Alice's Adventures in Wonderland captured the imagination of the public almost from the start. Even Queen Victoria was a fan and demanded Lewis Carroll (or Charles Dodgeson) dedicate his next published work to her which turned out to be an essay on mathematics. The novel's runaway success prompted Carroll to immediately craft a sequel and several adaptations. As time wore on, instead of fading out, Alice and her adventures seemed to gain traction and spawned dozens of spin-offs and adaptations including Beddor's "The Looking Glass Wars" trilogy.
I tripped across "The Looking Glass Wars" the way I find most YA lit: our school librarian handed it to me to look over. It's one of the perks of being a teacher that I have ready access to a lot of new lit. It took me a couple tries to get into the first book: Looking Glass Wars. It was too different and I wasn't in an accepting frame of mind. In this series, the book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland were inspired by a girl that Dodgeson meets named Alyss Heart. This girl is the princess heir of Wondertropolis in an alternate dimension which houses the seed for imagination in all worlds: the crystal heart. She ends up in our world by fleeing a coup led by her aunt, Redd Heart. Once I did get into the world though, I devoured both Looking Glass Wars and the next book, Seeing Redd, in under three days (while also finalizing grades for the 2012/13 school year!)
ArchEnemy, the final book in the trilogy took me significantly longer. I started it August 13th and just finished it a couple days ago. I simply couldn't get immersed in it the way I did the first two. I think the fact that all the characters were supremely unhappy for the first half of the novel had something to do with it and I think that the final novel felt rushed. While it was still a good book, it would have been better extended to two books and needed more levity inserted to break-up all the character angst. The overall finish satisfied me both for not being too obvious and for satisfying a mystery well seeded through-out the novel.
I've recommended the series to a couple students and so far they seem to enjoy it.
"Looking Glass Wars" Trilogy is:
- The Looking Glass Wars
- Seeing Redd
- ArchEnemy
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