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thebookberrie 's review for:
Dorothy Must Die
by Danielle Paige
Actual rating: 3.5 stars
Everyone knows the story of The Wizard of Oz: Good and Wicked witches, munchkins, yellow brick roads and all that jazz. Well this Oz has all that but is just a little bit different.
This book started off with a bang, with Amy Gumm getting swept off to Oz on a tornado, after being bullied by silly schoolmates. Dropped right into a dark and twisty Burten-esque Oz, Amy meets some strange characters and a very messed up Oz. Apparently after the famous Dorothy left, she came back - and got hungry for power and magic. With the land decaying from being drained for magic and citizens being strung up for just for sass, Amy has no idea who to trust or what to do. Soon she is recruited by the Revolutionary Order of the Wicked and given a task that only she, as another girl from Kansas can do: to kill Dorothy.
From the start, I loved Amy and her pink hair. Even though her home life was less than ideal, with her junkie mother and trailer park home; she was honest and real. She wasn't a push-over and was willing to train to save a world she wasn't even from.
Dorothy and all her twisted friends were interesting as well. I loved how Glinda, the Tin Man, the Lion, and the Scarecrow all took a turn for the worst - and that Wicked wasn't really all that bad around here. I wasn't a fan of Dorothy, and not in the way I should have not liked her. I love a good villain, I really do but Dorothy was not a good villain. She was mostly just a loud narcissistic who loved to look pretty and kill people for little reason. Just saying: what the Scarecrow was up to was very creepy and just fantastic.
I also really loved the plight of the Wingless Ones, I can't wait to have more of them in the sequels.
One thing I didn't love though was the pacing. After Amy joined with the Wicked witches, she has to be trained. I get that; she has a long way to go from average teenager to teen assassin.... but it just dragged on and on with tea parties and magic lessons and not much else for the longest time. I felt like she wasn't even accomplishing anything until she could just do all the magic. Then even after she was finally done training, more slowness happened. She goes undercover in Dorothy's palace and does servant work, until finally things start to speed up to an ending that isn't even an ending. It's a wide opening for the next books in the trilogy!
And here is a another gripe: the romance. There wasn't that much of it but when there was, I was annoyed. I'm talking quick and instalovey. I just did not get her attraction to Nox, at all. They train and then suddenly Amy starts talking about them having a connection, after getting jealous of another girl of course. Just no. With all the training and the task Amy has to do like I don't know, murdering an evil tyrant, there shouldn't have been time to waste mooning over some boy. One that was kind of flat in the character area as well. I just finished this book today and if you asked me what he even looked like in just a few hours, I would not remember. BUT the love triangle that I thought was being set up didn't turn out how I thought so kudos!
Yet another problem I had was the amount of unnecessary character deaths. You barely get to know some characters before they get killed... Or they just disappear for a while before reappearing. I'm mostly talking about Amy's pet rat! Did Amy ever feed that poor thing either?
Also a little bit of false advertising on the back of the book, even though it was one of the reasons I was really excited for this book:
"Your mission:
Remove the Tin Woodman's heart.
Steal the Scarecrow's brain.
Take the Lion's courage.
And then -
Dorothy Must Die."
First off, none of that was even a task set out for Amy until the very end. The very very end. Like the last three pages! Also not even a spoiler, Dorothy does not die.
The whole book kind of reads like a prequel to the next one really, which is sure to be awesome now that the lengthy first-book-in-a-trilogy stuff is done. (I hope.)
Everyone knows the story of The Wizard of Oz: Good and Wicked witches, munchkins, yellow brick roads and all that jazz. Well this Oz has all that but is just a little bit different.
This book started off with a bang, with Amy Gumm getting swept off to Oz on a tornado, after being bullied by silly schoolmates. Dropped right into a dark and twisty Burten-esque Oz, Amy meets some strange characters and a very messed up Oz. Apparently after the famous Dorothy left, she came back - and got hungry for power and magic. With the land decaying from being drained for magic and citizens being strung up for just for sass, Amy has no idea who to trust or what to do. Soon she is recruited by the Revolutionary Order of the Wicked and given a task that only she, as another girl from Kansas can do: to kill Dorothy.
From the start, I loved Amy and her pink hair. Even though her home life was less than ideal, with her junkie mother and trailer park home; she was honest and real. She wasn't a push-over and was willing to train to save a world she wasn't even from.
Dorothy and all her twisted friends were interesting as well. I loved how Glinda, the Tin Man, the Lion, and the Scarecrow all took a turn for the worst - and that Wicked wasn't really all that bad around here. I wasn't a fan of Dorothy, and not in the way I should have not liked her. I love a good villain, I really do but Dorothy was not a good villain. She was mostly just a loud narcissistic who loved to look pretty and kill people for little reason. Just saying: what the Scarecrow was up to was very creepy and just fantastic.
I also really loved the plight of the Wingless Ones, I can't wait to have more of them in the sequels.
One thing I didn't love though was the pacing. After Amy joined with the Wicked witches, she has to be trained. I get that; she has a long way to go from average teenager to teen assassin.... but it just dragged on and on with tea parties and magic lessons and not much else for the longest time. I felt like she wasn't even accomplishing anything until she could just do all the magic. Then even after she was finally done training, more slowness happened. She goes undercover in Dorothy's palace and does servant work, until finally things start to speed up to an ending that isn't even an ending. It's a wide opening for the next books in the trilogy!
And here is a another gripe: the romance. There wasn't that much of it but when there was, I was annoyed. I'm talking quick and instalovey. I just did not get her attraction to Nox, at all. They train and then suddenly Amy starts talking about them having a connection, after getting jealous of another girl of course. Just no. With all the training and the task Amy has to do like I don't know, murdering an evil tyrant, there shouldn't have been time to waste mooning over some boy. One that was kind of flat in the character area as well. I just finished this book today and if you asked me what he even looked like in just a few hours, I would not remember. BUT the love triangle that I thought was being set up didn't turn out how I thought so kudos!
Yet another problem I had was the amount of unnecessary character deaths. You barely get to know some characters before they get killed... Or they just disappear for a while before reappearing. I'm mostly talking about Amy's pet rat! Did Amy ever feed that poor thing either?
Also a little bit of false advertising on the back of the book, even though it was one of the reasons I was really excited for this book:
"Your mission:
Remove the Tin Woodman's heart.
Steal the Scarecrow's brain.
Take the Lion's courage.
And then -
Dorothy Must Die."
First off, none of that was even a task set out for Amy until the very end. The very very end. Like the last three pages! Also not even a spoiler, Dorothy does not die.
The whole book kind of reads like a prequel to the next one really, which is sure to be awesome now that the lengthy first-book-in-a-trilogy stuff is done. (I hope.)