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Originally Posted by rric528
Anyone read this?
I'm thinking of picking it up, any reviews, advice?
Thanks.
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I have read this. Let me cast my brain back...
It's actually a very good take on the Alice in Wonderland tale. (The comic Hatter M. is actually based on a character from this book, and the book is being optioned into a movie.) This is the official synopsis from the website:
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The Looking Glass Wars unabashedly challenges the world’s Carrollian Wonderland assumptions of tea parties, dormice and a curious little blonde girl to reveal an epic, cross dimensional saga of love, murder, betrayal, revenge and the endless war for Imagination. 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 slip each other the poisonous pink mushroom. Finally, someone got it right. This ain’t no fairytale.
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 shattered her world. Lost and alone in Victorian London, Alyss is befriended by an aspiring author to whom she tells the surreal, violent, heartbreaking story of her young life only to see it published as the nonsensical children’s sojourn Alice 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 got it all wrong. He even misspelled her name! If not for the intrepid Hatter Madigan, a member of the Millinery (Wonderland’s security force) who after a 13 year search eventually tracked Alyss to London, she may have become just another society woman sipping tea in a too-tight bodice instead of returning to Wonderland to battle Redd for her rightful place as the Queen of Hearts.
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Okay, that out of the way, let me review it a bit for you. This is actually the first book in a propsed trilogy from the author, Frank Beddor. And for the first book in a trilogy, it's a novel that could easily stand alone on its own merit.
All the characters from Carroll's novel are here, albeit in variations that aren't consistent with the good Reverend Dodgson's depiction, but still intriguing and complex. Hatter Madigan is the Mad Hatter, in this book not a mad, morose man but a deadly swift agent in service to Alyss' mother, the Queen of Wonderland. Redd is Alyss' cruel aunt, banished to a far corner of the land after an attempted coup. The Cat is not a grinning dispenser of sage advice, but Redd's most deadly agent.
The battle for Wonderland is brutal and bloody, and when Redd takes the palace, forcing Alyss to flee, my heart was hammering as good people fell under the cruel assault. Alyss is transported via the Pool of Tears to the Real World, where people regard her as slightly mad, and she is adopted by the Liddell family. (For those who may not know, Alice Liddell was the little girl that inspired the Alice tales) The only one who doesn't is a kind vicar, who takes her story and perverts her sad tale into a child's story of whimsy and nonsense. Carroll in this tale is an opportunist who feigns innocence in his mishandling of Alyss' story.
The story is kind of a stock banished princess finds her way back to her loyal supporters and takes back her crown kind of affair, but it's tight and well-written. There's a kind of lag in the middle, when Alyss is in the real world, and it doesn't look likely she'll be able to return, but when the action picks up again, it's good and satisfying.
The second book,
Redd Rising, should be out soon, and like I said, it's been put into a comic format and is being made into a feature film. I definitely recommend picking it up and giving it a look, especially if you're a fan of the Alice tales. It's an interesting, frankly adult look at them from another angle.
Hope that helps you make up your mind!
