A teenage girl from Kansas and her pet are swept up in a tornado and deposited in a magical land where, along with a band of misfits, she’s tasked with saving the world from an all-encompassing evil. That’s the story we’ve all heard for almost a century, complete with several retellings and iconic music pieces. But what happened afterward to the land over the rainbow? Dorothy Must Die turns the story of Oz on its ear by showing what happened to the magical land of emerald cities and yellow bricks after it was saved by the girl in the gingham dress.

In Dorothy Must Die, we’re introduced to Amy Gumm, a Kansas teen who’s bullied at school and lives in a trailer with her alcoholic, pill-addicted mother and her pet rat. Thoroughly displeased with her life, she wishes for something—anything—to get her out of there, and her wish is granted when a violent tornado whisks her to the mythical land of Oz. However, this isn’t the same Oz as the movie; the Yellow Brick Road is crumbled and dilapidated, the Munchkins have been nearly wiped out, and the Good Witch Glinda harvests magic from the very ground they walk on in the name of the Princess of Oz, Dorothy Gale. Shortly after her arrival, Amy is recruited by the Revolutionary Order of the Wicked, a resistance group of the lands remaining Wicked Witches: the green-skinned Mombi; Glinda’s twin sister, Glamora; the enigmatic and wise Gert; and the mysterious warlock/warrior, Nox. With Amy in their ranks, the Revolutionary Order has only one mission: Kill Dorothy Gale.

Danielle Paige leans heavily into L. Frank Baum’s books while crafting her post-apocalyptic fantasyland, and her alternate take on Oz follow decades after Ozma of Oz when Dorothy returns to the Land of Oz for good. I like her inverted take on the original heroes: The Scarecrow has become a brain harvesting mad scientist; the Lion is now a bully who derives strength from the fear of others; the Tin Woodman is the zealot enforcer of Dorothy’s reign, his heart allowing him to fall in love with her. Even Toto has become bloodthirsty and vicious. The character corruptions make for a fun dynamic, as none of these characters are what you remember. Amy Gumm is a solid and capable lead as she represents the reader’s confusion and wonder with this unrecognizable Land of Oz, even in—possibly because of—its ruined state.

The downside is that Amy is 15 years old. She hasn’t mastered control of her emotions, despite her insistence that she has; she’s in denial of her insecurities, though they are numerous; and she spends far more time trying to decide how she feels about the “cute boy” than I was personally interested in. Additionally, it’s frustrating to be in the head (via first-person) of a character who makes bad decisions at inopportune times for no good reason. She had several chances during the middle and tail end of the book to accomplish her titular mission but fails to execute, and it’s not as if a concrete reason is given. Lastly, the steps needed for her to actually do what she set out to do—kill Dorothy—aren’t revealed to her until the end. While this makes a great cliffhanger and sets up the next book in the series, it makes it harder to enjoy the book on its own merits.

I did enjoy Dorothy Must Die, though, and despite a few tropey YA issues—and I’m not a big fan of YA novels—I’m going to pick up the next book in the series.

Pros: Wonderful interpretation and inversion of classic Oz characters; well-paced story and intricately detailed setting; strong female lead

Cons: YA tropes abound (world rests on teenager’s shoulders, attraction to the brooding and mysterious opposite sex character, etc.); lousy decision making of lead character

Rating: 3.5 of 5 stars.

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