Well, I have always had rather a soft spot for good old Alice, and having watched and enjoyed the re-imagining that was Tim Burton’s movie earlier this year, I was really up for having a punt at Frank Beddor’s The Looking Glass Wars.

So Alyss is being trained to become Queen of Wonderland after a period of horrendous civil war which saw her parents defeat her wicked Aunt Redd. Things go totally pear-shaped on her birthday and she is forced to flee to our world in order to save herself. There she becomes Alice and tells her story to Charles Dodgson who uses it as the basis for the books we know and love.

But can Alice really find happiness in the arms of Prince Leopold or will her destiny reclaim her?

Well, we all know what’s going to happen here.

I thought I would probably like this but wasn’t prepared for how much I would love it and how quickly I would read it. I loved playing spot the character: some of them pretty straightforward correlations to our Alice (Hatter M being the most wonderful to my mind) but others a little more difficult to fathom.

I liked the conceit of Alice being a foundling brought into the Liddell’s home and how no-one believes her fantastic tales, so much so that she begins to doubt them herself as she grows older. I loved the idea of her becoming Queen Victoria’s daughter-in-law. I loved how she got here and how she gets back. And I adored the monstrous figure that is Redd and the havoc that she unleashes.

And then, of course, there is the violence…..

I enjoyed it so much that I now have the two sequels and the first of the Hatter M graphic novels, and will indulge myself at a suitable point.

Really very clever indeed.