I could easily compose a rant about how this book sucks so hard that light has a hard time escaping its gravity well, but instead of just bashing let's take an objective look at why this book is so very very bad.The Looking Glass Wars is a triumph of artistic design and marketing. The concept is immediately simple and intriguing. Wonderland is real. Alice Liddell was a princess on the run and Lewis Carroll mangled the truth. Alyss grows up and goes back to save a ruined Wonderland. The cover art is amazing, and the book is filled with things that fantasy lovers adore like maps and timelines. There is a website where you can play games related to the book, or buy a CD of atmospheric music to listen to while you read. There is even a comic book series about one of the secondary characters. How cool, right?Unfortunately the actual book is a mess. I can't grasp why there are so many positive reviews of this book, and it seems that many of the people who like it say that the people who don't just couldn't handle the manipulation of the original story. Listen, I've got no problem with that. I think the concept is loaded with potential. It is just a bad book. And I can't even say, "But that's just my opinion." It is clearly very poorly written. I mean the author has characters say "Noooooo!" Who does that? Four times, when confronted with bad situations, characters in this novel actually shout "Nooooooo!" On film it would play as a bad joke, but in literature it is just inexcusable.Almost nothing is sufficiently described. There are lots of talking and fighting chessmen in the book, but we're never told exactly what that means. Are they anthropomorphic rooks and bishops with arms and legs, or people that wear armor in the shapes of those pieces, or robots like Redd's card soldiers? We are never told, and they play a big part in the narrative. And orb generators. I still don't know what an orb generator does. They wield it like some type of gun, and I would imagine that it generates orbs, but apparently it just shoots orb generators. Like a bad guy can come in holding an orb generator and fire it and then it says that the good guys then had to dodge all of the orb generators flying around. I guess that means what they really are is orb generator generators, if what they really generate is orb generators. Great job, you wacky author you.And let's talk about Redd and Alyss' imagination powers. Apparently they can imagine anything and it happens. Like Green Lantern, but better. So can they imagine money or jewels? If so why do they need workers in the mines? Alyss can't imagine a fire into being, but she can imagine a solid metal lid that floats down to put out the fire. What? If they can simply imagine food into existence, why are people going hungry? Why can you not imagine someone dead, but you can stab them to death with imaginary knives? It is implied that if Alyss' imagination was strong enough, she could imagine a whole army of soldiers. Then why do they have flesh and blood soldiers, and why do they have to build robot soldiers? If they can imagine guinea pigs and worms into existence, then these characters have the godlike ability to create life from nothing but these ideas are never expanded on or dealt with. Just thrown in to get the story to the next chase scene. Which there are a lot of.Who is this book written for? The violence and expensive spin-off materials ($75 for a Looking Glass Wars themed art book!) would imply adult readers, but the juvenile sense of humor would indicate otherwise. For example one character has a fat butt, and the book just goes on and on about this like I'm supposed to be giggling ever time it is mentioned. He gets stuck in a chair and other characters have to tug him out. Hilarious, right? I share with you an exchange between prophetic caterpillars while they're getting high off their hookahs:"I'm having the weirdest sense of deja vu right now," said the green caterpillar. "Duh!" said the yellow caterpillar. "Do you think, just maybe, that's because you predicted this?" "Oh, yeah." The caterpillar council tittered.I'm wrapping this up, because if you actually found that funny then there's not much I can do to change your mind. SOUND EFFECTS! Who does sound effects in literature? I mean come on! Here are some of my favorites:Kabooooooorrrchk!Thimp thimp thimp! Thimp thimp thimp!Kraaaaawbooosh!Zzzomp!Clangk! Skrich-onk!And from the big climactic battle:Krrrrrkkkchsss! Hissszzzzl! Krrrch! Zzzzssszz!I'm not making this up. I wish I was. In summation, this book is not fun, entertaining, or well written, and you should not read it.
Some of my goodreads friends loved it, some seemed ambivalent, and some seemed to have hated it. Unfortunately very few of them wrote reviews though so I don't know much of what they thought about the book. Well, besides the number of stars they gave it. After a few seconds of mindful hand-wringing, and thinking about what I would rate this book while reading it, I have decided on three stars, although I enjoyed it quite a bit and had quite a bit of fun reading it. I really liked the re-telling of the Alice story as a dark and violent palace revolt. I found most of the book to be very quick paced and kept me reading in a longer stretch than I would have thought this book would have done. I actually thought I'd do something a bit more productive this evening than read an entire teen book, but as the professional reviewers say when they want to get their names on the cover of books for their blurbs, it was difficult to put-down. If I shut off the critical parts of my brain and just enjoyed the book as pure entertainment I probably would have given this book four stars and if it were a movie I probably would have sat through it and had no complaints, but then most of the movies I see these days are not ones that people would say are, um what's the word? Good? As I said in some other review though movies are movies and books are books and I expect more from the the printed page than the medium of light and sound. (But it's a teen book? or a kid book, right? can't you just fucking enjoy the thing?)Complaint one. The book veers into the dangerous terrain of Dungeon Master Bullshit. This is a danger whenever unfettered imagination is allowed as a rule in a fictional universe. I need restrains of some kind put on things like this. Without rules a sort of whimsy takes over where you know that good will beat evil but it's only because the author says so. This book doesn't completely fall into this problem but it's enough of a problem that I had a hard time with believing some of what was happening in the book. I can accept walking cards and fighting chess pieces, and all of that kind of fantastical world-built stuff, but unfettered imagination just doesn't work for me. Why wouldn't Redd have been able to just ferret out the remaining Alyssians? Why couldn't she spot the real Alyss amongst constructs? How could Redd be duped by anyone in her inner circle? Too much power is given to some of the characters but then that power needs to be circumnavigated by other characters for there to be a story. It's too much like that ridiculous fight in the second Matrix movie where Neo is fighting a bazillion Agent Smiths, it doesn't make any sense how the fight can be won by either side, it should have just been a recursive loop by the rules set up. Actually the two sequels to The Matrix are prime examples of Dungeon Master Bullshit. I hate those movies. Complaint two. This is a minor one and in a way it's not a complaint, but big narrative chunks are missing in the book. They are the boring parts where characters get from point A to point B, but there are quite a few moments where chunks of what would need to happen is just missing. This is good to the readability of the book because it cuts out what is possibly 'boring' and keeps the action moving at a swift pace, but it's also kind of jarring. It would be like I created a story where I had to get from New York City to California on foot. In New York I have to fight some zombie or something to escape the city and I do that in spectacular fashion and my victory ends a chapter. Next chapter I'm stepping over the state line into California where a zombie bird is waiting to do battle with me (which I also vanquish), but what about the middle stuff? A mention at least?Complaint three. This is sort of a combination of the first two complaints. I'm going to put it in a spoiler. It's not really too much of a spoiler, but, (view spoiler)[How come Alyss and Hatter get separated when they go through the Pool of Tears and it takes Hatter quite a while to get the hang of navigating through the passage ways between Wonderland and the real world but when Cat and the Cards go through they are able to all pop out in the same spot, exactly where they want to be even though none of them had ever done this before? And the same for Dodge. Was their trial and error that the author just left out? Did the rules of going through the portal change? Consistency, dammit! (hide spoiler)]
What do You think about The Looking Glass Wars (2006)?
Let me say up front that I am a fan of almost anything that reworks a classic, as can probably be seen by the books on my GoodReads shelves.I was nervous about this book for about thirty seconds, until I flipped to the full-color pages in the middle, which put my mind at ease and propelled me all the way to the check-out counter.Princess Alyss Heart isn't really interested in being Queen of the Wonderlands someday. She's more interested in getting out of the palace with her friend from the royal guard, Dodge Andrews, and getting into a bit of trouble.But when her ostricized aunt Redd storms the castle and engages her mother, Genevieve, in a battle of imaginations, Alyss must run for her life. She escapes the castle through her mother's private looking glass, which dumps her in the forest that borders the Pool of Tears. Along with Hatter Madigan, the dark, silent captain of the Queen's bodyguards, Alyss jumps into the Pool of Tears and is carried to a land far away, where she meets a young and uninspired writer who thinks that her stories of Wonderland are quite extraordinary.I feel like I should expound on Hatter Madigan, as he totally made this book for me.Hatter Madigan wears a long black trenchcoat, with a rucksack on his back, silver wristbands, and a high top hat that he never takes off, unless absolutely necessary. He is quick, acrobatic, quiet, and wields the throwing knives that protrude from his hat with chilling accuracy.I honestly giggled when I saw his illustration.And I'm afraid to read the sequel (Seeing Redd) because I don't want to finish so quickly that I have to wait ridiculous amounts of time for the third in the trilogy.I suppose I'll just have to take that risk.
—Caryn
I don't think I can finish it.It was recommended to me by Beta; Alpha hadn't liked it when he first read it (in author's proof, which is what I am reading). Beta insisted that _Seeing Redd_ must be read, and thus, I had to read this first. That, plus the TABarron series on Merlin, and of course, the Tree of Avalon.Well, started it. Want to like it. I do like the premise, actually. But I think, now that I have gotten almost half-way through, what just makes it unbearable is that the writing is so bad. Not bad in the sense of ignorant, but bad in the sense of craft and flow. It feels almost as if it were scenes plotted out along a time line, with the back story (what you might tell an actor) plugged in where it best fits. Forced; maybe that is the word that I am looking for.An example might be the naming of characters, to fight the Carroll's story yet work with Bedor's--the White Rabbit is one prime example, and one that Bedor has to point out to us as well (which makes it even more forced--- you get it don't you? see? see? We are being clever about our concept)...So how do I rate this, never mind shelve it?Read, I guess, and two stars.Sorry, Beta.
—Gloria
In a nutshell: Fantastic idea, horribly executed.The writing did nothing for it. I almost never start on an author's writing style but in this case, it was a significant factor in how I viewed the book. The style described too much in the wrong cases, not enough with the right ones. There was also a lot of telling rather than showing. The short, almost inconsiderate descriptions of the character's feelings made it seem false. I couldn't get a grasp on the characters at all.This was an absolutely brilliant idea. If it had been executed differently, this could have risen to Harry Potter status--or at least, it would have had the potential to. The idea was fresh, new and incredible. It just...never took off the ground for me. I found myself skipping pages and I would still know exactly what was going on.Writing aside, nothing anchored me to the characters. Even if you hate a character, that means that there was enough given that you're CAPABLE of hating them. It means that they were put through situations and were complete and total idiots and did a million things wrong and you hate their guts for it. But at least you have the proof. When you can't even cast an opinion on a character...oooh, well, that just goes to show that you weren't shown much. But Dodge and Alyss had such incredible potential! I just wish they were shown better. I could have really come to love them as characters. Same goes for the antagonist. Redd was downright creepy at first, but she quickly lost credibility.The dialog required much-needed help. It was mostly in the dialog that I lost the characters. Even with the sometimes skimpy writing, dialog can pick up the slack. Not in this case, though. I wrote a review for this now because I'm 95% certain that I won't be picking it up again. If I ever have children, I would try it out on them because it's more of a read out loud kind of book. But for readers who have a preference for more complex, lyrical writing that must be read inwardly, I don't recommend this book to you.I gave it a B- because I respect the idea so much. It wouldn't feel right to bring it lower than "B" status. Perhaps if Frank Beddor writes another series, I would take a chance on it. Otherwise, I'm not venturing into Wonderland again.
—Amelia
