Dorothy Must Die by Danielle Paige: Villains Week

Dorothy Must Die is an amazing book by Danielle Paige and is my first post for Villains Week!

This book is one of the weirder classics remixes that I've read: the concept is that Dorothy, instead of going happily home to Kansas, returned to Oz, hungry for power. Becoming princess, she's changed Oz for the worse... the Good are now wicked, and the Wicked are good. Or are they?

Amy Gumm is the Other Girl from Kansas, arriving in Oz also via tornado. As she moves towards the Emerald City, she learns terrifying things about Dorothy's new regime and is recruited by the Revolutionary Order of the Wicked on a mission: kill Dorothy. But who's really Good? Who's really Wicked? Where should Amy stand?

Definitely a teen book with some unpleasantly graphic descriptions of the violence, magical and otherwise, of the evils of Dorothy and her sidekicks, plus some unnecessarily inappropriate references.

However, I do kind of like the plot twists and worldbuilding here. I've read The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and while I can't say I think L. Frank Baum would agree with this book, he might chuckle at it or at least be interested. With the total reversal of Good and Wicked, you never know who the villains are. The characters, too, are interesting, definitely dynamic. Indigo with her tattoos, Jellia, Maude and Ollie, and the Revolutionary Order of the Wicked too, they all are people I want to know better, to find out what happens to them.

I'd say three stars for the excellence with characters and plot, although the theme is definitely not my style. It's certainly memorable in that I will never see Dorothy or Oz the same way again!

Three stars

Happy reading!

~Citali