Finished: October 5, 2017
Page Count: 452
Genre: Fantasy
Woohoo! I
finally got around to reading Dorothy
Must Die by Danielle Paige and I loved it all the way through. Well, right up
until the end that it. I’m going to go ahead and warn you right now dear reader
that the book ends on the cliffhanger of the main character, Amy, failing to
kill Dorothy, but succeeding in killing the Tin Woodsman instead and also successfully
escaping from Glinda with Ozma thanks to help of the Wizard and Ollie and Maude.
I knew this was coming since when I first discovered the book lying in my
theater class eighth grade year I read to the end (though it made little
sense). Somehow I still got super upset and felt dead inside once I got to the
end though. On the bright side, the series has been finished with four books in
the main storyline and either nine or ten prequel books that I personally don’t
feel the need to read. This way, if you’re like me, you won’t feel like back
flipping through an unbreakable glass window on a million-story building, and
continuing to backflip through the air in towards the ground for all eternity
in a miserable hells. But, I digress, this is a book review, not a list of
grievances about all the great series I’ve started that are unfinished or never
continuing and tear me up inside looking at you D. Gray-Man, this is a book review and I intend on reviewing
the book.
Now I hate
to start by comparing this book to my last but, I greatly enjoyed this book
more than A Face Like Glass. Paige
tells the story in first person so it feels way more personal and less
predictable than A Face Like Glass
(not that that was predictable). I felt like Amy (the main character) was
talking to me and as if I was experiencing the story along with her. The other
thing Paige did well with her writing was describing the world of Oz and the
characters. Hardinge did a poor job with describing her characters in a
memorable and detailed way. I knew exactly what Amy, Pete, Indigo, Ollie, Glinda,
Dorothy, Gert, Mombi, Glamore, Nox, Ozma, and the Wizard looked like just to
name a few. It was wonderful, and way easier for me to imagine the story in my
head because of it.
And while I’m
at it naming off lots of the characters, some of them may seem familiar if you’ve
watched or read anything about Oz (it makes the book way more enjoyable if you
have). If it wasn’t evident by the title and other things that may have cause
you to come to this conclusion, but Dorothy
Must Die is a derivative work based on The
Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum and the book series that followed. I
love the fact that Paige has twisted all of these beloved characters and bent
them backwards into cruder, more vicious versions of themselves. That sweet and
innocent Dorothy who just wanted to go home? Now she’s a power hungry princess
that’s not afraid to kill if it’s to get what she wants. How about the
beautiful and kind witch Glinda who wanted the best for Oz? She’s Dorothy’s
right hand b*thc and is helping steer Dorothy down her path of destruction
(also, I’m pretty sure she’s the one who corrupted Dorothy in the first place).
Those two are the most drastic of the bunch, but they also maybe my favorite non-original
characters in the book. I was relieved that the development of their evil
incarnations here wasn’t rushed though, as it was explained that when Dorothy
first came back, things were okay, but slowly went from bad to worse. In
addition to that, when Amy later goes undercover as a maid in the Emerald
Palace to kill Dorothy in chapter twenty-six, we slowly get a sense of how
corrupted these characters truly are, and I must say it that section of the
story is one of the more interesting. Each character has their own motives and
their own part to play in pushing the plot forward and while some outshine the
others none can truly upstage each other and none seem out of place in a world
such as Oz. Even the main character, Amy, fits in perfectly amidst all the
colorful characters.
The
character of Amy doesn’t seem to be one of a hero at first as she lives at a
trailer park with her mother after her father left them for another woman, and
she isn’t able to make any friends. She doesn’t carry herself an air of confidence,
nor does she treat others with kindness. It’s a huge contrast with Dorothy in
the original series and the types of protagonist I normally read about, but
with this type of character, her motive of wanting to leave her home for a
better life in obvious and it matches with the later tone of the plot later on.
When Amy arrives in Oz via a tornado, her reactions are believable in her disbelief
of anything being real, her sense of ignorance, and overall sense of being lost
make her instantly relatable and I can’t help but cheering for her. None of
these traits are too generic or stale as many main characters seem to come off,
and this is further enforced by the fact that it’s written in first person (way
easier to get inside the main character’s head and learn about them, not to
mention get a different perspective on other characters). The best part is that
she doesn’t become any less realistic after joining the Revolutionary Order of
the Wicked, learning magic, or infiltrating the Emerald Palace. It just builds
upon her relationships and overall character and I couldn’t help but seem to
like her character more and more the further on I got into the book. Amy is the
number two reason I stuck with this book (number one was because Dorothy is the
villain) and the number one reason I enjoyed the book.
Amy with Star in her jacket pocket (right), Ollie (top left), Pete (middle left) and Indigo (bottom left). Set when Amy first arrives in Oz. Art by me, characters and setting not mine.
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