Book Review — The Looking Glass Wars

Frank Beddor’s Reimagining of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland

Jul 31, 2009

Frank Beddor's The Looking Glass Wars takes elements and characters from Alice in Wonderland and re-imagines them into a new story about the power of imagination.

In the queendom of Wonderland, Princess Alyss Heart is celebrating her seventh birthday with her mother, Queen Genevieve. The Diamond, Spade, and Club nobles have gathered with the rest of the people to watch the annual Inventors’ Parade, during which the queen selects the best inventions in Wonderland to go through the Heart Crystal to inspire the universe.

The Looking Glass Wars Begin

Suddenly, the queen’s evil sister Redd, who had been banished years before in a civil war after she succumbed to Black Imagination, reappears with an army of card soldiers. Redd kills her sister Genevieve and takes back the kingdom. The queen’s bodyguard Hatter Madigan grabs the young princess and drags her through the Pool of Tears into our world, where they get separated and Alyss finds herself alone in the strange city of London.

Alyss Becomes Alice and Meets Lewis Carroll

Alyss becomes friends with a group of street urchins and uses her powerful imagination to entertain the crowds and earn money. But the longer she’s away from Wonderland the more her imagination fades and the more she wonders if her memories are real.

Finally, she is adopted by the Liddell family. They rename her Alice and try to convince her that the life she remembers is just her imagination. Then she meets the Reverend Charles Dodgson, a.k.a. Lewis Carroll, who seems to believe her strange story and promises to preserve her memories in a book. But when she reads Alice in Wonderland, she realizes that Dodgson doesn’t believe her either and has turned her world into nonsense. Her tutor, the albino Bibwit Harte, is now the White Rabbit, and Hatter Madigan is the Mad Hatter. The Cat, Redd’s evil assassin with nine lives and knives for claws, is now the harmless Cheshire Cat.

Alyss knows that she needs to get back home in order to liberate Wonderland. But she also has to work hard to keep her imagination so that she will be able to fight Redd when she returns.

This book isn’t a retelling of Lewis Carroll’s work, but rather a reinvention of elements of Wonderland. Part of the fun of this book is seeing how Beddor has reimagined Carroll’s world. Caterpillars are sage oracles who live in the Valley of Mushrooms. Tweedledum and Tweedledee are General Doppelganger, the commander of the royal army who can split into two. Jabberwockies are dangerous creatures who live in the Volcanic Plains. Walrus-butlers and frog-messengers tend to the castle, and everyone travels through looking glasses.

This is the first book in a trilogy, so it will be interesting to see how this idea plays out and what other characters will be introduced. Beddor has also created artwork and graphic novels to supplement these books. For example, Hatter M is a graphic novel that follows Madigan on his thirteen-year quest to find Alyss after she lands in our world.

This book is very different in tone from Carroll’s work, with violent scenes and political talk. Although the protagonist is young, this book was not written for a young audience. But anyone who enjoyed Carroll’s work should be interested in how Beddor utilizes it to create a very different story about the power of imagination.

Beddor, Frank. The Looking Glass Wars. New York: Speak, 2006. (ISBN 978-0142409411)

The copyright of the article Book Review — The Looking Glass Wars in Teen Fiction Series is owned by Emily Chauviere. Permission to republish Book Review — The Looking Glass Wars in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.