One of my favourite things about this book was the unrelenting action. There were some introspective bits where Amy questioned what was happening or reflected on the future or whatever, but yeah. Mostly it was all about shit happening. All. The flipping. Time. It made for a wild ride but still managed to remain totally readable.
I thought Amy was a great character. She had a lot of crap thrown at her over the course of the book and she proved herself to be a real fighter and I loved hearing her narrative of the events and speculation about who to trust.
I liked Amy’s relationship with Nox and I thought it was nice and slow-burning, not rushed at all. I especially liked how all the Wicked witches were fussing around them, all ‘Tra la la, lets push Amy and Nox together and get them to fall in love’, while Amy and Nox were like, ‘No way’. Very amusing. At one point, I thought there was a love triangle forming and I started to get a bit twitchy. This was a book with so much action, why muck about and try to shoehorn in extra romantic action on the side? Anyway, my fears were unfounded. Not to be a Spoily McSpoilerson, but I don’t think it’s turning into a love triangle.
I had trouble adjusting to the mindset of hating Dorothy, I have to say. The Wizard of Oz was one of my favourite films when I was little and I kept picturing Dorothy as a young Judy Garland, which didn’t really mesh with Amy’s description of the tarted-up, bosom-heaving, slit-skirted Dorothy that now ruled over Oz. I don’t think it was that the author described Dorothy badly - it’s more that I just couldn’t get my head around the new Dorothy. I was never sure why Dorothy had turned so evil from being portrayed as so selfless and lovely in popular literature - was it really a case of the story-book Dorothy being wildly misrepresented, or was it the old adage that absolute power corrupts absolutely? It was such a massive change for her as a character. Maybe the whole back story is going to be revealed in future books.
There have been a lot of fairy-tale retellings over the last few years and they vary wildly in quality. I would say that Dorothy Must Die is definitely one of the better ones. I’ll definitely be carrying on with the series.
4 stars