The New York Times bestselling first book in a dark new series that reimagines the Oz saga, from debut author Danielle Paige.
I didn't ask for any of this. I didn't ask to be some kind of hero. But when your whole life gets swept up by a tornado—taking you with it—you have no choice but to go along, you know?
Sure, I've read the books. I've seen the movies. I know the song about the rainbow and the happy little blue birds. But I never expected Oz to look like this. To be a place where Good Witches can't be trusted, Wicked Witches may just be the good guys, and winged monkeys can be executed for acts of rebellion. There's still a road of yellow brick—but even that's crumbling.
What happened? Dorothy. They say she found a way to come back to Oz. They say she seized power and the power went to her head. And now no one is safe.
My name is Amy Gumm—and I'm the other girl from Kansas. I've been recruited by the Revolutionary Order of the Wicked. I've been trained to fight. And I have a mission: Remove the Tin Woodman's heart. Steal the Scarecrow's brain. Take the Lion's courage. And—Dorothy must die.
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23 of 24 people found the following review helpful.
An 'oh so twisted' Oz...
By Jamie E.
I want to start off by saying that when I started this book I what I would think if it. My twisted sense of curiosity is what got the best of me on this one and I am glad it did. Lots of twisted and backwards adventure to be found here!Amy Gunn is your average girl who has been dealt a bad hadn at life. She has no friends (thanks to nasty Ms. Madison), her father left when she was young and her mom is is a druggie. She wants nothing more than to get away from her crappy trailer life. Well she gets her wish; just no how she expected it.Welcome to Oz. But not how we know it. Yes the happy movies and the book is based on what had taken place but the story didn't end there...Dorothy came back and apparently became power and magic hungry. Glinda is a horrible slave driven, the munchkins are back to living in fear worse than with the witches. The beloved Scarecrow, Tin Man and Lion are mutated and twisted into something atrocious! And many other twists await!Let me give warning: DO NOT get attached to characters. There is a fair share of death in this book. And the first one I read has me very distrustful of bubbles right now and was gross! so unpleasant death at that! You have been warned...Then we get the fun job of attempting to figure out who to trust. Everyone tells Amy to trust no one. So that sends a firm message that has me wondering through the entire book. Many characters seem to have ulterior motives and secrets. So Amy has to train and learn to fight, control magic all while wondering what is going on and why.Danielle Paige has done a great job with character creation. Nox, Glamora, and other fantastic new characters are in this book. Amy I felt could have been a bit better. I do like her with her balance of flaws and abilities but her frame of mind and willingness so early on to kill disturbed me.The ending bit a bit rushed with lots of important facts but it is just sort of hurled at the reader. Which leads to my last small annoyance: the back cover is misleading....By the end of the book she is just barely starting on the actually missions set. When I got this book I was not expecting a long series. Now I wonder how long this can be. I have no problem with a series but I prefer my summaries to cover the book not the whole series arc. There is a lot if filler in this book. While enjoyable, it was not necessary and I feel is deliberately drawing it out (much like drawing a movie into 2 parts-I don't like that either).Less those few flaws, I really enjoyed this book. A good start to a new adventure. This is for older teens-adults with some graphic scenes and behaviors. The recreated world is fun to re-explore after many years. I will assuredly be continuing the series!
54 of 63 people found the following review helpful.
Dorothy Must Die (Dorothy Must Die #1)
By Leeanna Chetsko
I like fairytale retellings a lot; I’ve read dozens and dozens. But DOROTHY MUST DIE is my first retelling of THE WIZARD OF OZ. Well, my first book retelling. I really liked Tinman, Syfy’s redo. So I was hoping for something along that line.I should have *loved* DOROTHY MUST DIE. Instead of the colorful, happy, Munchkin-filled, joyous land we remember from the movie, Oz has turned into a desolate wasteland. Glinda uses Munchkins as slave labor, mining magic from Oz so Dorothy can have it. Oh yeah -- Dorothy returned to Oz because Kansas just wasn’t good enough after her adventures. Instead of a wholesome farm girl, Dorothy’s a powermad princess, and has remade Oz in her vision. That? All good. I love that sort of stuff.But I didn’t love DOROTHY MUST DIE. It’s a book with great ideas but poor execution. It’s basically 469 pages of setup for the rest of the series. The title should be “Dorothy Almost Dies” or a “A Primer of Oz History Under Dorothy.” The beginning of the book caught my attention, the middle put me to sleep, and the end left me saying, “that’s it?”Amy, our sarcastic, unwilling hero is brought to Oz in a tornado. Even in its current condition, Oz is a step up from home, where she lives in a trailer park with her addict mother and is bullied by the popular girls at school. Amy’s an unlikely hero. When she’s rescued by a group of Wicked witches, she doesn’t take their word for it that she’s the only one who can kill Dorothy. Amy’s an okay character. She did some stupid things, which I always dislike, but I thought she also reacted realistically to the situations she got herself in.My biggest problem with DOROTHY MUST DIE is that not a lot happens. For a book of its length, there should be a *lot* more going on. As I said, the beginning was good, with lots of action. But once Amy settled in with the witches, the book took a left turn to boring. Normally I really like descriptions of training and turning someone into an assassin/hero/etc., but the author didn’t keep me interested. I kept wanting to skim to more exciting parts, but they didn’t come until the last couple of pages and then the book ends on a cliffhanger.After training, Amy infiltrates Dorothy’s palace … as a maid. So there’s another boring part, because I’m pretty sure it’s impossible to make reading about cleaning exciting. And Dorothy likes her palace to be really, really clean. I did not enjoy 100+ pages of that.DOROTHY MUST DIE is the first book in a trilogy. Usually, you want to read the first book, because it’s full of information you need for the next two books. When I finished DOROTHY MUST DIE, I really felt like I could have skipped it and jumped right into book two, if it was available.
22 of 25 people found the following review helpful.I was disappointed
By Stefani Sloma
You can also read my review on my blog Caught Read HandedWhat I thought:Alright, so the back cover of Dorothy Must Die says this: Your Mission: Remove the Tin Woodman’s heart. Steal the Scarecrow’s brain. Take the Lion’s courage. And then – Dorothy must die. Only you can make Oz a free land again.I want to start with my biggest problem with this book because it is still fresh in my mind as I’ve just finished the book – and because it is so unbelievably annoying and I can’t really get over it.Dorothy Must Die is 452 pages long – FOUR HUNDRED AND FIFTY-TWO PAGES – and other than the fact that Dorothy must die, not one of the other three things that Amy must accomplish is even mentioned in the book until the LAST EIGHT PAGES. (I’d like to go ahead and apologize for the amount of rage caps that will probably be in this review). The last eight pages, guys. This book is 452 pages, and the whole point of the book isn’t mentioned until the last eight pages?! I know I keep repeating myself, but I’m hoping if I continue to type it, it will finally make sense. (It’s not helping).This book started off pretty great. It captured my attention, and I was ready for a really great retelling of one of my favorite stories. It drew me in and got me invested in the story. And then I got bored. Like really bored. This book is probably 200 pages too long, and most of the middle section is so slowly paced that I had to just force myself through it. As Amy asks herself at least ten times, “What had I gotten myself into?” This makes me really sad because it started off making me want to read more, and then I just really didn’t care to do so. Then it picks up again in the last, like, ten pages. UM, WHAT?Let’s talk about characters, shall we? I’ll start with the ones we already know: the lion, the scarecrow, the tin man, and Dorothy. The first three are actually three of the only parts I really enjoyed about the book. They have been changed so that the gifts bestowed upon them by the Wizard are what rules them now: the lion’s courage, the scarecrow’s brain, and the tin man’s heart. Imagine this: the Lion is a huge and super muscle-y and has a jaw that he can unhinge to eat his victims; he feeds on people’s fear. Such a great idea! There’s a scene wherein you get to see him in all his glory, and it was one of the scenes in which I was genuinely engrossed. The Scarecrow injects other people’s melted down brains into his own and is a “thinker”: basically he experiments on people and winged monkeys alike. These characters are terrifying.Now, Amy. Oh, geez. She’s the main character in this book, and I find myself having finished the book and not caring enough about her to actually want to read any of the others in the series. That’s not good. She’s the type of girl that you yell at during horror movies to run, DON’T GO IN THERE, shut up! I also don’t think that her “transformation” was believable. The Revolutionary Order of the Wicked say she’s the only one who can save Oz, because she’s the first person from outside of Oz to come since Dorothy, so they train her to fight. But I just don’t see why the trust her so much. I’m sorry. There were times when she really irritated me, but other times I thought she was a pretty good narrator, especially when it came down to her moral compass and saving poor winged monkeys.One thing I did enjoy was the world building. I really enjoyed learning about magic in Oz and how Dorothy seized power (even if I didn’t like the way Dorothy was imagined). We get to interact with the residents of Oz and meet some cool, new characters. The Oz in Dorothy Must Die is dark, twisted, and scary.On the other hand, I didn’t enjoy Paige’s writing style. It is too literal. Instead of using her words to show us what is happening, she tells us. It was like I did this, so this happened. Then I did that. Also, there’s this:That was yesterday. Now it was today. (Page 251)I mean, REALLY? That’s usually how time works, thanks.I won’t even get into the romance in the novel, except to say, I didn’t believe it AT ALL. I felt no chemistry.The bottom line:I think the hype surrounding this book was a major problem. I was drawn in because of that, and I was obviously disappointed. I think if it had been executed better, it could have been a really great book. The concept behind it is fantastic, but it is too long and too literal. The blurb on the back was WAY deceiving, too. I will say that there were some pretty cool ideas, and the dark Oz in the novel is quite interesting. But there were a lot of problems that just didn’t outweigh the few good things.Also, I didn’t know until after I read it, but Dorothy Must Die is a Full Fathom Five book, and that makes me really mad and upset I bought it. If you don’t know what FFF means, this page explains it really well.I probably wouldn’t read the others in the series anyway, but now I really won’t.Rating: 4 – Eh. This is bad
