out. Hatter is a bit stoic for my taste, but believable. And I wanted a little more out of Dodge at the end of the book.

My two main criticisms with the book are: time and dialog.

<u>TIME</u>
Time passes VERY quickly and sporadically in this book. Sometimes spanning years in a couple of sentences and other times very drawn out (there's actually a sort of suspension of time as Alyss attempts a certain test, but I won't spoil that by explaining it). Most of the time, this worked well. But there were quite a few times where I found myself disoriented and trying to figure out 'when' I was. This was particularly the case during the main chapters following Alyss' life in 'our world.' She enters our world at age 7. I had a hard time distinguishing how long she actually spent on the (spoilers?) streets with the orphans, how long in the orphanage, how long with the Liddell's before meeting Dodgson, how long..., how long..., etc. Time whipped by.

While I admit that the "real world" wasn't the crux of the story, I would like to have seen the architecture of the timeline stabilized a bit more. It was also problematic to try and gauge distances by time as Alyss and her company trekked across the landscape of Wonderland under Redd's ever attentive eye and her Seekers. My thinking was that some of these journeys should have taken days...or weeks. And yet we're not given any indication as to duration which left it feeling like hours or minutes. This is especially true for me as the group makes their final trek to mount the final assault against Redd. Based on the descriptions of the landscape, I expected this to take a day or more. However, the reactions of Redd and her group made it feel like it was a quick trip...couple that with the way Alyss and company actually approach, and it gets even shorter.

So time was off-putting to me.

<u>DIALOG</u>
The dialog was generally really very, very good. Lines felt sincere and true to the characters. The tone and voice was consistent and sounded good.

My main difficulty was in lack of speaker acknowledgment at times. There were occasions where a line or two of dialog appears suddenly without any "Alyss said" or "Hatter grunted" or any of that. Usually you could figure it out by context, but I found myself having to reread some lines to be sure.

The most common were in the handful of exclamations that were more sound than dialog -- "Aah", for example. It's a great effect that jolts the reader into the sense of shock or pain of the character, but without an identifier, it distracted from the moment if I had to try and deduce which character just got slammed or whatever.

The other problem was that the words and phrases sometimes sounded too modern for the time. I can write some of this away by the explanation of the relation between Wonderland and our world. It seems that (as evidenced by the inventions sent through the heart crystal), our world is somewhat behind Wonderland and relies on Wonderland for its innovation and progress. If that's the case, then this could be presented as an explanation (albeit rickety) for the modern tone of some of the speech.

<hr>

Still. All in all, I loved this and look forward to the next book in the series.
****
4 out of 5 stars.

Lots of people have always wished they could imagine things the way they wanted them. In The Looking Glass Wars, Alyss must learn how to control this power before her world is thrust into danger. Alyss, princess of Wonderland, has to stop her evil aunt Redd from taking over Wonderland. Wonderland would have never been in danger if Redd hadn't killed Alyss's parent, Queen Genevieve; Wonderland would be under control. But it's not. Redd just needs to go through the Looking Glass Maze to gain her complete power. Frank Beddor, the author, shows a great example of a basic `quest' type of book. There is a problem, and the good guys (the Alyssians) need to go on a journey to stop the bad guys (Queen Redd). But, what makes this story different from others is that it ties into the real world, where kids don't know about Wonderland, or Card Soldiers. Everyone thinks that Alyss is crazy and she is just another hobo living on the streets of England. Beddor uses this as a trap for the reader. He makes them feel that they are in England and that you are one of the orphans that Alyss meets. I couldn't be any clearer when I say that this book is worth your time reading.

Green~Apple

To the Carroll/Alice purists, don't read [...] as a tribute/spin-off/etc and you'll be fine. To the rest of you, enjoy.

That said, let me say that I loved this book. I read Alice (Wonderland and Looking Glass) this past semester for a children's lit class so it was cool to approach this book with those stories so recently re-impressed on my mind. However, you definitely don't NEED those books close at hand to enjoy this book. In fact, as many Carroll lovers vehemently point out, this book is very different from the original Alice books. But then, if you want to get down to it, Beddor and the publisher make that quite clear...this is NOT the Alice you know. Lewis Carroll got it all wrong.

That's not to say you won't find it interesting to have some Alice/Carroll knowledge hanging around. Beddor does a good job of showing us tidbits of "true" history in this story. He weaves in bits of Alice's and Carroll's history throughout the story. But it's not essential that you know what is "fact" and what is "fiction" in order to enjoy this.

So, approach this book like you would any good adventure-fantasy book and prepare to be amazed. While his concepts are not entirely unique, Beddor does a great way of weaving them together in new and intriguing ways to weave together a great story. Some of the characters familiar to you from the earlier Alice books will be present, but they will take on exciting and interesting new roles. The world of Wonderland is a complex place will interesting rules and methods not present in Carroll's Wonderland.

The thrust of the plot is a political power struggle and the war that results. Even then, the politics are fairly lightweight and don't detract from the other main plot. The other main plot is one that remains strangely true to the original Alice...the heart of that plot being Alyss' struggle for personal identity. Alyss is tossed into our non-wonderful world and finds herself mocked and misunderstood for her vivid imagination and wild stories about Wonderland. After a long time of struggling, her despair gets the better of her and she denies her previous self. (possible spoiler) When she gets back to Wonderland, she has to struggle with that identity of her past and rekindle her belief and sense of wonder in order to help win the war.

The characters were great. The introspection with Alyss, particularly as we approach and climax at the final battle, is exquisitely drawn out. Hatter is a bit stoic for my taste, but believable. And I wanted a little more out of Dodge at the end of the book.

My two main criticisms with the book are: time and dialog.

<u>TIME</u>
Time passes VERY quickly and sporadically in this book. Sometimes spanning years in a couple of sentences and other times very drawn out (there's actually a sort of suspension of time as Alyss attempts a certain test, but I won't spoil that by explaining it). Most of the time, this worked well. But there were quite a few times where I found myself disoriented and trying to figure out 'when' I was. This was particularly the case during the main chapters following Alyss' life in 'our world.' She enters our world at age 7. I had a hard time distinguishing how long she actually spent on the (spoilers?) streets with the orphans, how long in the orphanage, how long with the Liddell's before meeting Dodgson, how long..., how long..., etc. Time whipped by.

While I admit that the "real world" wasn't the crux of the story, I would like to have seen the architecture of the timeline stabilized a bit more. It was also problematic to try and gauge distances by time as Alyss and her company trekked across the landscape of Wonderland under Redd's ever attentive eye and her Seekers. My thinking was that some of these journeys should have taken days...or weeks. And yet we're not given any indication as to duration which left it feeling like hours or minutes. This is especially true for me as the group makes their final trek to mount the final assault against Redd. Based on the descriptions of the landscape, I expected this to take a day or more. However, the reactions of Redd and her group made it feel like it was a quick trip...couple that with the way Alyss and company actually approach, and it gets even shorter.

So time was off-putting to me.

<u>DIALOG</u>
The dialog was generally really very, very good. Lines felt sincere and true to the characters. The tone and voice was consistent and sounded good.

My main difficulty was in lack of speaker acknowledgment at times. There were occasions where a line or two of dialog appears suddenly without any "Alyss said" or "Hatter grunted" or any of that. Usually you could figure it out by context, but I found myself having to reread some lines to be sure.

The most common were in the handful of exclamations that were more sound than dialog -- "Aah", for example. It's a great effect that jolts the reader into the sense of shock or pain of the character, but without an identifier, it distracted from the moment if I had to try and deduce which character just got slammed or whatever.

The other problem was that the words and phrases sometimes sounded too modern for the time. I can write some of this away by the explanation of the relation between Wonderland and our world. It seems that (as evidenced by the inventions sent through the heart crystal), our world is somewhat behind Wonderland and relies on Wonderland for its innovation and progress. If that's the case, then this could be presented as an explanation (albeit rickety) for the modern tone of some of the speech.

<hr>

Still. All in all, I loved this and look forward to the next book in the series.
****
4 out of 5 stars.

Lots of people have always wished they could imagine things the way they wanted them. In The Looking Glass Wars, Alyss must learn how to control this power before her world is thrust into danger. Alyss, princess of Wonderland, has to stop her evil aunt Redd from taking over Wonderland. Wonderland would have never been in danger if Redd hadn't killed Alyss's parent, Queen Genevieve; Wonderland would be under control. But it's not. Redd just needs to go through the Looking Glass Maze to gain her complete power. Frank Beddor, the author, shows a great example of a basic `quest' type of book. There is a problem, and the good guys (the Alyssians) need to go on a journey to stop the bad guys (Queen Redd). But, what makes this story different from others is that it ties into the real world, where kids don't know about Wonderland, or Card Soldiers. Everyone thinks that Alyss is crazy and she is just another hobo living on the streets of England. Beddor uses this as a trap for the reader. He makes them feel that they are in England and that you are one of the orphans that Alyss meets. I couldn't be any clearer when I say that this book is worth your time reading.

Green~Apple

I didn't pick this up expecting a masterwork, afterall whenever someone is appropriating another's work there will probably be a little bit of tug and pull in the readers mind over its validness.

This is a very fast paced action adventure book, it is capable of appealing to both a young male and female audience (something that is rather rare)

Alyss is a very strong personality who has to deal with tragedy and fend for herself in an alien world--I loved the character of her body gaurd as well, Hatter Maddigan. (I suspect that Beddor might have a little bias towards him as well, in his favour that is).

I wasn't disturbed by Alyss and her friend Dodge's relationship early on (as another reviewer was), boys and girls do play 'marriage' that young and can connect in terms of having a very close friendship, so I found in natural and sweet. Plus it made for a very fun reunion later on.

I would definately say for 12 and up due to the huge amounts of violence in this.

I do agree that Dodgeson's portrayl as a character wasn't entirely favorable, though he does have some homage payed to him with his scene with Hatter.

You don't have to be super familiar with the original Alice In Wonderland to appreciate or enjoy this, though it does make the page turning more enjoyable, in my opinion, if you can draw the parallels.

I look forward to the rest of this series.

I found out about this book through an article in Geek magazine. Since I first read them around the age of 9, Through the Looking-Glass and Alice in Wonderland have been my favorite books (I'm now 23). I was excited to hear that someone had decided to retell Alice's (well, Alyss's) story. At the same time, though, I was hesitant to read Beddor's novel for fear of being disappointed.

He did not disappoint. This book has a very different feel from the original books, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. The atmosphere of wonder, bewilderment, and sensical nonsense has been replaced with civil war, power struggles, and betrayal. Strangely enough, this swap works astoundingly well.

I appreciated the fact that so many of the old characters are present with new personalities and faces, such as Bibwit Harte, Hatter Madigan, and the Cat. I felt like they were old friends who had undergone such a transformation as to be unrecognizable yet, somehow, I couldn't fault them for it because, as much as I loved what they'd been, I also loved reading about what they'd become.

The plot is interesting. Imagination plays such a prominent role, as it should, and Lewis Carroll himself even makes an awkward, stuttering appearance or two. I look forward to seeing where Beddor heads in the next two installments. I can't wait for the next release!

Oh, and a question to finish: does anyone else think that Homburg Molly just might be Hatter's daughter?

I went into this novel - "the true story of Alice in Wonderland" - rather uneasily, just having finished re-reading the real Alice. However, it is a Cybils [...] nominee, and I'm on the nominating comittee, so duty called. . . .

The author uses almost all of the elements/characters from Alice, yet somehow quite amazingly manages to give this story a unique and original feel of its own. This version tells the tale of Alyss Heart, heir to the throne of Wonderland, as she faces life in "our" world after the invasion of her Aunt Redd. Darkly thrilling adventures ensue and keep you turning page after page, dying to know what will happen next.

There were certain moments in this book that somehow reminded me of The Scarlet Pimpernel (which, by the way, if you haven't read, you must). Especially the scene at the masquerade ball . . . loved that scene! The world created was very vivid and well-fleshed - you could almost picture each scene playing through your head like a movie. Both the plot and characters were complex and interesting.

I enjoyed this book very much, and in no way did it ruin my views of or love for Alice in Wonderland or Through the Looking Glass. Those books will always be better, and they will always be classics, lasting much longer than this "retelling". But for an intriguing, interesting fantasy, The Looking Glass Wars was very engaging and worthwhile . . . just read the original first!

Title: The Looking Glass Wars

Author: Frank Beddor

Summary:

The Myth: Alice was an ordinary girl who stepped through the looking glass and entered a fairy-tale world invented by Lewis Carroll in his famous storybook. The Truth: Wonderland is real. Alyss Heart is the heir to the throne, until her murderous aunt Redd steals the crown and kills Alyss' parents. To escape Redd, Alyss and her bodyguard, Hatter Madigan, must flee to our world through the Pool of Tears. But in the pool Alyss and Hatter are separated. Lost and alone in Victorian London, Alyss is befriended by an aspiring author to whom she tells the violent, heartbreaking story of her young life. Yet he gets the story all wrong. Hatter Madigan knows the truth only too well, and he is searching every corner of our world to find the lost princess and return her to Wonderland so she may battle Redd for her rightful place as the Queen of Hearts.

Rating: 3.75/5

Good:

I have seen the Alice in Wonderland movie, but have not read any of the books or anything else, so I wasn't sure what to expect from this book. However, I thought this book was actually pretty decent. I liked the plot and the action, and there were even some humorous bits. I was also extremely satisfied with the ending. Somehow, Frank Beddor managed to end this book with some closure, but he left enough thoughts open to make me curious and want to read the sequel. To which I say, well done.

Bad:

There were some parts that seemed to go too fast for me. The action at the end sort of snuck up a bit on me, coming a bit too quickly. But other than that, the reason I give it a 3.75 rating is simply because it didn't keep me on the edge of the seat like I would hope a book full of action like this would. Also, it's not what I typically read, so I found it to be a little strange. But honestly, it wasn't too terrible, and I'll definitely read the sequel, Seeing Redd.

Alyss Heart of Wonderland bears little resemblance to the fairy tale Alice we all remember. In The Looking Glass Wars by Frank Beddor, we have Wonderland to the tenth power. Kind of Alice in Wonderland meets The Matrix.

After her Aunt Redd succeeds in taking Wonderland's throne from her mother, Alyss escapes, led by Hatter Madigan through the Pool of Tears. They lose each other during the journey, and Alyss pops out of a puddle in Victorian England. No one believes her violent story - or that she's heir to the throne of another world. She is adopted by a family who believes her to be a little girl with a vivid - and frightening - imagination.

Befriended by a minister, Alyss thinks she has found someone to finally believe her story. He decides to put her story down into a book under a pen name, Lewis Carroll. When he presents Alyss with the book Alice in Wonderland, she realizes that he never believed her story, that it had only been fodder for a make-believe fairy tale.

Devastated, Alyss decides she's tired of being "Odd Alice" and settles in to her new life with the Liddell family, convincing herself that it was all just a dream.

But Hatter Madigan is still searching for Alyss, the rightful heir to the Wonderland throne. Wonderland has changed under Redd's rule - people live in fear of her evil temper, and Black Imagination is flourishing, while White Imagination has been outlawed. Wonderland's only hope is for Hatter to find Alyss and bring her back to battle Queen Redd.

This is one of the most inventive books I've read in a long time. I literally did not want to put it down! It is wonderfully written and will appeal to lovers of fantasy, old and young alike. It is darker than some juvenile fantasy: unlike the cartoon where the Queen of Hearts yells "Off with their heads!" quite ineffectually, in The Looking Glass Wars heads roll. If your children love Harry Potter or Inkheart, they will enjoy this book. It is the first in a planned trilogy. I picked it up because I will be receiving the second book to review soon, and I wanted to know how the story started. I can't wait to read part two, Seeing Redd.

Imagine that the story ALICE IN WONDERLAND was real. But the author got the story terribly wrong.

In the book THE LOOKING GLASS WARS, Alyss Heart, is heir to the Wonderland kingdom. But on her seventh birthday she is forced to flee her kingdom after a bloody coup staged by her exiled Aunt Redd. Lost and alone in Victorian London, no one believes her tales of Wonderland except the author Lewis Carroll. She trusts him with her story, hoping that someone, somewhere will find her and take her back home. But Carroll got the story all wrong. If not for the Royal Bodyguard Hatter Madigan's nonstop search, she might have ended up a princes wife and never returning to fight her Aunt Redd for her rightful place as Queen of Hearts.

I loved this story. At first, I thought this would be yet another attempt to rewrite a classic tale. Boy, was I wrong! I was glued to the first page-- a prologue that actual works! If you've read ALICE IN WONDERLAND before, it's fun to see what the true characters really were like in Alyss's world.

This is the first book of a trilogy. The author, Frank Beddor, does a great job of setting up the ending of the story for book two. What really happens to evil Aunt Redd? Will Alyss and Dodge overcome their backgrounds and remember the love they had as children grow into something more?( Oh, I hope so!)

In this re-imagination of Alice in Wonderland, Beddor tells the story of a violent world where practitioners of White Imagination and Black Imagination battle for control of Wondertropolis and the Heart Crystal.

At Alyss Heart's 7th birthday party, Heart Palace is seized by Redd, the queen's sister, who has planned for years to take back the throne that she believes is rightfully hers. Alyss is forced to flee through the Pool of Tears, on the other side of which is Victorian England. There she lives for 13 years, meeting the Reverend Charles Dodgson, and inspiring his famous tale, although she is very disappointed with what he does with her story.

Finally, Alyss is able to return to Wonderland and lead those who have dutifully followed her in rebellion against Redd. First, though, she must successfully pass through the Crystal Maze to prove that she is the rightful heir to the throne, and to master the power of her imagination. Finally, she faces Redd, who chooses to escape into the Heart Crystal rather than face defeat, thus ensuring a sequel.

Although an interesting premise, Beddor retreats too much into cliche and bathos. Rather than allowing his characters to fully develop, one big event changes everything for them, and suddenly they all have both the motivation and ability to defeat the evil Redd. Unfortunately, Beddor does not bring the reader along, making the final battle scene somewhat unbelievable.

I have never been interested in Lewis Carroll's books, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. I saw the Disney movie, as I'm sure most kids in my peer group had, but the movie didn't make me want to read the books. When I grew older and went looking for books to read I picked up both books, gave them a look through and decided they weren't for me. The story just was too outlandish for me (which is saying something considering my reading tastes). I was fascinated by the Disney Channel show (Adventures in Wonderland), but that show was so very different from other shows of the time (Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum as hip hop artists for instance) that it was hard not to be interested I think.

Upon meeting the author at this past New York Comic Con however, I have revised my opinion slightly and read both books (to compare). Still not interested in the original novels, but it gave me a better appreciation of The Looking Glass Wars!

Princess Alyss Heart suffers quite a bit--though not so much physically, but more mentally and emotionally. Its understandable that she would want to fit in, after being so cruelly mocked for years and her one vindication--the book--just making matters worse, I don't blame her. Equally though I was relieved to see her not play the priss for too long once things settle back to normalcy. It would have been heartily annoying to have her go from such a lively, spirited young girl to a spoiled, bratty whiner.

Beddor certainly did his best to alter each familiar character with just the right twist so as to make you wonder how you ever saw them otherwise. Hatter Madigan for instance--or rather the Mad Hatter or Bibwit Harte--the White Rabbit or even Redd. Oh Redd. I really enjoyed her theatrics--so vicious, so petty, so imperfect, I loved her despite being the 'evil' of the book. I rather less enjoyed the Cat, her half-feline/half-human assassin (the Cheschire Cat). The Cheschire Cat was the only character of the original novel I liked even a little bit. The Caterpillar definitely stayed the same--right down to his nonsensical, stuffy and obnoxious ways.

The story moves at a quick pace, alternating event viewpoints from Alyss' adventures, to Hatter Madigan's search for her, to Redd's tyrannical rule and some time is spent on Dodge Anders (Alyss' childhood friend) and Jack of Diamonds (a worm of a boy who plays both sides) so we get a very well rounded view of things. We never see Redd alone, but then such a paranoid personage as herself wouldn't trust to be alone (who knows what her subordinates are scheming if she isn't there to watch?).

The end sets up for the next book, obviously as this is a trilogy, but is satisfactory in tying up the loose ends that could be tied up and giving us a glimpse of things to come.

At first glance this is an interesting play on the theme of Alice in Wonderland. Under closer inspection the plot is underdeveloped and the writing lacks continuity. The tone uses modern day phrases that seem strange in the world of Lewis Carrol's beloved heroine. In fact, the writing as a whole seems too casual for the dark story the author is trying to present. The ending is blatantly left open for a sequel and without a sequel it seems mildly unfinished. The main characters lack depth, and the author seems unsure whether to make the villain Alyss'( alternative spelling for a new twist) Aunt Redd a truly frightening person or merely a comical overbearing caricature. Because of this indecision it is hard to feel any emotion about the villain. The end is an anticlimax and overall the book seems to juvenile to deal with the real underlying themes that made Alice in Wonderland a beloved tale. Don't read this book unless you have little experience with good writing.

The Looking Glass War by Frank Beddor is the first in a trilogy that sets the world of Alice in Wonderland on its head. In this book Alyss is the heir to the throne of Wonderland, a kingdom where imagination rules. Her Aunt Redd, a master of black imagination, takes over Wonderland, killing Alyss's parents and sending Alyss fleeing through the Pool of Tears.

Redd, who delights in cruelty and destruction, rules Wonderland while Alyss is in exile in our world learning to fit in. She tells her story to Charles Dodgson, but he gets it all wrong. She is just about to give up when she is returned to Wonderland to battle with Redd.

This book starts on the slow side as we are introduced to the alternate vision of Wonderland. The way that Beddor uses the characters from the Alice in Wonderland in his novel adds a surreal aspect to the story in places. Once the characters have been introduced, the story picks up its pace until it is a wild ride to a great showdown at the conclusion.

The characters themselves are well done and believable. They struggle with what has happened to them and their world. All of them learn and shift in their understanding of themselves and their place in the world.

The second book, Seeing Redd is out, and I will be looking forward to the release of the final book in the series.

Armchair Interviews says: This is terrific beginning to this fantasy trilogy.

Princess Alyss Heart of Wonderland leads a charmed life at the young age of seven. Poised to begin her own training to be the future queen, with White Imagination skills ripe for development, Alyss doesn't know how good she has it until her evil aunt Redd strikes a fatal blow to Wonderland's Queen, and Alyss's life as she knows it.

Forced to flee, with only the vigilant Hatter Madigan to protect her, Alyss jumps into the Pool of Tears to save herself by leaving Wonderland, quite possibly forever. When she is separated from Hatter and finds herself in Victorian London amongst street urchins, Alyss must adapt and overcome. And so she turns her back on her memories of Wonderland and loses her skills at Imagination. Years later when she's created a life and future, a deadly Wonderland assassin known as The Cat tracks her down and Alyss is forced to face the world of her youth.

Slightly darker and more science-fiction than the original tales of Wonderland, The Looking Glass Wars is an enjoyable reimagining of Lewis Carroll's beloved classic, with a bit of an edge for action lovers. The trials Alyss must overcome are intriguing, and the ways Beddor recreated the original characters are fanciful and fun. Hatter Madigan is a skillful protectorate, a member of the feared Millinery, known for their deadly skills with hats. The chess pieces are loyal friends to all true Wonderlanders. Redd is evil and loathsome, as all villains should be. Fairly predictable for a first book, I did enjoy seeing how Beddor would play everything out. I do recommend it as a light and fun fantasy read for those of you who have been thinking of picking it up. I look forward to the next installment, Seeing Redd, to find out where he takes his version of Wonderland.

The Looking Glass Wars is an alternate history retelling of Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass books. Beddor reimagines the children's classic as non-fiction: Alyss Hart, a Wonderlander, comes to Earth in a time of crisis (her evil aunt Redd has attacked Wonderland in her quest to become the Queen of Hearts), and she finds herself in a far different reality. On Earth, she is just a young girl with no allies and a fading Imagination. When she is adopted by the Liddell family, and comes across the young deacon Charles Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll) she thinks she has found a sympathetic soul. She tells him her story -- which he then publishes in the drastically altered tale that we know. Disheartened, Alyss (now Alice) tries to adjust to life on Earth and forget about Wonderland. But all is not right in Wonderland, and the two worlds Alyss knows are about to collide.

For much of this book, I was fairly indifferent. It came highly recommended by a number of friends, and I am completely smitten with the Alice story and will read/watch* anything having to do with the insanely fabulous world Carroll created. So I really wanted to love this, and at times I did. But for much of the book (probably the first ½ or so), I just didn't. I felt Beddor struggled to find the tone he wanted; it waffled back and forth between an imitation of Carroll's light, irreverent style, and a more current, action-drama feel. Also, with attention divided between the two worlds, Wonderland and Earth, it never felt like either got the attention it deserved, and I never got to really live in either and experience it, which was disappointing. But there were moments when I got what I wanted, when the worlds became real and the action was compelling, and the tension was high and I was in it. I just wanted that to be more consistent.
Eventually, the book did find a middle path and start to come together, and I will say that I saw enough in it to like that I will certainly keep reading, and do not really regret spending the money on it. I am not saying this is not a good book, just that I wanted more, and didn't quite get it.
On a side note, the card soldiers (idea and illustrations) was absolutely brilliant.

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Lewis Carroll butchered the story beyond recognition. There was no White Rabbit, a little girl did not fall through a hole while chasing said rabbit, and the little girl most certainly was NOT born in England. If that weren't degrading enough, Carroll had the temerity to spell the girl's name wrong.

Meet Alyss Heart, Princess to the queendom of Wonderland. A brutal attack drove the young princess and her bodyguard into exile, with no promise of return. Accustomed to the everyday wonders of her birthplace, and to her power of White Imagination, Alyss is forced into the mundane world of nineteenth-century London. She has been separated from her bodyguard and quickly relegated to the likes of orphaned street rats.

Adopted by a British family, Alyss hopes to find help in returning to Wonderland. She is crushed when no one believes her fantastic stories. After her trust is betrayed by Carroll, Alyss, now renamed Alice, despairs of returning to her reality.

As Alyss languishes in England, her dread aunt Redd has overtaken the queendom and doles out her brand of rule. Every day in the capital city, Wondertropolis, is worse than the day before.

It is up to a lost bodyguard and old friends to bring Alyss home. If they succeed, she will have to battle to take her rightful place as the Queen of Hearts.

With the style of a master-storyteller, Beddor details a more comprehensive and gritty view of our beloved Wonderland. Characters range from outlandish to deeply human; settings from thoroughly mundane London alleys to the extraordinary Heart Palace. The Looking Glass Wars is infused with the spirit of imagination brought to life. Lovers of Alice in Wonderland and fans of fantasy dare not miss this adventure. To do so would be to demonstrate a lack of imagination.

Note to Parents: While this book is rated for ages 10 and up, I feel that the violence portrayed in this novel may be too much for some ten- or eleven-year-old children. If you are unsure of your child's readiness, don't be afraid to read it first. This book will appeal to adults just as much as to kids--and you'll know what your child is reading.

Update 9/5/2006: I think this is going to be a love-it or hate-it novel. I wrote this review on the date posted below, posted it in the the store discussion area, and will "officially" post it on the store when the book is released. In my opinion, I think this actually HONORS the spirit of Carroll's work, albiet in a dark way

Reviewed by Christina Wantz Fixemer

8/21/2006

The Looking Glass Wars by Frank Beddor is an interesting take on the Alice in Wonderland story. This interpretation contends that Alyss Heart, Princess of Wonderland, is the Alice of the Lewis Caroll story. When her evil Aunt Redd attacks and kills her parents, Alyss flees to the outside world. Separated from her escort and bodyguard, Hatter Madigan, Alyss finds herself an orphan in London who is eventually adopted by The Liddells. Her adoptive family dismisses Alyss' stories of her life in Wonderland as flights of fantasy. She gives up her memories of Wonderland when a family friend publishes her stories under the pen name Lewis Carroll. Alyss is hurt and angry because she feels her life has been trivialized and turned into a fairy tale. She becomes determined to be the ideal daughter and truly becomes Alice Liddell. She is set to marry Prince Leopold when a figure from her past arrives and brings her back to the ruins of the Wonderland where she grew up. Redd has destroyed the city and all those who support White Imagination, that of the former King and Queen. She and her followers practice Black Imagination, which is destructive and evil. In order to restore Wonderland to the peaceful land of her childhood, Alyss must learn to hone her imaginative skills and defeat her aunt.

This book took a long time for me to read. I kept getting hung up comparing it to the original story. I was also distracted by the semblance to the real life story of Alice Liddell and the fabricated parts created for the character of Alice Liddell. In fact, at one point, I put the book down and left it for over a month. I read quite a few other books before I came back to finish it. However, I did come back to finish it. I enjoyed the adventure of the story, and the change and development of Alyss' character. It makes an interesting statement about how much is lost when imagination is discouraged. It furthers the statement with the power Alyss has once she begins to hone her imagination as an adult. The characters were interesting, particularly Alyss' childhood friend Dodge, but many of them were weakened by being based on characters in the original story. For example, Hatter Madigan may have appeared as a stronger hero figure if I weren't thinking of him as the Mad Hatter.

I can't even decide if I liked this story or not. I'm not sure if I would have enjoyed it more if it hadn't been based on Lewis Carroll's Alice. Of course, being based on the famous work is part of what drew me to the book in the first place. I'll say this--The Looking Glass Wars is an interesting adventure filled with some familiar characters in a familiar land. Will I read the sequel, Seeing Redd: The Looking Glass Wars, Book Two? Probably, if I come across it on a book exchange site, but I won't be paying to download it.