Book Review #2 Wicked by Gregory Maguire

Let me just say to begin with, out of fairness to Maguire and to the book, that I am a HUGE Wizard of Oz fan. I loved the Baum books. I loved the movie. I loved the little-seen sequel Return to Oz. I loved the characters, the imagination, and the SIMPLICITY of it all. In addition, let me add that I LOVED the musical Wicked. I am a fan of musical theater, and it was one of my favorites musicals ever. So, to be fair, I had astronomical, gigantic, probably unfair expectations for this book. It did not deliver. There were a few moments in this book that were pure genius. There were rare, wonderful times when I was reading and just thought to myself “YES! That is exactly how I imagined it!” But, overall I simply did not like the book. I wanted to. I had heard that I should. But alas, I did not.
I think that the primary reason for this is how completely disjointed the book feels. It feels more as if it is a collection of short stories about one character, rather than a novel. In each chapter we are just coming to be interested in a supporting character or characters, when BAM! the story jumps forward x years and the nearly interesting characters are never seen or heard from again, or show up in such limited and uninteresting capacity that it makes little difference. After the second time of this happening I realized that this book was more a little series of vignettes about Elphaba, rather than a cohesive whole.
I also felt that there was a lot of unnecessary difficulty with the names of the characters and the places. I felt like after a while these became more of a distraction than an addition to the plot and the setting.
I think that the biggest problem I had with the book was that it was simply not that entertaining. I understand that there are a lot of "morals to the story" in this book and that it wants to study issues of prejudice and morality... but for me, there also needs to be a good strong STORY to back that up. I just didn't find that here. I need to be able to get invested in the characters, particularly the main character. But the supporting characters were constantly being whisked away, and the main character never seemed fully realized.I have been told that this book is much better the second time. I don’t know that it will get that chance. There are just too many great reads out there.