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Critics' Opinion:
Readers' Opinion:
First Published:
Sep 2006, 384 pages
Paperback:
Aug 2007, 400 pages
Book Reviewed by:
BookBrowse Review Team
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An intruiging re-imagining of Alice in Wonderland, in which Wonderland exists, and Alyss is a princess escaping a bloody coup to hide in Victorian London. Lost and alone, she tells an aspiring author the surreal story; but he believes it to be mere fantasy. Now, years later, she is found by a loyal bodyguard, and together they fight to regain her lost throne.
The Looking Glass Wars unabashedly challenges our Wonderland assumptions of mad tea parties, sleepy dormice, and a curious little blonde girl to reveal an epic battle in the endless war for Imagination.
You know the myth...
A little girl named Alice tumbled down a rabbit hole and proceeded to have a charming adventure in the delightful, made-up world of Wonderland...
Now discover the truth... Wonderland Exists!
Alyss Heart, heir to the Wonderland throne, was forced to flee through the Pool of Tears after a bloody palace coup staged by the murderous Redd. 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 only to see it published as the nonsensical Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Alyss had trusted Lewis Carroll to tell the truth so that someone, somewhere would find her and bring her home. But Carroll had gotten it all wrong. He even misspelled her name! If not for royal bodyguard Hatter Madigan's nonstop search to locate the lost princess, Alyss may have become just another society woman sipping tea in a too-tight corset instead of returning to Wonderland to fight Redd for her rightful place as the Queen of Hearts.
Meet the heroic, passionate, monstrous, vengeful denizens of this parallel world as they battle each other with AD-52's and orb generators, navigate the Crystal Continuum, bet on jabberwock fights and travel across the Chessboard Desert.
Chapter 1
THE QUEENDOM had been enjoying a tentative peace ever since the time, twelve years earlier, when unbridled bloodshed spattered the doorstep of every Wonderlander. The civil war hadn't been the longest in all of recorded history, but no doubt it was one of the bloodiest. Those who had entered a little too quickly into the carnage and destruction had trouble adapting to life during peacetime. When hostilities ceased, they ran amok on the streets of Wonderland's capital city, looting and pillaging Wondertropolis until Queen Genevieve had them rounded up and shipped off to the Crystal Mines—a spiderweb-like network of tunnels carved in a far-off mountainside, where those unwilling to abide by the laws of decent society lived in windowless dormitories and labored to excavate crystal from the unforgiving mountain. Even after these people were taken off the streets, the peace that settled on Wonderland was nothing like that which had existed before ...
Our 12-year-old male reviewer loved every bit of The Looking Glass Wars - the humor, the action, the graphics and the characters. From an adult point of view, Beddor gets top marks for creativity and plot, but loses points for a clunky writing style that tends to read like a concept for a computer game rather than a finished book...continued
Full Review
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(Reviewed by BookBrowse Review Team).
Frank Beddor is not your average first
time author. He's just published the
second in his Looking Glass trilogy (Seeing
Red), published a spin-off comic in
December 2005 about the character of
Hatter Madigan (Hatter M
illustrated by Ben Templesmith), is
working on a video game (set in
Wonderland during the 13-year-reign of
Queen Redd, which is barely touched on
in the book), and is in talks about a
movie trilogy which, undoubtedly, would
lead to countless merchandising
opportunities.
Which begs the question, who is Frank
Beddor? According to his ...
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