Dorothy Must Die

A small disclaimer at the start: I am not that familiar with the original Oz stories. I have learned some snippets from the recent movie about Judy Garland and -strangely- You and saw the musical The Wiz during lockdown but I am in no position to catch all the references in this work, so I have purely looked at the story as such and my enjoyment of that.

The main point of this book is clearly given in the title: Dorothy Must Die. It will come as no surprise then that something’s rotten in the state of Denmark Oz, and that thing is Dorothy. It makes a nice premise, but also leaves little for the reader to guess as to what is going on.

Unfortunately, while Dorothy could have had the possibility of being bad for the right reasons or at least a more layered kind of evil, this didn’t happen and Dorothy probably just read ‘Evil for Dummies’ before she took over Oz. The new MC is also swept away from Kansas and almost immediately becomes the one thing that could save everyone. While I thought she was not much special as characters come, I was mostly disappointed in Dorothy.

Maybe nice for big fans of everything Oz, but not really for me.