Book Review
Dec. 9th, 2014 11:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fiberaddictFriday I picked up a copy of "Wicked" - it's the book that the hit musical is based on. I read it over the weekend....for *Fan Fiction*, it's OK. Not stellar, but OK.
It purportedly tells the back-story of the events in the Wizard of Oz. Now, I don't have any problems with fanfic - if it's well-written - but I do have problems when people assume that fanfic is canon...in this case, it isn't, because L. Frank Baum did NOT authorize the book. And I think he'd take issue with some of the subject matter....
Because the author seems to be into kink. A *lot*. :shudder: I'm not sure I want to see the musical, now - because if they put *any* of it in, it'll ruin it for me. :sigh: "Wicked" - aka The Wicked Witch of the West/aka Elphaba - is green because a traveling tinker (who seems to be the Wizard himself, if I understood the ending correctly) thought he needed to drug her mother so she'd have sex with him. Only, her mother was a little tart - sleeping with any and everyone who came by. Her "father" - the man who raised her - is a missionary...only not a very good one. Her sister - the "Wicked Witch of the East" - is her half sister - her father was from a different area of OZ (not sure if he was a different species, or just different race)....who was also sleeping with their mother's husband. (Got that? Yeah.) She was born without arms because her mother's Nanny was given pills from a Gypsy to prevent this child from being green.......
The ruby slippers were given to NessaRose by the missionary dad, and Elphaba *wanted* them. Glinda - who was Elphaba's roommate in college - enchanted them so that Nessa could stand on her own 2 feet.....and things just keep getting weirder and weirder. (Elphaba commits adultery, and maybe has a kid - but she doesn't know, because she spent a year drugged out of her mind and can't remember if she gave birth, or not. And then she tries to tell his wife about the affair, but the wife doesn't want to hear it.)
It....well. It started out OK, but the kink came out and it just kept getting weirder.....there's 2 more books about OZ by the same author, but I don't think I want to spend the money on them. (He's also got 1 about - I think - Cinderella's stepsister, and another about...I dunno. I really lost interest in reading them after about the 2nd chapter of this one, to be honest.)
Anyway......the basic premise was interesting, but the extra....stuff, not so much. Since Baum wrote 20-ish OZ books, I don't think this was necessary.....and I think I'll stick with canon for a while.
It purportedly tells the back-story of the events in the Wizard of Oz. Now, I don't have any problems with fanfic - if it's well-written - but I do have problems when people assume that fanfic is canon...in this case, it isn't, because L. Frank Baum did NOT authorize the book. And I think he'd take issue with some of the subject matter....
Because the author seems to be into kink. A *lot*. :shudder: I'm not sure I want to see the musical, now - because if they put *any* of it in, it'll ruin it for me. :sigh: "Wicked" - aka The Wicked Witch of the West/aka Elphaba - is green because a traveling tinker (who seems to be the Wizard himself, if I understood the ending correctly) thought he needed to drug her mother so she'd have sex with him. Only, her mother was a little tart - sleeping with any and everyone who came by. Her "father" - the man who raised her - is a missionary...only not a very good one. Her sister - the "Wicked Witch of the East" - is her half sister - her father was from a different area of OZ (not sure if he was a different species, or just different race)....who was also sleeping with their mother's husband. (Got that? Yeah.) She was born without arms because her mother's Nanny was given pills from a Gypsy to prevent this child from being green.......
The ruby slippers were given to NessaRose by the missionary dad, and Elphaba *wanted* them. Glinda - who was Elphaba's roommate in college - enchanted them so that Nessa could stand on her own 2 feet.....and things just keep getting weirder and weirder. (Elphaba commits adultery, and maybe has a kid - but she doesn't know, because she spent a year drugged out of her mind and can't remember if she gave birth, or not. And then she tries to tell his wife about the affair, but the wife doesn't want to hear it.)
It....well. It started out OK, but the kink came out and it just kept getting weirder.....there's 2 more books about OZ by the same author, but I don't think I want to spend the money on them. (He's also got 1 about - I think - Cinderella's stepsister, and another about...I dunno. I really lost interest in reading them after about the 2nd chapter of this one, to be honest.)
Anyway......the basic premise was interesting, but the extra....stuff, not so much. Since Baum wrote 20-ish OZ books, I don't think this was necessary.....and I think I'll stick with canon for a while.
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Date: 2014-12-09 06:37 pm (UTC)I hated Wicked. It is rare when I can't/won't finish a book... and I was given it when I wasn't able to walk, so you'd think I would have been desperate for reading material. I stopped about 1/3 of the way through and never touched it again.
There is nothing there, other than the names of the characters and the very general setting, for lovers of the Oz books. It is not Oz grown up. It's something else, and it can be something else somewhere else, I'm not having any of it.
_h