books etc that i remember reading this year

[jehnt]

Comments

[zombie_boogie]

Tell me more about The Looking Glass Wars. I actually am about to make a post looking for book reccs because I feel like I was a shit reader last year.

[jehnt]

If you like Alice mythology and, well, mythological story-sets in general, you'll probably like it. It's not the best book ever, but it's highly enjoyable and an interesting take on the Alice story. Basically, Alice is the daughter of the White Queen, who rules Wonderland fairly peacefully now that she's disposed of her insane and tyrannical sister, the Red Queen. But the Red Queen comes back and Alice and the Mad Hatter are forced to flee through a portal that sends them to Earth, where Alice becomes Alice Liddell and her life story roughly (VERY ROUGHLY) follows that of the real Alice Liddell... which might pass by those who aren't familiar with her biography, even if they recognize that Lewis Carroll is in it. Then obvs she has to go back and free Wonderland and become Queen! At points I felt like the storytelling kind of got lost and fell apart before putting itself back together again and finding focus (the climactic bits, in particular, seemed like "ah well, how do I end this thing? let's just have them throw magic shit at each

[zombie_boogie]

Sounds like a fun read! Thanks for all of the detail. I appreciate an explanation of the books strengths and weaknesses, because often when people give recs they just say, "It was awesome" or "it sucked" and that isn't helpful at all. I'm on an Alice kick lately so I'll probably check this out.

[jehnt]

Oh yeah, I hate recs that don't give me enough detail. Like everyone's recs of Avatar that are like "MOST AMAZING FILM EVER OMG!" were not at all helpful as to whether or not I'd want to see it, but hearing "exactly like Pocahontas but with blue people and without singing" made it sound more tempting. Except the humans apparently lose in the end (uh, spoilers??) and I'm against any movies where humanity doesn't win, and so I don't think I shall see it quite yet because it would be awkward to be the only one in the theater arguing for the genocide of the natives.

Hmm this reminds me that I need to finish my review of SyFy's Alice. Which I found enchanting, even if I (FOR THE ONE TIME IN MY LIFE) did not ship Alice/Hatter.

[sunnyskywalker]

Temeraire is so much fun. I loved the Empire of Ivory the best, though Victory of Eagles has Temeraire pov sections which are quite cool too.