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| The Looking Glass Wars | 
 enlarge | Author: Frank Beddor
Publisher: Dial
Category: Book
List Price: $17.99
Buy New: $5.89
You Save: $12.10 (67%)
New (7) Used (10) from $5.15
Avg. Customer Rating:  79 reviews
Sales Rank: 441909
Format: Bargain Price
Media: Hardcover
Reading Level: Young Adult
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 384
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6 x 1.5
ASIN: B000NA1XRG
Publication Date: September 26, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
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.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 74 more reviews...
 Don't go ask Alyss. Go ask Alice. March 27, 2006
127 out of 159 found this review helpful
When I first heard about the premise of this book my initial reaction was one of shock. A book in which people can learn the "truth" about Alice's Wonderland? What a great idea! And my goodness what an obvious one as well. You may not know it, but there are tons and tons of books out there, both for children and for adults, that talk about the "real" land of Oz. Everything from "Wicked" (both book and musical) to "The Wiz" to who knows what all. So why has nobody ever done the same thing with "Alice's Adventures In Wonderland"? There was a Disney Channel television show that vaguely touched on it, a nasty video game that reinterpreted it, countless pop songs and independent plays that work off of it, but never a children's book that gave us an alternate look into that world. Until now, that is. With glee I plucked Frank Beddor's book out of the hands of my colleagues and got down to reading it. Frank Beddor, a sometimes actor, sometimes stuntman, sometimes freestyle skier (this is all true), sometimes producer of "There's Something About Mary" has now decided to add "writer" to his resume. So how much should we expect from the fella who was John Cusack's skiing stunt double in "Better Off Dead"? As might be expected, not a heck of a whole lot. Beddor has a some interesting ideas, sure. I mean, the book's premise is a very strong one. And his writing is not, on the whole, bad. It just that Beddor hasn't a clue who his audience is or where he wants to go with this series. And it shows.
We're all familiar with the story of "Alice's Adventures In Wonderland". How the author Rev. Charles Dodgson (i.e. Lewis Carroll) was friends with Alice Lydell and conjured up a world of make-believe for her enjoyment. But what if it was the other way around? What if Alice had conjured up the world for Mr. Dodgson? And what if that world had not been an innocent place of joy and wordplay but rather a dangerous land from which she was an exiled queen? Princess Alyss Heart of Wonderland was having a perfectly lovely life when, at the age of seven, her parents were dethroned and her world turned upside down by Alyss's evil Queen Redd. Now Alyss and her bodyguard Hatter Madigan have been thrown into our world with no obvious return to their beloved Wonderland. In our world Alyss is made to believe that everything that happened before was just a dream. Yet in her absence rebellious groups are forming against Redd's new dictatorship and they just need one thing: Princess Alyss must come home and take her rightful place as queen.
Cute premise. But the book, for all that it invokes Wonderland, is actually far more interested in war, battles, and strategy than the more detailed aspects of the land. You get to see Wonderland in its purest state for a brief chapter or two before the book erupts and the chance to enjoy this familiar-but-not-familiar land is gone. In interviews Beddor has said that as a kid he saw Lewis Carroll's books as "a girl's book". Obviously he has attempted to rectify the situation. People who go into "The Looking Glass Wars" expecting Carroll's wit, whimsy, or ability to play with words are going to be sorely disappointed. Beddor isn't afraid to display his contempt for Carroll's original creation right from the start as well. In this book Charles Dodgson is a weak-willed wimp of a man who's more interested in creating light-hearted fantasy when cold bloody reality is what's needed. It's obvious that Beddor couldn't make a joke or a humorous scene if his life depended on it. The closest thing you get is a brief practical joke by Alyss at the beginning of the book on her (I kid you not) albino tutor. From there on it its all blood, guts, death, despair, and predictability.
Beddor also shows a shocking lack of inventiveness when it comes to names. He's perfectly good at creating creepy counterparts to Carroll's original characters, of course. Hatter Madigan is a security version of the Mad Hatter. Redd is the Red Queen. But where does everybody live in this book? Wondertropolis of course. I don't suppose it's much worse than Frank L. Baum naming one of his characters Ozma, but sheesh. Wondertropolis? Turning Alice into Alyss is a nice touch and all but the inclusion of animals called adorable things like "tuttle-birds" and "gwynooks" shows that what Beddor wants to pull off with this book is in direct opposition to the story he took it from. One wonders why he didn't just create a new book entirely from scratch rather than drag Carroll's creation into the mix and risk the wrath of the pro-Carroll multitudes. The fact that I picked up this book to begin with answers my question.
One of the other problems I had with the book involved little seven-year-old Alyss and her best-friend Dodge crushing on one another as kids. At one point the (and I will emphasize this once again) SEVEN-year-old child commands Dodge to dance with her. He does and we read this passage, "He put an arm around Alyss's waist and moved with her in gentle circles. He had never touched the princess before - not like this. She smelled of sweet earth and powder. It was a clean, delicate smell. Did all girls smell like this or only princesses?". I'm now going to remind you yet again that this is a TEN-year-old boy with a SEVEN-year-old girl. Ten-year-old boys, with very few exceptions, do not like girls. And if they do like girls, they certainly do not like seven-year-old girls. And if they do like seven-year-old girls (and here we're getting into tricky territory) then they certainly do not go all wobbly when they touch them. Can't help but get a little sickened by the above passage? Join the club. And apparently Alyss's crush as a seven-year-old lasts good and strong until she's twenty-years-old. Uh-huh.
NOT that the book isn't amusing at times. There's enough fighting in here to satiate even the most bloodthirsty of readers. Fans of Garth Nix or those kids who lament that J.R.R. Tolkien just wasn't gory enough may find a kindred spirit in Beddor. The thing is, he makes the very odd choice of allowing Alice to grow into a twenty-year-old hottie. This sort of makes any future installments in the proposed trilogy difficult. And if Beddor is trying to aim this at teen audiences then he's picked the wrong publisher. I did like that Beddor did his homework and included some factual information about the real Alice Liddell in between his own fantasy. In some ways his mixing of myth and this new reality is rather well done. I liked the use of the Pool of Tears and how Tweedle-Dum and Tweedle-Dee had becomes generals. But Beddor also spots his text with slang like, "Duh" and he obviously rips off the whole hero-sees-dead-parents-in-a-mirror idea from the first Harry Potter book. For every fun and original moment in this book there's forty problems on the next page. To top it all off, the minute that you hear that Alyss must go through the Looking Glass Maze to become a queen, you know exactly how the book is going to end. So much for the element of surprise.
Beddor has his finger in as many different pies as possible. He wants video games and graphic novels and roller coasters and who knows what-all to tie-in to his beloved new world. You can't blame the guy, but you also can't help but remember other darlings of the media who had similar dreams smashed in front of them (paging Clive Barker's, "Abarat"...). In Germany this book has been published for adults. In the UK it was published for 10-14 year-olds. Here it will be thrown at children. I can't possibly predict the kind of reception the book will get from kids. I suspect, however, that many will be bored or confused by it while others lap it up like it was cream. It's fine for what it is, but do not expect a great deal of creativity in its creation. It's just nothing to crow about.
 I...can't...I...oh my god...it's...awful December 10, 2005
25 out of 38 found this review helpful
I tried. I tried so very very hard to like this book. I really WANTED to like it. It was so utterly, disgustingly poorly written I couldn't.
I initially promised myself I wouldn't write this review 'til I finished the book, thinking that there may be some Great Human Truth imparted at what would be an undoubtedly stunning finale. But I couldn't make it. I made it 308 pages in, and there are only 376 pages. I fought and I fought, but finally I could not fight anymore. So I had to write the review now.
This book, for all intents and purposes, could have been written by a 13 year old. The writing style is so one-dimensional that words fail to describe it. There is literally no characterization. The "wonderful re-imagining of the classic faerie tale" that everyone was firing their gun off about turned about to completely ridiculous. This story is in no way modeled after the original Alice in Wonderland. The premise is that Lewis Carroll (Charles Dodgson) listened to this little girl's heart-wrenching sob story, and rewrote it into the classic tale we all know and love. If that's so, then Dodgson really was smoking that opium. This story is about as close to Alice in Wonderland as Star Wars is to the Rocky Horror Picture Show.
Aside from the bloody awful butchering of the English language and the 13-year-old aspiring romance novelist characterizations, the story itself is utterly lackluster. If you've had any experience with fantasy novels in their slightest imagining, I mean if you've ever read a book about men with swords fighting monsters in any sense of the term before, you've read a better novel than this. Beddor just cannot make this book exciting. There are so many places you WANT the story to go, and they just don't. The deus ex machina is in-your-face ridiculous. Just once I'd like to see the characters think or fight themselves out of scenario without a miracle saving them in their horrifyingly anticlimactic climactic battle.
"Alyss" is aloof, emotionless, and nonbelievable as a main character. Empathizing with her horrible plight is impossible. "Redd", the villain, the usurper Queen of Hearts, is the worst of the bunch, being such an awfully predictable villain at times I just had to laugh. The imitigably stupid anti-hero, Dodge, isn't fleshed out enough to even be worth mentioning. In perhaps the worst adaptation of original to Beddor's twisted work, the generals "Dopple" and "Ganger", shoddy imitations of Tweedle-dee and Tweedle-dum, bear absolutely no resemblance to their equivalents, and their characterization is very vague. Hatter Madigan, the character with by FAR the largest potential in this story, is continually stuck in Limbo as the "unspeaking, unfeeling bodyguard with a dark past and a singular purpose". I strongly considered buying the spinoff Hatter M. comicbook, due out sometime soon, that chronicles the THIRTEEN YEARS missing from this book, but the awfulness of this literary travesty, coupled with the insanely overstylized surrealist artwork of Ben Templesmith, insures that I will go nowhere near that certain failure.
Really, there aren't enough bad things I can say about this "book". My mind is wandering because there is so much I want to say about it that I can't focus. I would like this rant to be coherent and to thoroughly dissuade you from reading this filth, but I understand that the venom that fills me when I think of this trash may prevent cohesion in my words. For that I apologize.
What makes me even angrier was that this story had so much potential. It reads like a very very bad screenplay. Adapted to film, this could be a cult-classic B-movie along the lines of Labrynth and Willow, only not as good. Archetypes are empIoyed here, only not in a fantastical way. More in a very tired, "it's all been done before" sort of way. I want to force Frank Beddor into letting me rewrite this disaster just so his novelistic holocaust will no longer be visited upon humankind. I guarantee you that any individual with a fundamental understanding of English, who has read at least one good book in their lifetime could outwrite Frank "There's Something About Mary" Beddor. So much of this book is based around the concept of "Imagination" (much like Disney's commercial failure: EPCOT), it's amazing that Mr. Beddor's imagination is a diseased wasteland filled with plotholes and bad character development.
I can't continue this, it's making me sick. If you value your mind, and you have at least a high school education, you will be able to see this book as it truly is: awful. Kids may like it, but then I'm not really in a position to judge.
The Looking Glass Re-Imagined May 5, 2007
18 out of 19 found this review helpful
When I first heard about the book, I was curious but leery. The idea of a new take on Wonderland was intriguing, but I was left wondering what an author could really do with it. Apparently a lot, but I was left asking why it was necessary. But I picked it up anyway.
Frank Beddor, the author, has a vivid imagination, but everything he does truly springs out of Lewis Carroll's novel. He has some amusing twists and capricious renderings of characters, events, and hardware in Wonderland, but ultimately I was disappointed with this one. There just really wasn't enough of a difference, and the differences that were there flew in the face of everything I loved about the book.
The idea of an adult Alyss (see, Carroll gave us the incorrect spelling after schoolteachers forced Alyss to change her name to Alice) going back to Wonderland to lead a revolt against Queen Redd was interesting, but just didn't really come to life. Beddor's world-building seems good, and his pacing is excellent, but I would have liked to read something wholly original by him. He's a good writer, but being enamored of Wonderland doesn't do him justice in some ways.
The book is readable, and if you're truly curious I'd suggest waiting for the paperback. [...] has already slated the book for a deep discount, so that might work out for you too. I'd be interested in hearing any comments other readers might have on the book.
And I'll be looking for Beddor's first original work. Although that might be a ways off given the fact that there's a movie, an RPG game, comics, and other avenue in the works on this one.
A Fun Re-Imagining October 12, 2006
15 out of 19 found this review helpful
I don't normally write book reviews and I have no intention of heading off in this direction too often, but "The Looking Glass Wars" inspired me enough to share my enthusiasm. Frank Beddor's book takes the premise of Lewis Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland" adventures and stands it on its head. Essentially, what Beddor does is re-imagine Carroll's fantasies as the true adventures of a young girl named Alyss (Carroll even got the name wrong, apparently!), a princess who lives in an alternate universe called Wonderland. As the book opens, she is the heir apparent about to celebrate her seventh birthday, but is forced to make an escape when her evil aunt murders her parents and lays claim to the throne. Fleeing through a `looking glass,' Alice is deposited in mid-18th century England, where she is soon relating her tales to an opportunistic English writer named Reverend Charles Dodgson (whose nom-de-plume -in reality -is Lewis Carroll).
While it is not necessary to know Carroll's work to enjoy "The Looking Glass Wars", it certainly would add to the reader's awareness of Beddor's humor. Throughout the book, he utilizes characters from Carroll's work in amusingly re-imagined forms; Here, the White Rabbit is a seven-foot tall albino tutor named Bibwit Harte (just unscramble the letters a bit and there you go). The Cheshire cat is actually a mercenary fighting for the evil Redd, who represents the wicked Queen of Hearts. The Mad Hatter is a loyalist named Hatter Madigan, who searches the Earth for Alice so he may return her to Wonderland and help her to regain the throne. The innately clever underpinning of Beddor's book is how he can gently poke fun at Carroll's work, by making his fantastical descriptions and flights of fancy as a basis for Alyss' reality. The staid, gray world of Victorian England stands in remarkable contrast to the rainbow hues of Wonderland, and the plot manipulations are consistently amusing. While I can't say for sure, it seems quite likely that "The Looking Glass Wars" will one day be a movie, especially since Beddor has previous film credits (as producer of `There's Something About Mary'). My advice is to read the book before somebody does the visualization for you, because imagining Wonderland for yourself is at least half of the fun.B+Tom Ryan
This book is good for inducing vomiting fits. September 4, 2005
12 out of 28 found this review helpful
Oh my. This book is a horrible, awful mess. It has an interesting enough premise, but that can't save this pile of steaming crap. It is not a good thing when the plot can be guessed two chapters into the book. It is also a bad sign, when you look on the back to see what the book is about, and you find that "until her life was shattered," is being used as a complete sentence. Aaaaiiieeee. Short sentences can be used to make something dramatic, but that really didn't work in this situation. The Lemony Snicket-like warning before the story began didn't help either, especially since there is no more gore in this book than any other book that contains fighthing. Thank you, Frank Beddor, for that immense pat on your own back.
When Mr. Beddor starts writing the story though, that's when things really start getting out of hand. He has a wonderful talent for creating the most cliched and uninteresting characters ever. There is the selfless, wonderful queen, the precocious but stupidly powerful princess, the solemn bodyguard, the smart but "pleasently" befuddled tutor, the insane, psychotic usurper, and the daring young soldier boy. And then there's general Doppelganger, who, quite honestly, has no personality whatsoever. I could not pick out a single personality trait for this man. Beautiful. We have a book filled with the tritest characters known to man, and one character without a personality. As far as character developement goes, there isn't any. Except, maybe, Dodge's "developement" which brings nothing but odd personality traits that don't make sense. They're cheesy too. But maybe the plot could be better? Wrong.
Like I said before, it is not good when the plot can be guessed after reading two chapters of the book. This book follows a standard formula of "Oh no! The girl's family has been killed! Distress! *insert evolution into warrior queen here* Now there is vengeance!" Ouchie bad, not to mention unoriginal. Also, when Alyss transforms into a warrior queen, she has a stupid amount of powers. Not a single battle except the last one could possibly be interesting after this, because you know Alyss is unstoppable. God-like powers dumb down a story if the only ones who possess them are the protagonist and the antagonist. The plot skips along in it's linear fashion, until the anticlimactic ending, after which I rolled my eyes. This is not a good thing.
This book has made my brain attempt to get itself digested. Frank Beddor cannot write, and should never write again, unless he figures out what detail and originality are. Aggh.
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