“Fiddle-de-dee’s not English.”

The Looking Glass Wars by Frank Beddor
Speak (an imprint of Puffin Books) (2007)
First published 2006
400 pages

This, to put it simply, is a re-imagining of Lewis Caroll’s Wonderland.

Fanfiction? This definitely fits the bill. An articulate explanation about fanfiction can be found here (yes, I like stealing links from other people) and this pretty much summarises my thoughts. In a more readable manner. Without flailing around. The inside back cover of the book says — jokingly, I hope — that Beddor has gone into hiding “to avoid the impassioned vigilantes at literary odds” with his trilogy. That sounds like fandom to me, yep. The only reason he’s not in (more) trouble is because the books are out of copyright.

I love Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Though the Looking Glass. And, as much as I love the source material, I have nothing against Beddor for writing this — it’s an interesting premise. I think I saw someone mention somewhere that The Looking Glass Wars does to Wonderland what Wicked did for Oz: gave it a second chance. Not that I’ve read Wicked yet. While I am glad Wonderland is getting more attention again, I heartily wish that Beddor was a better writer, or had a better editor, though.

I like the idea, but the execution is terrible. (“OFF WITH THEIR HEADS!” goes the part of me which couldn’t resist making a pun of my own writing, and in Wonderland, a card soldier dies. Perhaps one of the Spades.)

It starts off with Alice Liddell storming off angrily from a perplexed Reverend Dodgson, claiming that he had ruined her story, twisted her descriptions of Wonderland. We find that she is actually Alyss Heart, the heir of the throne of Wonderland, and her Aunt Redd is bent on claiming the throne for herself. I have no real problems with the prologue, but I started off quite badly in Wonderland — I can’t like the terms. “Wonderlander” was particularly grating to me and I trip over it each time I come across it, and it’s used often, so the narrative became really stilted for me. (Well. Maybe that’s my problem and not Beddor’s, but “Wonderlander”? Why am I having such weird issues with this book. Then there is “Wondertropolis” — I nearly banged my head on my desk at this one.) And the so stark division between good and bad — White Imagination and Black Imagination — made me wince. Wonderland or not, I doubt any world is divided like a chess board.

The pacing was uneven; it was better when Alyss was in London and was Alice Liddell than it was when she returned to Wonderland. Too many info dumps too often; I don’t know why Beddor felt it necessary to rationalise everything that was nonsensical in the original story. Not that there weren’t any clever moments in the book; there were, but it gets bogged down by the bad writing.

Things picked up in the middle, and the end came quickly enough. It gets strangely Star Wars-like near the end. The dialogue could be really bad at times, especially Redd’s. Awful sound effects, too, for example: “Clangk! Skrich-onk!” No, those weren’t typos. And the book’s more focussed on action than character development; aside from Alyss, most of the characters are quite one-dimensional, and I don’t just mean the cards. Ha ha. (Whoops, there goes another card soldier.)

Well, at least the cover is sleek and well-designed. And there extra pages in the book, including colour pages and illustrations for the story. I find the coloured drawing of seven-year-old Alyss quite sweet looking, with a passing resemblance to the actual Alice Liddell. Her tutor, though, looks like a creature from Star Wars. Almost like a very tall Yoda, to be honest.

Oh well. There you go. I don’t know if this comes off as overly harsh because of my attachments to the original Alice books. I’m not sure how well the story would hold with no previous experience with Wonderland — I think it would be able to stand on its own — and I wonder what someone who hasn’t read the original books would think of The Looking Glass Wars.

Will I read the sequels? We’ll see. Seeing Redd is already out, and the third book is scheduled for a 2008 release. I’ll pick them up if I see them in the library. Can’t say I’ll be keeping my eyes peeled for them, though.

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This book was recced by Rhinoa for the Herding Cats challenge.