Rating: 
Summary: Wickedly overrated
Review: I will start by saying that I have been a huge Oz fan since childhood. I have noticed that many of my fellow Oz fans objected to the liberties MaGuire took with the original stories. Personally, I don't object to that. What I object to is that he took his liberties and gave us a mediocre product."Wicked" starts promisingly enough. The first chapter in which Ephalba, the mysterious witch-to-be, is born in Munchkinland captivated me. We then jump to when Elphaba goes to college, and the "plot" takes a jump into the garbage. Ephalba proves to be difficult to like, a self-absorbed boor who revels in her role as "outcast" and assumes a superior attitude over it. Along the way we are intoduced to Glinda, an irritating snob, Boq, a pathetic fool in love with Glinda who inexplicably becomes friends with Elphaba, and a host of other unlikable characters. The college chapter also includes simplistic diatribes against animal experimentation, trivializing a serious, complicated, real world issue. After that, things seem to happen for no other reason than the fact that they need to happen for the sake of the story. Elphaba moves in with the princess of Winkie-land. Why does she let her stay? So Elphaba can be the witch of the West of course. How nice of the princess to act irrationally for the sake of MacGuire's story. Elphaba begins sewing wings onto snow monkeys. Why does a rabid animal rights activist maim helpless monkeys? Because it moves the plot along. Glinda later becomes the witch of the North. Now, previously MacGuire had painstakingly been working every bit character from "The Wizard of Oz" into his story. Now he makes Glinda the witch of the North, like in the movie, ignoring the fact that in the book she was the witch of the South. Why does he do this? Because it moves the plot along. The overall message seems to be MaGuire whining, "She's not bad, just misunderstood." As in most cases where people try to defend criminal behavior this way, this line of "reasoning" falls flat. What is truly unforgivable, however, is that I found I really didn't care if she was evil, misunderstood, or anything else. I was just waitng for the bucket of water to fly so the story could end and I could return to my life. Overall, "Wicked" offers a promising premise, but fails to carry it out.
Rating: 
Summary: An astonishing and sophisticated fantasia on L. Frank Baum
Review: Most of the disappointed reviews of Maguire's masterwork come from people expecting this book to be something it is not--to be somehow more like the 1939 movie THE WIZARD OF OZ, or like the 14 L. Frank Baum Oz books. Maguire's novel is like neither in tone, though it was certainly inspired by both, and uses as its coordinates the Oz mythology. Maguire's Oz is very thoroughly research-based on the Oz books and yet it is much darker and more sophisticated than Baum's Oz: Maguire manages to invent complex religious, political, and sexual-social systems for his version of Baum's wonderland. The novel ingeniously uses details and unanswered questions from the previous Oz books (why are the silver shoes so desirable? how did the two witch-sisters come to be rulers in the East and the West? what was the Good Witch of the North doing in Munchkinland, in the East, when Dorothy arrived?) and along the way presents a variety of deeply involving characters: Galinda, a Gillikin beauty will grow up to be the Good Witch of the North (Maguire tantalizingly never explains how Glinda will end up in the South at the end of Dorothy's jorney in a different guise); Nessarose, the armless and fanatically religious Eminence of the East; and, at the book's center, the marvelously complex and empathetic Elphaba, who will become the both the Witch of the West and Wicked by the novel's end. You're best off reading this book if you read the Baum books when you were younger, but you're also best off understanding they're not going to be quite the same. Maguire's is a rich, deep philosophical novel about the nature of evil and of governing systems, as well as a very funny and absorbing adventure story. It deserves to be the cult classic it has become.
Rating:
Summary: Very disappointing.
Review: Being the type of person who enjoys watching the Wicked Witch of the West melt in slow motion, I thought this book would be an interesting read. It was, until I got past the first chapter on the future witch's childhood. From then on, this book became a chore to finish. It doesn't even know what type of book it wants to be: tongue and cheek, serious, political or sexual. All of these elements are thrown in for good measure. Strange dialogue and silly plot twists persist throughout the book. The horrible throw-away ending only added to my regret at not putting the book down when our heroine was sharing a room with Glinda (the soon to be Good Witch of the North,) in college. (Really.) Don't be fooled by the premise of the book, which appears to have great promise. That promise is not fulfilled. To each his own, but I'm at a loss to understand how anyone could have given this book five stars.
Rating: 
Summary: Required for an OZ fan!
Review: Being an OZ fan (I believe I've read thirteen of the fourteen OZ books written by Baum), the moment I saw Gregory Maguire's "Wicked" at a bookstore I knew I had to purchase it. Wicked's premise is this: what if the Wicked Witch of the West wasn't really so wicked and OZ wasn't as idyllic as it seemed? And what if the Wizard of OZ, in addition to being a fraud, was also a tyrant? Just what would happen to someone who joined a resistance movement against the Wizard? I found this novel interesting, although the first fifty pages contained what I considered gratuitous sexual content; stories of Elphaba's mother's sexual trysts with strangers didn't bring anything to the book, in my opinion, nor did portraying Munchkinlanders as sex-crazed heathens. Still, this book comes highly recommended from a self-confessed OZ and fantasy fan.
Rating:
Summary: BEAUTIFUL!
Review: I LOVED it!
I read Confessions... first, and I am glad I left this one for second. Now that I finished it I will miss it.
It left my mind hungry for more Maguire, more Elphaba, more OZ!
Rating:
Summary: how could you not like Wicked?
Review: how can you not like this book?... the story itself was amazing in my mind. What goes through Elphie's (her nickname) mind is what all of us think sometime or another... many questions do arise in the story, but all are answered if you are willing to stick with the story... i admit it was hard to follow in the beginning, but get through the tough stuff and you'll find an amazingly written story of The Wicked Witch Of The West. It really makes you think about good and evil and how the lines are blurred in the middle.. what makes someone good and what makes them evil, is the question that you should take away from the novel.. this novel is highly recommened by me, for the thinking mind and for those who want another perspective on OZ.
Rating:
Summary: This is a wonderful book!
Review: Gregory Maguire took the land of "Oz" that we all know and love, and turned it upside down! He did an amazing job with the characters, the plot, and the locations. It is kind of a prequel to the Wizard of Oz, this is an excellent book.
Rating:
Summary: Eternally Wicked
Review: When one first approaches, Gregory's interpretation of the life of the Wicked Witch of the West, it carrys an undeniable pull and appeal to see into the life of this most overlooked character. However instead of statisfying our curiosity as to the true nature of this woman, one still looks upon it from a detatched speculative point of view. That is to say, we only know what she did and why the reasons she does it by her own statements but Gregory never really peers into the true thoughts and mind of the 'witch', instead giving us a sort of glossed up detatched presentation of speculation. Along with taking the reader in numerous side plots that are quickly discarded in his haste to move the story along, Gregory fills Oz with real politics, racism, sex and other gratutitous things that attempt to Humanize the fabled land but only succed in making it more odd for he also approaches it in a detached way, so that it appears as if, like the main character one is putting such an odd creature in a bright pink ribbon. It simply does not fit though it's obvious it's being worn. Gregory never tells the story entirely from the main characters point of view, instead we get a second hand personalized account told in third person from someone else observing her, thus he leads us on as was stated before numerous side turns and twists and actions of the character that leave us mistified and forces the reader to figure things out on their own, but never really understanding what it is that they are doing. Just what was Elphaba doing in the Emerald City? What did she want with Madame Morrible besides the obvious? It's claimed several times that she doesn't believe in the soul, but why is this truely so? One could argue it's because of her father's ridiculous religous beliefs but that only gives a shallow, outside answer and never really delves too deep into Elphaba's own psyche. The result leaves this book an unsatisfactory odd piece of literature that never truely gives us an understanding as to who the character is and as such never changed this readers opinion of Oz. As many readers have claimed.Though one 'truely' knows what Elphaba went through, one is still left with the question as to Why? This book left this reader both unsastified and truely disgusted, this book is not a real addition and realistic approach to the Oz series but merely an unsatisfactory, poorly written book of speculation and not answers. Basically, Gregory answered our questions with a question.
Rating: 
Summary: Good, but Not Great
Review: I enjoyed this book. It takes the stories of Frank L. Baum and turns the viewpoint around. His work was from the viewpoint of a little girl from Kansas. This book shows Oz as it really is, full of politics and murder, sex and love, religious zeal and indifference. And we experience Oz from the viewpoint of Elphaba, The Witch of the West. She is truly one of the most exciting women ever written. She is sharp, smart and funny. And in the end, it is her idealism, not her evil, that is her undoing. Elphaba is an idealist and expects a lot from the people around her; she is always disappointed. But this book is not without its flaws. Maguire has the lofty ambition that this book is to be taken as Literature and so he writes lightly though out debates of good and evil, of free will and fate. His ideas are either not new or not fleshed out enough, and so these debates got in the way of the story.
Also, there were a lot of sub-plots that went nowhere: Nastoya of the Scrow seemed dropped in and then disappears; Shell is only mentioned by other characters, but has no real interactions or purpose to any story; what EXACTLY happened to Tibbett at the Philosophy Club and why did it eventually kill him; is Nick Chopper and the Tin Woodsman one and the same? Maguire seems reticient to go all the way with his darker ideas. He gets to a point of discomfort and then backs off. Some of these dangling plot lines seem to be put there so the book would not be mistaken for a children's book. Personally, I'd have preferred that if he was going to go down those plot paths to finish what he started. Otherwise, just don't bring them up. That being said, I did enjoy this book. It kept me up to 4 am a few nights. And the day I finished it, what should be on TV but "The Wizard of Oz." I tried to watch it, but I couldn't get through it. This has been my all time favorite movie, but after reading this book, it seemed so....colorless. Glinda impressed me as an idiot, the munchkins were portrayed in a condesending manner, the Wizard was too nice and grandfatherly, and the Wicked Witch of the West was too one-dimensional. I had to turn it off. Now that I know her name, I know better.
Rating:
Summary: Truly Amazing and Unique Work of Literature
Review: I just started my first year of college this fall, so I don't exactly have a lot of free time on my hands. But when a friend mentioned this book to me I was instantly intrigued. I have been a devout fan of The Wizard Of Oz for as long as I can remember, so I rushed to get a copy of this book. I think one of the reasons that I liked this book so much is because it touches on larger issues like social statuses and the existence (or appearances?) of good and evil, not just references or a retelling of classic fantasy story. Maguire really makes you think when you're reading, which is a beautiful, but extremely rare, gift.
|
