Dorthy Must Die by Danielle Paige (Review)

Genre:	YA, Retelling, Twisted Tale
Publication Date:	April 1, 2014
Pages:	452
Published By:	Harper Collins
Series	Dorthy Must Die #1
Review copy:	Bought

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Amazon ~ B&N ~ Chapters

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.

  I had been dropped here by a tornado, and now I was standing on something that looked remarkably like a road of yellow bricks.
  This had to be some big mix-up.  Maybe Kansas had finally cashed in on the whole Dorthy thing with a theme park and the tornado had just happened to drop me here.

  This Tin Woodman was not the Tin Woodman I remembered.  By now I shouldn't have expected anything different   nothing was the way it was supposed to be in Dorthy's remade Oz.

  Or was I someone more extreme, someone  I never imagined   a killer.  A warrior.  A girl who could stab someone in the face and know that she was doing the right thing?  A girl who had strength she never even knew about?

 What a fun and unique take on what happened after the classic finished.  So often we are tied up in the before it happened or what we would have preferred to happen, to stop and think about the after.  The aftermath is quite often more interesting than we would expect.  Dorthy Must Die nailed the post Dorthy leaving Oz, and created a masterful story with the power of 'what if'.  

  There is so much to be said about the way this was written, and the way that everything pieced itself together.  There was no one moment where as a reader I paused and couldn't accept the turns that this story took.  No, this was written in such a way that as things changed and people were introduced that it was easy to accept that this was the way things had become.  Basically despite the horror that the beautiful land had become, it was easy to visualise.  This is not saying that there were some questions left hanging in the air because for me there was.  However, there is no good book in which all of the secrets are dished out in the start and it's these little things that keep us turning the pages wanting more... Right?

  Amy herself to start came off as nothing special, and not horribly notable as a character but as this book proves, things change.  Though Oz is not the one she thought she knew, or the Oz that she had hoped she landed in, it proves to be a character builder for her.  Though things were not always what they seemed with her either.  For me Amy's wanting something more became something she wanted less of, and a path to see that things can be what you want if you are willing to go for it.  This being said, she was very much a pawn in multiple games, and all in which no one really knows who the 'good guys' are.  Though I never really connected with Amy I did enjoy her.  She was smart enough to ask questions, quick enough to pick up up on things not to do but impulsive enough to be enjoyable to read.

  There was definitely a lot going on in this book, and many characters that were mentioned.  What is good about this is that Paige does not kill the book with over detailing each one, but does give enough detail to each to allow you to see them the way you need to.  With this comes some new and some old.  I loved the way that the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman and the Lion were twisted into something spectacularly horrible.  Maybe it is Dorthy's presence that causes this, but either way they are not the friendly characters we came to love in the original.  This is accented by some small surprises from other characters that kind of have always in some way been a wild card and a few new ones that add their own kick to the mix.  Nox was one of the characters that kind of stirred up the mix, but he also caused some mixed feelings that may need to be discussed in future reviews.

  Dorthy Must Die was a fast paced, well thought through twist on the post Dorthy Oz.  Can it be called post Dorthy if she found her way back?  Either way there was almost never a dull moment, and I can't wait to start The Wicked Will Rise (the only benefit of not having picked up this book before now).  Fans of Oz, twisted tales and new takes in general will surely enjoy this read!!