Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I've read many of the reviews of Wicked and I just don't get it. So many, even when they revile the plot, the content, the story itself, deem Mr. Maguire a "literary genius" with words. I see none of that. In a great story, especially one of fantasy, we should feel swept away by the tale, captivated by the writer's language and enveloped by every sentence. Instead of creating this safe haven for us to enjoy by making his words RELATIBLE, he seems to go out of his way to show us what fancy verbiage he can pull off, regardless of whether it improves the story for it's reader or not. It doesn't. I'm not impressed by Mr. Maguire's vocabulary. In fact, it is one of the most annoying parts of an amazingly annoying book. These are my complaints, along with the verbiage issue: 1) Mr. Maguire makes the book excessively complicated by adding in made-up factors which are essential to the plot, but which he never explains to us, regardless of how verbose he is. For example, by the time I was 2/3 of the way through, I realized that I still didn't understand the "time dragon" or any of the religions or basic politics that are so crucial to his story. He never bothers to explain these things, but carries on long, boring conversations between his characters that revolve around them. It's like sitting down to a meal with 20 people speaking a foreign language. After a while it just exhausting and mind numbing. 2) Mr. Maguire jumps around - usually just when things are getting good. We spend goodness-knows how many pages dealing with Elphaba and her family before she even utters her first word and then, just when the plot FINALLY goes somewhere...*poof*....she 17 and off to college. This happens continually. I kept thinking that it was going to become some sort of cliff-hanger where he goes back and we get to REALLY hear the good stuff. Nope. He moves on and that's it. Where's the payoff for the reader? We put up with all of that blah, blah, blah and then he just SKIPS ahead when it gets good? HE DOES THIS EVERY SINGLE TIME. Beware. You have been warned. 3) He skips the interesting characters and spends pages and pages on the ones that you could care less about. In another one of his jumps, we never know what happens to Elphaba's TRUE father because it just ends with all of the characters in limbo, then, in a passing phrase, we find out that he was murdered - something to do with that 'ole time dragon again. Then he's on to something else. Hundreds and hundreds of words and pages have gone plodding by, and one of the more interesting things gets nothing more than a passing reference. 4) He spends pages and pages on THINGS that you don't care about, describing them into minutia with his wordy, verbose language. I think that if I had had to read one more word about Elphaba's journey to the castle, I was going to tear my hair out. The description went on and on and was so boring and wordy. Blech. Skip that stuff! Geeze - tell us the GOOD stuff. Tell us exactly how they killed Fiero. Oh, I forgot, he skipped that part. 5) Elphaba is nasty, annoying and never grows emotionally. Get some therapy, Elphi. Her POV was just annoying, hardly sympathetic. Obviously, after she learned to speak , she simply became a teenager and never grew past that. 6) The sex scenes and the violence are dull. Just because there is sex between humans and other species doesn't make it good reading or erotic. It's been done before and CERTAINLY done much better. and the very worst thing: THERE IS NO PAYOFF. NONE! I hung in there, and hung in there hoping that he would wrap things up and explain things at some point and give SOME sort of emotional satisfaction for having dealt with pages and pages and hours and hours of his slog, and he just rushes through the Dorothy part and it's over. I'm furious. Overall, I hated it. I'm astounded that so many liked it. I regret picking it up. Unlike others, I wish that I could give it "no stars" - the writer's ability create an imaginary world should be a given and he gets no credit for that from me. SEE THE SHOW: The broadway show is wonderful and amazing. It is everything that this book is not. However, don't go thinking that they have much in common, because they don't. The plot in the show makes sense, is interesting (far more interesting than the plot in the book), creates characters with whom you really become involved AND gives you a GREAT payoff in the end, explaining things in a MUCH better way and giving you a WONDERFUL and different point of view of the whole story of Oz. The show is one of the best that I have ever seen, and I have seen quite a few. Don't miss Julie Murney as Elphaba, if you get a chance. THE SHOW: 2 THUMBS UP, 4 STARS, DON'T MISS IT! THE BOOK: 2 thumbs down, 0 stars, skip it.