Seeing Redd

57. Seeing Redd (The Looking Glass Wars) by Frank Beddor. 371 p. Published August 2007.

This second novel follows immediately after The Looking Glass Wars. Alyss has taken her place as Queen of Wonderland but still worries after her aunt Redd, whose daring dive into the Heart Crystal – the source of all imaginative power – provided a last minute escape. Doing what they can to piece the queendom back together after Redd’s disastrous rule, Alyss and her advisers often end the day in exhaustion, a fact that King Arch of the neighboring Borderlands is willing to exploit. Sending an attack of Glass Eyes, a weapon salvaged from Redd’s army, Arch inflames fears of Redd’s return and uses the Diamond family to get Molly, Alyss’ bodyguard, to unwittingly trigger a devastating explosion in Wonderland’s primary transportation system, the Looking Glass.

Meanwhile, Hatter Maddigan, who has taken a short vacation to mourn the passing of his beloved, stumbles upon proof that Molly is, in fact, his own daughter. He rushes back to Wonderland in hopes of finding her, but is too late, the young girl taken back to King Arch under the guise of a third party’s kidnapping. Hatter follows her into the Borderlands, neglecting a direct order from Alyss.

Redd, who had spent the intervening months on earth to gather an army, finally returns to Wonderland in hopes of navigating her long-neglected Maze and gain full control over her own powers of Dark Imagination. Alyss is hard pressed on all sides, knowing that her country cannot survive a fight on two fronts, and is forced to make a decision that will change the face of Wonderland forever.

From the start it was obvious that, unlike the first book, Seeing Redd couldn’t rely on the novelty of retelling Alice in Wonderland. Instead, Beddor begins to build upon the story, making it his own. On the one hand, he does a marvelous job, developing a sense of realism in the characters. At the same time, much of Seeing Redd came across as monotonous, spending too much time delving into motivations and machination and the story only begins to pick up towards the rear of the book. Ending with a cliffhanger, Seeing Redd leaves a lot for the third and final novel.

Rating: 2 out of 5

XKCD

I spend a significant portion of every morning catching up on my favorite webcomics. With a knack for combining intellectual humor and stunning wit, XKCD numbers high on that list. And I’m not just saying that to avoid being taken hostage by its rabid fan base (help me!).

NYTimes Literacy Debate: Online, R U Really Reading?

I wanted to post about this NYTimes article debating the difference between Digital and Print media (Via Omnivoracious’ Amazon Blog). The article, which begins a series on “The Future of Reading” fields a very important question: “Is the Internet the enemy of reading, or has it created a new kind of reading, one that society should not discount?”

Personally, I will always hold books over any other form of reading. I don’t even like EBooks - when Amazon’s Kindle was announced, I cringed. It took me weeks to accept my friend’s obsession with audiobooks. I empirically believe that there are crucial developmental stages and skills that can only be obtained through literature. And don’t even get me started on the use of the internet as an academic reference – what the article mentions in relation to a study regarding The Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus is reminicient of my own experiences in college.

I will conceed some validation for the Digital argument, mostly revolving around the improvments in non-linear thinking. But the internet, and the digital form as a whole, is simply too fluid – even after a decade of mainstream use – to be relied upon as a literary tool. It corrodes concentration, refutes grammar, and provides facts without the need for research or actual learning (yes, there is a difference between fact-finding and learning).

But that is my opinion. What’s yours?