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 bluebirds. 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 yellow brick road – 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. – Goodreads
Another BookBub deal! I bought this a while back and kept passing it up in favor of other books. I finally cracked it open because payday hadn’t hit yet and I wanted to read something fantasy-ish.
Spoiler alert: I didn’t watch the Wizard of Oz until my junior year of college. My high school yearbook teacher heckled me for years when I didn’t get a glittery red shoe joke, so he was very proud when I emailed him out of the blue and let him know I watched a terrible movie about flying monkeys and munchkins for a film class.
This is a Wizard of Oz retelling (if the description didn’t make that clear or you TLDR’d it). Amy is the other girl from Kansas—though transported in a similar fashion, she arrives in Oz and realizes that the Oz she’s landed in is much different than the one she’s learned about in stories. Murder, magic theft, ridiculous laws—Dorothy has turned into a psychopathic power hungry control freak.
I loved the tone of the story—I was constantly cracking up. It definitely had an air of satire and sarcasm, which I really enjoyed.
“Energy crackled between us, and I felt a strange pull to him. Moth to flame. Magnet to magnet. Stupid girl to impossible, slightly mean witch boy. Wizard. Whatever.”
Every time I read the words ‘witch boy’ I cracked up. I’m going to start calling Harry Potter a witch boy.
I digress.
The worldbuilding was great, though I suspect it was partly because I visualized what I already knew about Oz. The yellow brick road, the Emerald City, the creepy ass flying monkeys, Dorothy, Glinda. That’s okay, though.
I also enjoyed most of the characters, though I felt that most of them fell flat. I wasn’t terribly invested in many of them. Even Amy was a little bit dull (which was the point of her character, I get that).
This book was one of those weird reads where I read, read, read and thought, I’m going to stop and DNF soon. And then I hit 97% and was shocked.
In all, I’d rate this a 3/5. If you’re super into Oz, pick it up.
lifebetweenreads.com 