Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West Features

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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.

What Customers Say About Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West:

The book came in good time. The front cover was a bit loose, but it was a used book and the book itself was fine.

I, like so many others, picked up this book as a fan of the "Wizard of Oz" movie and was intrigued by the title. It seems as if Gregory Maguire forgets which character he's writing for and gets lost in his own thoughts. I just finished the book and I must first state that I did not read the L. Just about all speak as though the words are one person's only; page after page sounds like one voice, one set of vocabulary, one use of grammar. For me, it was like reading a contemporary love novel crudely attached to the back of a fantasy. I've read many of the other reviews and have one brief issue to add: character dialog. For example, the character Samira is described as a minimally educated, mostly illiterate and less than inquisitive person but has a vocabulary that seems completely out of character.

These distractions were annoying.I wanted to enjoy this book. Frank Baum books of Oz. Too many of the dialogs seem to ramble leaving this reader left to image the author sitting at his desk beating the keys, pouring out his thoughts rather than molding his characters into a world the reader could get lost in. Maguire does an adequate job of developing his characters except for their dialogs. And, the dialogs many times just do not match the character. Its theme had tons of potential but the story needed an author to write a book the reader could first believe in and then submerge into. I'll place this on the shelf with "Alice in Wonderland" and "The Hobbit", but not very close.

So well written, I just flew through it.We all know the story of Dorothy, but this is a very imaginitive tale from the "Wicked" witch's perspective. Warning: This is NOT to be confused with your typical children's story. :)Definitely an ADULT tale. How Maguire came up with the details in this story is beyond me.very creative.I think, hands down, this is far superior to the musical. Excellent read.I can't wait to start the next book.

I'm enjoying reading it. My sister is a big fan of the musical that was inspired by this book and is an avid reader. I gave it to her for Christmas because I knew she'd enjoy it.

I loved this book. It is well written and very creative, it also offered the reader an understanding of why the witch became as we all know her. This book kept my interest and I cannot wait to read the other books in the collection.