Book review: Seeing the evil side of Oz

Five out of Five Stars

By Chloe Gregg
Associate Editor

“Dorothy Must Die” is a four-book series by Danielle Paige about a teen girl named Amy Gumm, who gets thrown into the insane world of Oz after a tornado lifts her trailer home.

This story does not depict the utopian-like Oz we all know and love, but a dystopian and apocalyptic Oz where Dorothy is the evil, greedy bad guy who has sucked all the power out of the land.

Amy is discovered by a league of witches called the Wickeds. The Wickeds train Amy to kill Dorothy and Dorothy’s henchmen: the Tinman, the Scarecrow, the Lion and Glinda. Their hope is that once they are all dead and/or handicapped, Oz will return to how it once was.

These books are extremely gripping. I went through three books in less than a week and even after finishing the series, I still crave more. (Lucky me; the author has released side stories from the same world.)

This series did a phenomenal job with all of the magical action scenes within the books. Many times Amy has to go against the bad guys, and she can seriously hold her own.

The book introduces a lot of really cool magic, too, like shadow-shifting to go from one side of the battle to the next, among other ones.

The best part about this series, in my opinion, is all the characters included from the original stories of Oz. Yes, there are munchkins, and Dorothy really does wear ruby Mary Janes. And there are even flying, talking monkeys!

I highly recommend taking on this series. You won’t regret it!