Yellow Brick War

Hey Guys!

It´s Wednesday and even on vacation I won’t abandon you so here I am. Today I will be talking about the third book in the Dorothy must die! series by Danielle Paige.

This will be a spoiler free review but as it´s the third book in the series it´s more than possible that you find spoilers regarding the fist two books in the series. If you haven’t read those ones just after this paragraph you have the titles of the books in the series in order; click on those and you will be redirected to the reviews of those ones:

Dorothy must die!

The Wicked Wil Rise

And now without further ado let´s start talking about the book.

The third instalment in the series retakes the story even before we left it. Amy seems to be in the realm of darkness and the witches tell someone to raise but, is it to Amy or to someone else? Now they all are in Kansas and Amy is the one in charge to find the silver shoes that took Dorothy back to OZ. and she also has to face Dorothy and kill her and a bunch of new enemies that appear along the way.

When compared with the previous book, The Wicked Will Raise, we could say that this book is a masterpiece. But truth to be told, it is not. In fact, this book is quite average if not bad. The plot has many issues and is full of clichés and the arc of the characters is bad.

There are some contradictions between one book and the next one, mostly regarding the time passing. Also, there are some issues with the magic system. However, reading this book I came to the conclusion that this might not be a problem of the author but a “lost in translation” problem. I read the book in Spanish and there are sentences that say the opposite thing to the previous one. That´s why I usually read in the original version of the book when given the chance.

With regard to the clichés, I just want to mention one thing. Why all the men/guys in YA/New adult smell like sandal? Was there an offer for the fragrance? Seriously, don’t you find surprising and upsetting that most of the male characters in the YA literature smell like sandal? Let´s be real, how many 16-year-olds know what sandal is? Let alone, how sandal smells. And let´s be even more real, how many can actually tell the components of a perfume and distinguish sandal among them? If you can what are you? Are you Jean-Baptiste Grenouille (the main character of Perfume: The Story of a Murderer)?

Also, the characters don’t have an arc that makes you like them more as it happens in most of the novels. They are stuck right where they started. If there is any change in them you won´t know and that’s why Amy is constantly saying things like: “I am not the same girl I once was”. And this happens for all the characters. The only thing that seems, in my opinion to made up for the awfulness of all the characters is the appearance of the Nome King, who I won´t be talking about so I don’t make any spoilers.

The writing style, let´s be honest, is terrible. Why denied it? Where is the action pack and good narration that happened on the first book? Obviously forgotten. It is as if the books are not written by the same person.

The rhythm is also a problem for this book. The boring scenes last for several pages while the interesting ones are nothing but a mere paragraph.

Nevertheless, there is something in this book that is very well done in this book: the plot twist. There are a couple of them right in the moment they were needed and made up for all the other mistakes.

Overall, I gave this book 3 out of 5stars and I hope that the last book in this series is far better than the central ones.

See you all next Wednesday.