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  • The story started out well enough, but I quickly grew bored with it. The writing is unengaging and rather bland throughout. And for some reason, the author seems to think the reader wants to know when any character decides to take a piss. Literally. I'm sure there's some symbolism there I didn't car ... Continue

    The story started out well enough, but I quickly grew bored with it. The writing is unengaging and rather bland throughout. And for some reason, the author seems to think the reader wants to know when any character decides to take a piss. Literally. I'm sure there's some symbolism there I didn't care to figure out.

    The last part of the book was better than the rest (following as it did hundreds of pages of boring political and religious machinations and thinly veiled allegories on civil rights) but by the time I reached those final 100 pages I was reading not to find out what happened, but just to get through the thing.

    

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• ― Cuzzin Todd said on Feb 2, 2008 about the Paperback edition| 1 feedback| 1 feedback

• 1 of 1 person find this helpful

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  • It was fun to listen to this talke from a different perspective. So what really happened??? :) This might be a fun book to read for an adult book club. At times I thought it was a little drawn out.

    

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• ― SheReads said on Mar 5, 2007 about the Paperback edition| Add your feedback

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  • Wicked Waste

  • Just finished. Took me awhile. Too much hype on this book. The story was okay but not a page-turner. I did at least finish the book but will wait before reading anymore Maguire books. Maybe I should have read The Wizard of Oz first.

    

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• ― Bibliophile said on Oct 13, 2008 about the Paperback edition| 2 feedbacks| 2 feedbacks

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  • Wicked

  • A very strange book and sometimes hard to read. I've heard the Musical is very good. I think I'd like to see for myself. Not sure I'd read anything by this author again. Just not my usual style.

    

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• ― Bobbi said on Aug 27, 2008 about the Paperback edition| Add your feedback

• 0 of 2 people find this helpful

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  • OMG I HATED THIS BOOK!! I had heard quite a bit about this book, so I decided to read it. I think it is the most horrible book I've ever forced myself to finish. I kept hoping it would get better, but that never happened. I was more than disappointed- I was disgusted by this book.

    

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• ― Julie said on Mar 30, 2008 about the Paperback edition| Add your feedback

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  • Interesting idea but I think I like the musical storyline better and I'm glad they made the changes to it.

    

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• ― Deanna Kyre said on Mar 21, 2008 about the Paperback edition| Add your feedback

Following the traditions of Gabriel GarcÍa Marqu,z, John Gardner and J.R.R. Tolkien, Wicked is a richly woven tale that takes us to the other, darker side of the rainbow as novelist Gregory Maguire chronicles the Wicked Witch of the West's odyssey through the complex world of Oz -- where people call you wicked if you tell the truth.

Years before Dorothy and her dog crash-land, another little girl makes her presence known in Oz. This girl, Elphaba, is born with emerald-green skin -- no easy burden in a land as mean and poor as Oz, where superstition and magic are not strong enough to explain or to overcome the natural disasters of flood and famine. But Elphaba is smart, and by the time she enters the university in Shiz, she becomes a member of a charmed circle of Oz' most promising young citizens.

Elphaba's Oz is no utopia. The Wizard's secret police are everywhere. Animals -- those creatures with voices, souls and minds -- are threatened with exile. Young Elphaba, green and wild and misunderstood, is determined to protect the Animals -- even it means combating the mysterious Wizard, even if it means risking her single chance at romance. Even wiser in guilt and sorrow, she can find herself grateful when the world declares her a witch. And she can even make herself glad for that young girl from Kansas.

In Wicked, Gregory Maguire has taken the largely unknown world of Oz and populated it with the power of his own imagination. Fast-paced, fantastically real and supremely entertaining, this is a novel of vision and re-vision. Oz never will be the same again.

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