While I was wandering the floor at the SDCC, I happened to come across a booth for “The Looking Glass Wars.” Some of you may remember I pointed out an online trailer promoting the forthcoming comic book version of the novel a few months back. I still hadn’t had a chance to read the book before hitting the show, so I was pleased as punch to find out that the author, Frank Beddor, was selling copies of the UK release for a reasonable ten bucks a pop. After chatting with him for a while - Mr. Beddor was a pleasant and fun conversationalist - I happily plunked down my ten-spot and wandered off, new book in hand.

It took me a few more weeks, but I finally found the time to sit down with my purchase and spend a few days with it. The long and short of it is that I enjoyed the book quite a bit. Beddor writes the book in a style that bridges the gap between the Harry Potter novels and “His Dark Materials” with more than a touch of Baum’s “Oz” novels sprinkled liiberally throughout. Beddor’s writing style has the sort of open and friendly narrative voice of Rowling, but with the darker, more disturbing imagry that Pullman brings to his trilogy. While the violence may be a bit much for some younger readers to handle, TLGW is a book that can easily be enjoyed by teenagers as well as adults, which to Beddor’s credit, I imagine is more difficult to achieve than one might think.

The story itself is a quite enjoyable take on the tried and true concept of “everything you know is wrong” or if not wrong, at least there’s a lot more to the story than you previously realized. The conceit of the novel is that Wonderland is a real place. Alyss (not Alice) is a real girl who was Wonderland’s princess, but somehow ended up in our reality. While here, she befriended Lewis Carroll who took the story of her life as she related it to him and twisted it into a children’s fairy tale.

Beddor spends the first chunk of the novel introducing us to the real versions of the Wonderland characters, and to be honest, if he hadn’t moved so swiftly, he might have lost me. While it was fun for a while to mentally point and recognize various characters and scenes from Carroll’s stories, I found myself skimming though the first few chapters, looking for new material to sink my imagination into. (Please note: I also hate sitting through Superman/Batman/Spider-Man’s origin every time they’re adapted into a new series/medium/whatever. It’s a personal preference.) Thankfully, just as it starts to become too much, Beddor essentially blows everything up and the story I was looking for begins.

At this point, Beddor manages to draw you into his new world much more effectively. If there’s one complaint I have about TLGW, it’s that there’s so much happening so quickly, it feels as though there’s enough information for a trilogy of books packed into just the one novel. The world we’re shown is interesting enough that I really would have liked the pace to slow a bit to allow me to experience the various facets of Wonderland more fully. Despite that, Beddor still manages to flesh the majority of his characters out sufficiently so that the reader becomes invested in their lives and experiences. Considering that there are till 2 more novels planned and at least one comic book, the characters that do suffer somewhat by the semi-rushed pace will likely receive more attention in the future.

While it’s obvious that Beddor has a lot of love for Lewis Carroll’s original story, there are bound to be purists who are angered by his reimagining of the tale - you see this sort of reaction all the time in the comic book world (Marvel Comics’ Ultimate Universe, for example). That would be a shame, because Beddor’s managed to build on the ideas from an old classic to create a new, rich land with a world of possibilities.

Comics, Books