THE LOOKING GLASS WARS, Frank Beddor

Between this and Tiger Lily, you’d think the latter would’ve given me more trouble while I worked out how to address its flawed approach to racism and queer identity while also praising how it brought Barrie’s characters and world to life in a new way. Well, it came to a 50-50 split over which book gave me the splitting headache of these last four months. Where Tiger Lily and The Looking Glass Wars differ lies in how I can’t contribute much social criticism to the first (as you will see next week), while I have plenty of story-based issues with the second.

This blog reviews various works of fantasy, but my specialized interest is in reworked popular stories that, over a century later, still enthrall us. Sometimes I’m rewarded with works like Tiger Lily; while it’s not free of problems, it successfully respects and perpetuates the spirit of the original. Then we have The Looking Glass Wars. Oh, boy, do we ever. We have it so much that it’s prompted my longest review to date. I pray for my readers’ perseverance (if I have any readers at this point).

Let’s start with one of my biggest adaptation pet-peeves.