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A review by eesh25
Dorothy Must Die by Danielle Paige
Did not finish book.
DNF (At 65%)
I'm gonna be honest here. I only bought the book because of it's name. It sounded cool and I barely even paid attention to the blurp, much less the reviews. And while the book seemed okay enough when it started, almost nothing interesting happened.
The story follows Amy, a girl from Kansas. She gets caught up in a tornado and transported to Oz. Yeah, just like Dorothy. Except instead of ending up in a magical world where everything works on its own in the most convenient of ways, Amy is in a much duller Oz. She's gets there years after everything with Dorothy went down and finds out that Dorothy not only returned to Oz soon after going back to her aunt, she turned evil and is now the tyrannical ruler of Oz who will do anything for power.
Afterwards Amy meets a bunch of people, goes through stuff, and eventually becomes part of a plan to kill Dorothy. Why does Amy have to be the one to do it? Who the fuck knows? Which is kind of a common theme in the book. Not much of the important stuff is known.
Yes, we know who the villain is but saying that Dorothy became evil just because she got a taste for magic? You gotta give us more than that. The Dorothy from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is an innocent, personality-less girl who, through all the adventures, just wants to back to Kansas. If you want me to buy her becoming an evil dictator, I'm gonna need a lot more of an explanation that a few fucking sentences. Same for Glinda, the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman and the Lion.
This was one of my biggest problem. This is a series that has four book (as far as I know) and if, after 300 pages, I give zero fucks about the villains or the story, it's not good. That might have worked for a standalone (one that wasn't 450 pages long) but not for a series. And it's not that we haven't met the villains properly, we have. They just have no personality or menace.
But moving on to the other characters. I actually kinda liked Amy, so it's a shame that this book didn't work out. Other than her, all the other characters are generic and cliched. The too-obvious love interest, the mentor-like individual, the mean girls... And the fact that the prose lacks any grit and darkness whatsoever... It was had to stay invested and by the time I got to 300 pages, I'd been dragging myself through the book for a while. The character motivations and development (for everyone other than Amy) was next to none. So I gave up.
There are a lot of people who enjoyed this book though so I'm not gonna say you shouldn't read it. Just be prepared for a long and slow ride. Who knows? Maybe the series gets better. I'll likely never find out.
I'm gonna be honest here. I only bought the book because of it's name. It sounded cool and I barely even paid attention to the blurp, much less the reviews. And while the book seemed okay enough when it started, almost nothing interesting happened.
The story follows Amy, a girl from Kansas. She gets caught up in a tornado and transported to Oz. Yeah, just like Dorothy. Except instead of ending up in a magical world where everything works on its own in the most convenient of ways, Amy is in a much duller Oz. She's gets there years after everything with Dorothy went down and finds out that Dorothy not only returned to Oz soon after going back to her aunt, she turned evil and is now the tyrannical ruler of Oz who will do anything for power.
Afterwards Amy meets a bunch of people, goes through stuff, and eventually becomes part of a plan to kill Dorothy. Why does Amy have to be the one to do it? Who the fuck knows? Which is kind of a common theme in the book. Not much of the important stuff is known.
Yes, we know who the villain is but saying that Dorothy became evil just because she got a taste for magic? You gotta give us more than that. The Dorothy from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is an innocent, personality-less girl who, through all the adventures, just wants to back to Kansas. If you want me to buy her becoming an evil dictator, I'm gonna need a lot more of an explanation that a few fucking sentences. Same for Glinda, the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman and the Lion.
This was one of my biggest problem. This is a series that has four book (as far as I know) and if, after 300 pages, I give zero fucks about the villains or the story, it's not good. That might have worked for a standalone (one that wasn't 450 pages long) but not for a series. And it's not that we haven't met the villains properly, we have. They just have no personality or menace.
But moving on to the other characters. I actually kinda liked Amy, so it's a shame that this book didn't work out. Other than her, all the other characters are generic and cliched. The too-obvious love interest, the mentor-like individual, the mean girls... And the fact that the prose lacks any grit and darkness whatsoever... It was had to stay invested and by the time I got to 300 pages, I'd been dragging myself through the book for a while. The character motivations and development (for everyone other than Amy) was next to none. So I gave up.
There are a lot of people who enjoyed this book though so I'm not gonna say you shouldn't read it. Just be prepared for a long and slow ride. Who knows? Maybe the series gets better. I'll likely never find out.