Rating: 
Summary: Great setup, but missteps in final chapter derail the book
Review: I think everyone in my book group wanted to say that they liked the book. It was entertaining, interesting and engaging. We all knew how the story would end, but enjoyed reading how Ephalba (the Wicked Witch) gets to her confrontation with Dorothy in a different way than one would expect. Ephalba goes through many transformations, from outcast to sister to student to animal rights activist to the convent and potential motherhood, all the while questioning her humanity and soul. We see glimpses of her life in seven year intervals up to her final battle with Dorothy.While the book introduces many fascinating events and topics that link it to the Wizard of Oz, ultimately it unravels in the final chapter and leaves the reader with too many unanswered questions. The Cowardly Lion is explained by creating a world where some Animals can speak, but are having their rights taken away day by day. Treating these sentient animals as second-class citizens gives Ephalba her main motivation to create trouble. Yet this plot line goes nowhere in the final chapter. We are led to believe that the social unrest surrounding the treatment of Animals will figure prominently in the final act, but it does not. Glinda's role, the ruby slippers, the flying monkeys and Ephalba's "evil", erratic behavior are also explained away using contrivances that derail the story. Maguire uses an interesting plot device to explain the scarecrow (he is a totem created by the townspeople), yet he drops this potentially powerful symbol as the climax resolves. I would still recommend this book to others because the setup is so interesting, but it could have been much more.
Rating: 
Summary: Wicked is exactly that!
Review: This book was very excellent. I am an Oz fan, and it took me about 50 pages to get out of that mind set that every Oz fantasy puts you in. That simplistic, everything is wonderful, no one ever dies mind set. Once I did that, I found myself thouroughly pulled into the tale. It is explained in terms of realism, as if these things really happened, and gives explanations as to why they happened. Why is the witch the way she is, why is the wizard like he is, etc. It is done in a very excellent way. This is by no means at all a childs book, as it tends to be graphic at times, and I do not reccomend it for any child. Murder in the land of OZ?...Can it be? It can when people can die in Oz, just like in the real world. My only problem with this book, is that I found the end to come quickly. The last few years of the witches life came too quickly, and I wanted more explained, but alas, we don't always get what we want. I recommend this book to anyone that wants to wonder why the witch is wicked?...or is she wicked at all?
Rating: 
Summary: In brief...
Review: I struggled for quite awhile to figure out how to describe this book to my friends and explain why I loved it so without rambling on and on like I am starting to do now.... It's like a near-perfect marriage of the styles of John Irving and Jonathan Swift: deep, quirky characterizations that continuously evolve through the course of the book, coupled with an intoxicatingly broad, witty and acerbic satirical bite. What more could one want? (So, why only four stars? I never quite shook the self-conscious mind-game of squeezing these three dimensional characters into the two-dimensional frames provided by their former L. Frank Baum and Hollywood versions. Perhaps this is a problem with pop-culture-Mike (me) and not Maguire's enchanting work at all...)
Rating:
Summary: Cynical and Magical
Review: Brilliant book. I've always been the sort to root for the bad guys. This desire for the evil side of life springs from a desire for characters with some depth of psyche and moral complexity. This book developes characters and situations in a way that is involved and brilliant. It is revisionist fantasy at its best and grandest. I like the revisionist fantasy genre in which the author takes a traditional and well known story and changes it to fit less archetypal patterns. To the best of my knowledge Wicked is the one of the first full length novels of that genre. The Characters, especially Elphaba the main character, are both attractive and revolting at the same time. No character in this narrative is bland or two dimensional and if one is not careful the characters can involve the reader personally in their lives. To say this book is thought-provoking is not enough. To say this book is both humourous and endearing is not enough. To say this book is well written and brilliant is not enough. To say this book is involving, engrossing, and unnerving is not enough. To give this book the credit it deserves is difficult in so short a space. I will simply say that this book is a treasure, and that is enough.
Rating:
Summary: Very entertaining
Review: I haven't read a lot of fiction, but this book has gotten me hooked into the world of Gregory Maguire. What a fun read! I would highly recommend this book to anyone who likes having fun...
Rating:
Summary: How creative!
Review: All I can say is Gregory Maguire has a wonderful imagination and is a stunning writer. I love the concept of taking a story and writing it from a different point of view. The main reason I loved this book is that it is so completely different from all of the other books on the market today. My book group read it a few years ago and we ALL were completely captivated by it. A great "escape" book.
Rating:
Summary: The most creative story i've ever read
Review: I am not usually a fan of fantasy books, but the title of this one caught my eye. I started reading the first chapter and I was hooked. I had to buy the book right then. To me, if a book can grab me from the get go then it's a great book. Try it, you'll like it! Especially if you loved the story The Wizard of Oz. It puts a funny and interesting spin on things.
Rating:
Summary: The True Nature of Evil
Review: Finishing this book several days ago, I have held off writing a review until I could at least try to rack my brain for a word sufficient enough to describe how good it is. But after days of searching, there really isn't one. In Wicked, Gregory Maguire does for the Wicked Witch of the West what Anne Rice did for Vampires, namely the Vampire Lestat, when we got 'his side of the story,' and discovered that perhaps he wasn't such a villain after all. The Witch, a character that held so much childhood fear and contempt for me becomes a pitiable, loveable, endearing creature....almost human. With 288 reviews of this book, I am sure you can find a synopsis that will satisfy any reader, and give you either too much, too little, or just enough detail. So, I won't bore with another rehash.....suffice to say that the book entertains from start to finish. Elphaba the Witch, Glinda the Good, Tik-tok the mechanical man, and even the Wizard himself, are all turned upside down in terms of character definition, and a whole new Oz opens itself up to the reader, an Oz of political conflict, class struggle, dark deeds, adultery, prejudice, sin, and redemption. In re-imagining the beloved tale of Oz, which has survived for so many years permanently embedded in the hearts and memories of children and adults around the world, Gregory Maguire surely ran the risk of a public outcry for taking such a story and re-tooling it, such as the 2001 re-telling of Planet of The Apes on the big screen. But, as he managed with Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, Maguire has taken this tale and made it completely his own. Proper homage is given to the fantasy-world of Oz that we all remember, and yet we discover layer upon layer that we never knew existed. Maguire explores the true nature of evil, whether evil itself is an entity which exists in the world, or if it is merely a judgement of the actions of human beings. The book is chock full of imagery and foreshadowing, the course of Elphaba's (the Witch) life being determined within the first 100 pages of the book. It also explores the idea of predestiny, or whether or not the events of all of our lives are determined by a force other than our own will. For anyone looking at this book, be warned, it is not a tale for children. However, for adults, this is a highly original, well crafted, entertaining read.
Rating:
Summary: A magical and all consuming read.
Review: A magical and all consuming read. I made time every chance I could to pick up and fall into the story of Elpahba (hint L. Frank Baum) the noted wicked Witch of the West, who it turns out is not a witch at all, but an Animal activist. Delighted to find that she and Glinda (the "good" witch) were roommates in college. From her rather bizarre birth to her demise at the hands of Dorothy- that had me raising my fist in anger - I was enthralled beginning to end, at once sympathetic and frustrated with the protagonist. Rarely are retold stories from alternate POV's so intensely detailed and rich with layers of well developed characters. McGuire nearly forces us to leave our preconceptions of the original wizard of Oz behind and gladly so! I'll never be able to see the classic film the same way again. As a child I feared the wicked witch of the West - now I root for her!
Rating: 
Summary: Boring
Review: This book was highly recommended to me and I see that most of the other reviews are very good but I don't get it. I found the book incredibly uninteresting and dull to read. My sister read it at the same time and had the same opinion. I was expecting the book to have a lot of clever tie-ins and twists relating back to the L. Frank Baum novels. Instead, I found a story that barely had anything to do with the original works, either in tone or substance. The new story just didn't interest me at all. Maybe I missed something but I could barely get through the book so couldn't recommend it to others.
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