** spoiler alert ** I began the last book of Frank Beddor’s The Looking Glass Wars trilogy with some trepidation. Final books in trilogies are notorious for failing to match the pace and excitement of the previous texts, and I worried that this would be the case here as well. I did find that ArchEnemy suffered from end of series-itis, but not in a terminal sense. Beddor’s book continues to build on the world he has created, and ambitiously addresses the social and political struggles of those who occupy it. Although ambitious, however, the story presents these struggles in a way that doesn’t highlight why they are wrong, only that they are. While this might be acceptable in a work of fiction written for adults, I am concerned that it is perhaps too ambiguous in a text written for young adults, who need more explicit and concrete explanations—but more on this later.
The book begins where Seeing Redd ends and follows three storylines in a broad fashion: Alyss and Dodge; Hatter and Molly; and Arch and Redd. Each of these three pairs has major unresolved issues that are used by the oracles of Wonderland, the caterpillars, toward a mysterious end. The oracles have a mission all their own and, since they can see the future, they appear especially manipulative and self-serving in this book. But this series has a lot to do with trust, and even when Alyss and her friends misplace their trust in one individual, other friends step into the breach to protect her and the court, and Alyss chooses to believe that the caterpillars are on her side.
There remains a major unresolved issue from Seeing Redd: All the imaginationists lost their abilities after the explosion of the bomb planted by King Arch, and it is unknown if anyone will regain their talents. The Club family, who has long targeted the Hearts, takes this opportunity to hold rallies and meetings to speak out against the imaginationists: the architects, artists, scientists, and other talented individuals in Wonderland. Alyss is mystified by this behavior; she can’t understand why the members of her populace would turn against her and those who represent the creative energy of the kingdom. Perhaps more ominous, the Clubs have begun to gather up the imaginationists and relocate them by force to ghetto-like tenements called ‘limbo coops.’ Alyss doesn’t have any proof, however, that the Clubs are directly behind what is happening, so she and a very worried Dodge attend a rally in disguise to collect the evidence necessary to prosecute those responsible. Dodge’s worst fears are realized when Alyss is recognized, but they are saved by a transport of imaginationists headed towards the coops; although the imaginationists are being deprived of their legal rights and forced to live in unacceptable conditions on Club lands, they are not a group without power, and they give Alyss the good news that they are recovering from damage caused by WILMA. Imagination is returning to Wonderland.
Meanwhile, Hatter and Molly are trying to cope with Weaver’s death and Molly’s accidental detonation of the WILMA device. Hatter is a warrior, and has given his life to the protection of the Heart family; he doesn’t know how to be a father to a teenage daughter, much less to one who is suffering on so many levels. But Wonderland is being attacked by Arch, who is well aware that both Alyss and Redd are without their powers, and the king is determined to punish both Hatter and Molly. Hatter decides that he has lost too much; he is willing to surrender his life in defense of the queen, but not his daughter’s. He decides to take Molly to the only place he deems safe enough: To the Reverend Dodgson, the only person Hatter knows who is aware of Wonderland and will recognize potential attacks on his daughter. He leaves Molly on Earth, angry and surly about this second abandonment, but she eventually begins to use the time productively.
At the same time, the reader begins to learn more about Redd and her youth. When she was a wild young woman, causing her parents great concern for her eligibility to rule Wonderland, she was spending that time with Arch. Her original quest to gain her throne creates a situation in which she “envision[s:] a future with” Arch, “cavorting as they pleased while she ruled Wonderland and he Borderland, an enviable power couple if there ever was” (115). Her temporary return to power during Seeing Redd has her revisiting those feelings, and desiring an equal to share her life with. Arch, however, is a misogynist who sees women as things, and his only interest in Redd lies in her position as queen of Wonderland; without a throne and her powers she is merely a woman, and not a threat in any sense. But his arrogance about the success of his machine and excessive pride in his intelligence also causes him to underestimate WILMA’s success or the extent of Redd’s madness. This final betrayal by a man she sees as her equal at first drives her to attack him, and then flee to lick her wounds in defeat. This experience causes her to see any “sentimentality,” no matter the degree, as “the most dangerous weakness of all” and she fully completes her descent into madness (117). At this point she will do or promise anything to restore her crown and her position to power, especially after she begins to recover her imagination. Arch now has two Heart women as his enemies, and his certainty in complete success foreshadows his downfall.
The state of the political environment of Wonderland seems to be the biggest concern in this book, which is clear from the outset with Alyss’ need to travel in disguise to the rallies planned by the Clubs family. Alyss makes it clear that the civil rights of her people must be protected, even if “we don’t like what they’ve gathered to hear” (33). When she begins to feel doubt about the decisions she has made in the course of her reign Dodge must remind her that Wonderlanders are, by virtue of the differences in imagination, not equal in ability and “ll [she:] can do is try to make it so [all Wonderlanders are:] equal in rights—subject to the same laws and afforded the same fundamental opportunities” (119). The Clubs, meanwhile, are determined to deprive the Imaginationists of their freedom and to move them into tenements and restrict their movements. King Arch isn’t faring any better; as soon as he successfully invades Wonderland the tribes he has managed by “antagonizing them against one another to prevent their banding together against him” begin to behave like the nearsighted, greedy populace he has trained them to be (149). And above all of these political systems are the maneuverings of the caterpillars, who can see the possible futures and have political goals of their own. Ironically, Redd and Alyss are united in protecting imagination from Arch and the Clubs, and they align themselves with the caterpillars, who they hope are also on the side of imagination.
Imagination, and the differences between those who possess or lack it, also lies at the heart of the book. Early in the story it becomes evident that the instability of the last fifteen years has been difficult for the Imaginationists of the queendom, and thy are now beginning to believe “imagination causes more problems than it solves” (102). But Alyss has already had to address this issue: In Seeing Redd she realizes that imagination isn’t in itself good or evil; rather, it is up to those who have imagination to choose how they are going to use their ability. The green caterpillar tries to explain this to Redd in ArchEnemy when he says, “It is supposed that power corrupts…[y:]et the powerful are often corrupt before they are powerful” (95). Despite her ongoing dispute with her niece about the succession to Wonderland’s throne, Redd, too, recognizes that “a world with imagination is better than a world without it,” but her final descent into madness prevents her from applying the wisdom she has been given and allows her temporary truce with Alyss to be only for the purposes of defeating Arch—she fully intends to attack her niece afterwards in order to regain possession of the Heart Crystal and with it control of the imagination in Wonderland (187). The conclusion of the book, which revolves around the establishment of the Everqueen, makes it so that no one group of Wonderlanders (or a single individual, for that matter) can control imagination: “Some shall be born with much imagination, others little” but “Everqueen can never be destroyed, or the inspiration she provides lessened” (363).
Although I enjoyed the story greatly, I do have some concerns about how it has been constructed. One of the biggest issues I encountered was with the structure of the book, which felt like three smaller books shuffled into one. Beddor rotates his short chapters between characters in an almost predictable pattern that sometimes interferes with the enjoyment of the story and makes it feel fractured; as soon as one storyline gains momentum he ends the chapter and carries on with another storyline. While this may be a deliberate strategy to help younger readers manage the scope of the story, I know it caused me issues with remembering the order of events, and that it would, likewise, be problematic for a younger audience. I feel the book would have benefited from some judicious blending and some page breaks, rather than a new chapter every time the perspective changes.
Another concern I have with the overall story is the treatment of the Imaginationists by the Clubs. Early in the story the reader learns that this minority population is being gathered at gun point by soldiers and forcibly relocated to specially designed concentration camp-like areas where soldiers patrol the borders on foot and from guard towers. Families are often scattered and forced to live in squalid conditions with little food or comfort; at one point a Club soldier breaks up a dispute telling the involved parties that they are not allowed to kill each other, “[y:]ou leave the killing to us” (25). All of these descriptions are powerful reminders of historical events (German concentration camps throughout Europe, Japanese internment camps in the United States) but there is very little discussion within the story about the human rights violations or the human cost of what is happening. The camps exist only as the location where the Imaginationists have been taken and in the context of Alyss’ time gathering support from them, and I feel they are a subject that could have been expanded upon. Given the strongly political tone of the book, it is disturbing to be that greater emphasis was not placed on the criminal nature of the rights violations.
Despite the concerns I have with the text, which I admit are more in the way of curiosities and mild annoyances, I enjoyed this book. I wish the story had been of the same depth of the first book, which was more complex and created a unique and thriving world. Also, the dustcover of the book seems to indicate that Alyss will be travelling to Earth in the first part of the book, which I was looking forward to because Alyss’ departure in the first book was abrupt and left some questions, but her return doesn’t happen until nearly the end of the story. The finish of the story is consistent with the rest of the series, however, and although the creation of the Everqueen is somewhat anticlimactic and rushed, the major characters that support Alyss all end well.