Dorothy Must Die by Danielle Paige was one of my most anticipated reads of the season. I read and loved the prequel – No Place Like Oz – and indeed my desire to read Dorothy Must Die sent me into a reading slump for a while as nothing else hit the spot. Having read it, I can say that, while there was a lot to enjoy about Dorothy Must Die it didn’t quite live up to my anticipation. What I liked The protagonist. I really liked our protagonist, Amy Gumm, and enjoyed following her journey. She is a strong, kick-ass heroine, yet is dealing with her own internal demons and has her own buttons that can be pressed. Coming from Kansas as she does, she is the reader’s inroad to Dorothy’s Oz. Many parallels are drawn between Amy and Dorothy; both are originally from Kansas, both were feeling trapped in their mundane lives with little escape from their farm/small town before their arrival in Oz. Both are sensitive to the magic that is all around in Oz. The worldbuilding. While it’s fair to say that L. Frank Baum did a lot of the heavy lifting in his creation of the…
Dorothy Must Die by Danielle Paige was one of my most anticipated reads of the season. I read and loved the prequel – No Place Like Oz – and indeed my desire to read Dorothy Must Die sent me into a reading slump for a while as nothing else hit the spot. Having read it, I can say that, while there was a lot to enjoy about Dorothy Must Die it didn’t quite live up to my anticipation. What I liked The protagonist. I really liked our protagonist, Amy Gumm, and enjoyed following her journey. She is a strong, kick-ass heroine, yet is dealing with her own internal demons and has her own buttons that can be pressed. Coming from Kansas as she does, she is the reader’s inroad to Dorothy’s Oz. Many parallels are drawn between Amy and Dorothy; both are originally from Kansas, both were feeling trapped in their mundane lives with little escape from their farm/small town before their arrival in Oz. Both are sensitive to the magic that is all around in Oz. The worldbuilding. While it’s fair to say that L. Frank Baum did a lot of the heavy lifting in his creation of the…
Altered by Gennifer Albin is the second in the Crewel World series of YA novels which tells the story of Adelice, a young woman of Arras with the skill to manipulate the weave of life itself. At the end of Crewel we were left with a real cliffhanger – Adelice had just broken out of the control of the Guild and escaped to Earth where a whole new set of challenges await her. While there was a lot I liked about Altered I didn’t find it as gripping a read as Crewel. I didn’t feel it lived up to the promise of that punch of a climax to book one. I found I really missed Arras and Earth wasn’t as interesting a setting. This is the second book in a trilogy and like many, it suffers from middle book syndrome. A lot of time is devoted to setup for the finale of the series with the discussion of the skill of altering, the flip side of the coin to what Adelice can do, and yet for me it was still not exactly clear what the difference is between altering and weaving. The end goal for the series is setup and…
Altered by Gennifer Albin is the second in the Crewel World series of YA novels which tells the story of Adelice, a young woman of Arras with the skill to manipulate the weave of life itself. At the end of Crewel we were left with a real cliffhanger – Adelice had just broken out of the control of the Guild and escaped to Earth where a whole new set of challenges await her. While there was a lot I liked about Altered I didn’t find it as gripping a read as Crewel. I didn’t feel it lived up to the promise of that punch of a climax to book one. I found I really missed Arras and Earth wasn’t as interesting a setting. This is the second book in a trilogy and like many, it suffers from middle book syndrome. A lot of time is devoted to setup for the finale of the series with the discussion of the skill of altering, the flip side of the coin to what Adelice can do, and yet for me it was still not exactly clear what the difference is between altering and weaving. The end goal for the series is setup and…