I think I finished it because I wanted to see if it ever got good. The thing that really hurts about this book is that it's such a great IDEA. I mean, dear god! This is what trying too hard reads like. In the wake of the destruction it caused, no one had the hubrir or courage (or the prior existence) to lie and claim to have known the act of terror for what it was: a wind twisted up in a vortical braid. One or two pretended to think it was squadrons of flying dragons overhead, trained for attack, breaking the sky from its moorings by the thrash of tripartite wings. To the more traditionally religious it was the blitzkrieg of vengeful angel armies, the awful name of the Unnamed God sounding itself at last-surprise-and the evaporation of all hopes for mercy. It was the oozing of the ills of the world into one crepuscular muscle, intent on stabbing the world to its core for once and for all. To the superstitious it was the collapsing of time. ![]() To the essentialists, it seemed as if the world had suddenly found itself too crammed with life, with cells splitting by the billions, molecules uncoupling to annihilation, atoms shuddering and juggernauting in their casings. ![]() To the pleasure faithers with tiktok affections, it was the sound of clockworks uncoling their springs and running down at a terrible speed. 'a volcano of the invisible, darkly construed'. 'A gulfy deliquescence of deranged and harnessed air'. "Journalists, armed with the thesaurus and apocalyptic scriptures, fumbled and were defeated by it. Not only does it read like the author is framing each paragraph around a $5 word, but also the construction is, well, a little juvenile: when it tries to be funny it winks too much, when it tries to be a political tale it's too obvious, and. ![]() It had me thinking, "um, dude, I could totally do that." The characters are flat and stereotypical, the plot is jumpy and contrived, the dialogue is ridiculous, the tone is wildly inconsistent. This book, however, had me thinking differently. Oftentimes, I read a book and see ways I could never be a writer: the word choice, the cadence, the picture and world and emotions the author paints with language - the distance between my ability to write a little song and, oh, Mozart. It's a fantastic idea, mind you, but the execution is. I don't want to be mean to the poor author (Gregory Maguire), who has made a fortune and franchise from this book and ones like it, but it's absolutely terrible. The biggest difference is that the show is good, and the book is not. I heard the book and the show were quite different, so I wanted to see the difference. I have a confession: I wanted to read this book because I saw the Broadway show, and the idea of a Broadway show based on a book based on a movie based on a political satire intrigued me. Taking readers past the yellow brick road and into a phantasmagoric world rich with imagination and allegory, Gregory Maguire just might change the reputation of one of the most sinister characters in literature. ![]() And then there is the little green-skinned girl named Elphaba, who will grow up to become the infamous Wicked Witch of the West, a smart, prickly, and misunderstood creature who challenges all our preconceived notions about the nature of good and evil.Īn astonishingly rich re-creation of the land of Oz, this book retells the story of Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West, who wasn't so wicked after all. Wicked is about a land where animals talk and strive to be treated like first-class citizens, Munchkinlanders seek the comfort of middle-class stability, and the Tin Man becomes a victim of domestic violence. Gregory Maguire creates a fantasy world so rich and vivid that we will never look at Oz the same way again. But what about her arch-nemesis, the mysterious Witch? Where did she come from? How did she become so wicked? And what is the true nature of evil? Frank Baum's classic tale we heard only her side of the story. When Dorothy triumphed over the Wicked Witch of the West in L.
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