Yellow Brick War: 03/15/19

Yellow Brick War by Danielle Paige is the third of the Dorothy Must Die series. It opens in a dark, twisted Kansas, corrupted by the evil magic of dystopian Oz. To save Kansas and Earth, Amy has to find a way of sending Dorothy et. al. back to Oz.

This book is built on the supposition that Oz and Kansas are the same shape. Oz is vaguely rectangular with some curvy bits. It is divided into five sections with East and West flipped. For more on Oz's landscape, please read: In the upside-down: the hobo life in Oz.

But Paige describes Oz as rectangular and Kansas as well. Kansas isn't exactly rectangular either and the two shapes don't overlay.

As the action is primarily set in Kansas, the dystopian fantasy story is replaced by a paranormal high school drama, in the vein of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. But it lacks the narrative drive of the previous two and is left to stumble along on the rather weak character building.

For the road narrative spectrum, book three is a 3366FF: family, home, and cornfield. The traveler, Amy, is reunited with her mother. The location is Amy's original home. It's what she was desperate to leave but now she is back. These two pieces are low down on their axes of the spectrum, brining the novel almost to the realistic fiction. But the arrival on the outskirts of town, in the cornfields — albeit darkened and corrupted by tainted magic — puts the novel in the neighborhood of horror.

Interestingly, Dorothy Must Die is also situated in the horror. The Wicket Will Rise goes into the fantasy end of horror, before returning to gritty fiction with horror elements for this third book. The final book is The End of Oz.

Two stars

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