Book Review: Seeing Redd

TITLE: The Looking Glass Wars: Seeing Redd
AUTHOR: Frank Beddor
PART OF A SERIES: Book 2 in Looking Glass Wars Trilogy
PUBLISHED: 2007
GENRE: young adult, trilogy, fantasy, fiction rewrite, action
PREMISE: The Looking Glass Wars continue with Alyss learning how to be a queen, dealing with jerky neighboring kingdoms and Redd who makes a comeback.
MY REVIEW: I confess this trilogy is probably going to be a tad bit strange for the average reader and Alice in Wonderland purists may not be thrilled with it. But for me it was fun. I enjoyed seeing the twists Beddor had on Wonderland and it's a very exciting book that keeps you reading from beginning to end. The villians are also good in this. Redd is snarky (and a little cheesy to some extent) and Arch...well I kept wanting to smack him everytime he spewed junk about women so that is probably a mark of a good love to hate villian.
The only downside to this book is that the characters...aren't as well developed as I would like. But that's probably because they are in the midst of a war/running a country and when you focus on action, character growth can sometimes get lost in the shuffle and I think that was what happened here. I also didn't particularly care for some of the blandness of the writing.
But other then those two things, the trilogy is still fun and will keep you interested in it. I look forward to book three (just to warn you, the author leaves a mean cliffhanger) and I really hope this gets made into a movie like Beddor has said he's trying to do. Because this reads like it would make an awesome movie. It also is the perfect thing to read if you're gearing up for the Tim Burton Alice in Wonderland flick like I am. Does it not look awesome?
WHO SHOULD READ: Alice in Wonderland junkies, fiction rewrite fans, if you like good action books
MY RATING: four out of five card soldiers

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