I’m coming to the realization that I love fantasy fiction. I
do not like giving myself that title, because I lump fantasy in with sci-fi and
I don’t enjoy sci-fi. But I love fairies, magical lands, and fairytale-esque
storylines. The little princess in me screams for her dresses and Prince
Charming. Cliché? Yes I know. Actually I prefer the magic and adventure over
the marrying, but sometimes a little romance is fun too.
The Looking Glass Wars by Frank Beddor is my latest
fantasy read. Based on Lewis’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Beddor
takes the idea of Wonderland to a whole new level. Actually this book is a
combination of fantasy and sci-fi, but we’ll get to that later.
Alyss Heart’s seventh birthday is quite the celebration in
wonderland. The Princess who will one day secede to the throne of Wonderland is
beloved by the people and shows a lot of promise as a practitioner of
imagination, but her Aunt Redd has other plans. The rival sister to the queen,
Redd has been in exile because of her practice of black imagination, but she
has built up her forces and on Alyss’s seventh birthday, Redd overthrows her
sister and takes control of Wonderland. Alyss witnesses her mother’s death and
barely gets out with her own life. The only way for Alyss to survive is to
takeher chances in another world with Hatter, her mother’s body guard. But
things go terribly wrong and Alyss and Hatter lose each other. Alyss ends up on
the streets in Victorian England, while Hatter makes it his mission to find
her. In Wonderland, things are going poorly with Redd’s rule, but after many
years, Alyss finally makes her way back to Wonderland. She must learn once
again how to wield her powers and stop Redd.
Beddor created a Wonderland that is both magical and
technical. The card soldiers and more like robots and there are a lot of
devices that fall into the sci-fi aspect of fiction. The story is interesting
to see the twist from Victorian children’s fiction to what Alyss’s reality was
in Wonderland. The characters were a little shallow for me. Motives and desires
were easy to see and I didn’t feel there is a lot of depth to their
personalities. The story is engaging and adventurous. It is a storyline that
has been done hundreds of times before. Bad guy takes over and reeks havoc, so
hero must step up to right things.
All in all, this is an easy read and entertaining. It is the
first and a triology along with having offshoots of graphic novels devoted to
Hatter. I am not itching to read the next two books, but I may pick them up at
some point.
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