Back in March I read a book called The Looking Glass Wars. I enjoyed it enough to pick up the sequel, Seeing Redd.
We are back in Wonderland, and its been… well, some short period of time since the end of the first book. The book uses “lunar cycles” to measure time, but its unclear if a lunar cycle in Wonderland is the same as one on Earth, but I suspect it isn’t. Here on Earth, a lunar cycle means from full moon to full moon (or new moon to new moon, if you wish), which runs about a month. In Wonderland, I am guessing that its much shorter, perhaps that the author might in fact mean just one day, as is the moon comes up and then the moon goes down. In some places the book says its been a full lunar cycle, and you can easily imagine a month having gone by, yet in other places when an urgent task is required to be done in two or three lunar cycles… well, would waiting two or three months really make the task urgent?
In any event, the book keeps with that same similar style from the first book where things are said but not explained, which is good that the book isn’t bogged down with explaining exactly what an orb generator or a scorpspitter is, and yet, given the way that I read books, constructing the world in my imagination, without details I’m left to fill in the gaps myself, or just to have gaps. Filling in the gaps myself often leads me to having to revise my image of something later when a new detail does emerge, which then causes me a little confusion concerning earlier events…
Despite those issues (which might be my issues alone), the book still reads well. It moves along at a good clip, hits the high parts and delivers a decent punch. I enjoyed it.