I had the pleasure of meeting Frank Beddor at the 2005 San Diego Comic Convention. What originally caught my eye was his booth. It was decorated with lovely posters of illustrations from his book, comic, and even animation. Mr. Beddor was a very nice man and was extremely passionate about his book, The Looking Glass Wars, that was going to release in the U.S. in the upcoming months. My husband, of course, insisted we buy the book immediately. We did, and Mr. Beddor was kind enough to sign our copy while we chatted about a comic book based on one of the characters in his book. He even gave us a free copy of the first issue.

That was almost 5 years ago. My husband has since read the book approximately 3 times while I, on the other hand, just finished reading it for the first time today, despite his persistent insistence. I have to admit that I really enjoyed this book. The Looking Glass Wars is a reinvention of Lewis Caroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. The Alice that many of us grew up reading about or watching is actually a princess in Wonderland, the world of imagination, who’s parents are murdered by her wicked Aunt Redd. While trying to escape death as her aunt overthrows the kingdom, Princess Alyss winds up in our world where she is trapped. After some time, she returns to Wonderland and must take back the throne as rightful Queen of Wonderland.

One of my favourite parts about this book was the correlation of Wonderland and our World. Not only did Beddor take a little bit of history into account when detailing Alyss’s time in the Earth world, he also implied that Wonderland was only in her head. I love stories like this. For all intents and purposes, we can assume that Wonderland is real and that is where our imagination, ideas, and inventions, etc. come from, but planting the seed of doubt adds a lovely touch to the story.

Alyss is well developed and her character growth is pleasing. She’s strong, yet vulnerable, which is great because often times strong female characters are somewhat mannish and abrasive.

I adore Dodge, even to the end of the book when I started feeling sad that he had changed so much. Like Alyss, I miss the romaticised child Dodge, but Dodge was the most human character in the book. He was flawed, emotional and he struggled. He and Alyss began as childhood playmates who were clearly enamoured with one another, but ended on distant path after being away from one another. Even though Alyss grew up in a world where imagination meant very little and Dodge stayed in a Wonderland filled with turmoil and fighting, only one of them was really able to get past their hardships and become the great person they were supposed to be.

One of my only criticisms about this book is the lack of description for key elements. Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of descriptions throughout the book, but key beings such as the card soldiers and the chessmen were not described accurately enough for me to understand clearly what they were. Even though many things were named after what they were, such as Wonderland or Wondertropolis, a pawn was called a pawn and was only vaguely described. Was it an oversized chess piece that had arms? Or was it humanoid, but costumed similarly as a chess piece? I wasn’t sure because it was never explained in a complete way.

In the end, I rate this book a 4.5 out of 5 and will read the second book in The Looking Glass Wars trilogy sometime this year.