The Looking Glass Wars
posted in series, book challenge, fantasy, young adult, book review, children's literature |
“It had all been twisted into nonsense…He’d transformed her memories of a world alive with hope and possibility and danger into make-believe, the foolish stuff of children. He was just another in a long line of unbelievers and this–this stupid, nonsensical book–was how he made fun of her.”
Did Lewis Carroll imagine the happenings in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking Glass (1872) and tell them to Alice Liddell? Or did Alyss Heart live through those adventures and tell them to Charles Dodgson? In his 2006 re-imagining, The Looking Glass Wars, Frank Beddor posits the latter scenario in this first book of his trilogy about what really occurred in the Kingdom of Wonderland.
Beddor re-creates the whole cast of Wonderland characters such that The Looking Glass Wars showcases (just to name a few) on the side of White Imagination Alyss Heart, Bibwit Harte, General Doppelganger, Hatter Madigan, and Dodge Anders and on the side of Black Imagination her Aunt Redd, The Cat (who happens to be quite a proficient assassin), Jack of Diamonds, and many members of card families of the Diamond, Clubs, and Spades varieties.
Alyss Heart, princess of Wonderland, has grown up in a Wonderland where there exists a tenuous peace in the land. Twelve years earlier White and Black Imagination had done battle and White Imagination with its precepts of peace and harmony had won out. Alyss’s imagination, while fertile, had not yet been trained fully in these precepts.
But on Alysss’s seventh birthday, peace is shattered when Alyss’s Aunt Redd (aka her Imperial Viciousness) comes back to reclaim the Heart throne and the Heart crystal. Redd kills Alyss’s parents and wages a bloody overthrow that leaves Wonderland under the thumb of Black Imagination.
With her inchoate imagination, Alyss is powerless, and she is forced to flee Wonderland through the Pool of Tears. Alyss winds up in London where her imagination enervates. For a time, she tries to keep Wonderland real to her by telling others about it, but she is ridiculed and scorned. The last straw is when she tells Charles Dodgson and he twists her story into nonsense. Thereafter, she resolves to put Wonderland (and concomitantly, her imagination) behind her completely such that she no longer believes flowers can sing for they don’t have larynxes nor does she believe any longer in Wonderland’s very existence.
In Alyss’s absence from Wonderland, her imagination suffers, but Wonderland also suffers under the thumb of Redd. Among other things, Redd decrees, “Silence is hereby outlawed. Silence breeds independent thought, which in turn breeds dissent.” Redd’s authoritarian rule brooks no dissent; Redd has fostered only the precepts of Black Imagination throughout Wonderland. Black Imagination thrives on fear and keeping others powerless.
Not all in Wonderland fear Redd and consent to her rule. A small group known as the Alyssians continue to strive against Redd’s authoritarian rule. The Alyssians locate Alyss’s whereabouts in London and bring her back to Wonderland many years after her initial departure. The grown-up Alyss returns to Wonderland to reclaim her place as rightful ruler, but first she must reclaim her imagination. Her mother once told her, “…you must work hard to develop it according to the guiding principles of the Heart dynasty–love, justice, and duty to the people. An undisciplined imagination is worse than no imagination at all. It can do more harm. Remember what happened to your aunt Redd.”
Alyss must fight to recapture her imagination, the Heart crystal, and her Wonderland by finding her way through the Looking Glass Maze. Alyss’s tutor Bibwit Hare has said that “A unique Looking Glass Maze exists for every would-be queen. The maze must be successfully navigated by the would-be queen if she is to reach her imagination’s full potential and thus be fit to rule.”
If nothing else, Beddor’s re-imagining provides another explanation for the Queen of Hearts’ (Aunt Redds’) propensity to yell, “Off with his/her/their heads.” But it does more than that; Beddor’s story gives us another wonderful (albeit unlike the original) fantasy story set in Wonderland that readers will be able to enjoy. It is like the original in the sense that both Carroll’s stories and Beddor’s The Looking Glass Wars encourage imaginations to blossom.
If you like The Looking Glass Wars, you might enjoy other stories that re-visit classics and fairy tales through different perspective such as Gregory Maguire, Donna Jo Napoli, or Robin McKinley. You could also visit The Looking Glass Wars website which begins with the line “Fantasy just declared war on reality…” You could also just go ahead and read the sequel, Seeing Redd.
