The first of his Alyss of Wonderland trilogy, Frank Beddor’s The Looking Glass Wars is a storming, imaginative tour-de-force that deserves to be not overlooked. Using Lewis Carroll’s classic children’s story, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, as his inspiration, Beddor has created something new and original, something fresh and exciting. Beddor imagines that Alice’s wonderland did indeed exist. That it was not fairy tale. Princess Alyss Heart was heir to the throne of Wonderland, but was cruelly usurped when her Aunt Redd stormed Wondertropolis and murdered her parents. Fleeing for her life, Alyss was transported to our world, to the world of Charles Dodgson and literary Oxford in the late 19th Century. Taken in by the Liddells, Alyss at first steadfastly refused to denounce her true bearing as fiction. But after years of convincing nobody of her origins and noble birth--Alyss Heart became Alice Liddell. And it was Alice Liddell who inspired Dodgson to write his legendary novel about her--despite Alyss’s accusations that he has cruelly twisted her story to make light of her heritage for entertainment. Alyss’s Wonderland is an occupied land that must be freed. And Alyss eventually realises that she must once again go back to her true home and try to reclaim it. And it is going to be a bloody reckoning. Beddor has pulled off a wonderfully complicated twist of creativity and his ambitious novel is on many levels enormously satisfying. The author has previously been a ski champion, stunt double and actor, but it is perhaps his continuing role as a Hollywood film producer that most influences his debut novel. The book is a visual feast that is begging to be made into a film. But for now, its life as a book is a deserved one. (Age 10 and over) --John McLay