She gets bullied into joining the revolution, she gets bullied for being rubbish at training in the beginning (like, wow, you're a teenager from a world in which you don't have to defend yourself from anything more serious than a high school shoving contest, why aren't you the uber warrior we need?!), she gets bullied for not being the hard as nails, nothing before the cause soldier that she was kind of forced into training to be. Our narrator and main character gets bullied from page one and that pretty much goes on throughout the book. Several other things bothered me about this book as well. To be fair, I have just noticed today that there is a prequel novella available for the Kindle on Amazon which may answer some of these question. There's a hint that she developed an addiction to magic, but her becoming a sort of magical junkie doesn't fully explain the depths of corruption and sadism to which Dorothy has sunk. It's suggested throughout the book that the Oz books we know and love weren't wrong, that everything did happen that way and that Dorothy used to be good and has changed. What never gets explained satisfactorily is why. You learn early on that, surprise! Dorothy and cohorts are now the evil rulers of Oz. Since there are apparently going to be sequels to this book, I realize you can't spill all the beans straight off, but at the end of this book my knowledge of how Oz came to such a pass is still pretty negligible.
There are a lot of interesting concepts going on in this book, but I didn't really feel like any of them were fully realized or explained. I found this one to be a rather mixed bag. So if that bothers you, consider carefully before you buy. Another small warning if you're buying this for your kid - while this appears to be firmly in YA territory, be aware that there are several bloody bits and language that would get a movie rated R. While it doesn't exactly end in what I would term a cliffhanger, the conclusion raises a lot more questions than it answers and the main character narrating the story puts it right out there that it's not over. Interesting concepts, lacking in the executionįirst off, if you're looking for a 100% standalone novel, this is not it.
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