Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire (1995)
Read: April 2012
People rave about this musical and so when I saw the book on the shelf at work (we have an 'open library' in the staff room with books of varying age and quality!) I thought I'd pick it up. Ironically when Lis and the kids came over on holiday she was reading it too!
The premise of the book is that it is a side-story from the Wizard of Oz tale as it tells the story of where the Wicked Witch of the West came from. It follows her birth and growing up as she goes to school and is a young woman. The story though jumps about a bit and the exact purpose of the tale is hard to follow at times. It doesn't provide as clear an introduction to her back story as I'd expected. Maybe it would have helped my understanding if I'd swatted up on the Wizard of Oz again, but I thought my general knowledge would have been enough for the story to make sense.
Maybe this is what the Lord of the Rings books are like - that as you have to create a whole fantasy world you have to work hard to follow the story and the rules of this new world that the characters inhabit. It's a lot more than just following the characters because you actually have to introduce the characters and the setting to the reader. I coped with the 'other world' of Harry Potter, but maybe that is an unfair comparison!
There are others in the series / style by the same author, but I think that fantasy is not my genre.
Read: April 2012
People rave about this musical and so when I saw the book on the shelf at work (we have an 'open library' in the staff room with books of varying age and quality!) I thought I'd pick it up. Ironically when Lis and the kids came over on holiday she was reading it too!
The premise of the book is that it is a side-story from the Wizard of Oz tale as it tells the story of where the Wicked Witch of the West came from. It follows her birth and growing up as she goes to school and is a young woman. The story though jumps about a bit and the exact purpose of the tale is hard to follow at times. It doesn't provide as clear an introduction to her back story as I'd expected. Maybe it would have helped my understanding if I'd swatted up on the Wizard of Oz again, but I thought my general knowledge would have been enough for the story to make sense.
Maybe this is what the Lord of the Rings books are like - that as you have to create a whole fantasy world you have to work hard to follow the story and the rules of this new world that the characters inhabit. It's a lot more than just following the characters because you actually have to introduce the characters and the setting to the reader. I coped with the 'other world' of Harry Potter, but maybe that is an unfair comparison!
There are others in the series / style by the same author, but I think that fantasy is not my genre.
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