Is wicked good?

Question

I saw the musical. It was good so I wanted to read the book. Someone i heard said the book was horrible. Is the book good?

Answer 1

"Wicked" is wicked good - and so is the sequel, "Son of a Witch."
Here's a review from Amazon:
"f you can find a better bang for the buck than Wicked, please let me know. I picked up Wicked, knowing nothing except that its subject matter was the Wicked Witch of the West, to be drawn immediately into Maguire's splendidly imagined world of sentient animals, multiple societies, and unique physical laws. Wicked is an enthralling, great read, hugely entertaining. On top of all this, Maguire has Bradbury's gift for creating atmosphere. The pages are heavy with dark, mysterious magic; its moral laws are ultimately incomprehensible.
Apparently doomed at conception, Elphaba is a truly terrifying infant. Razor-toothed and preternaturally intelligent, she is shunned from birth as a freak and a curse. She is nonetheless the tale's most complex, human, and compelling character, possessed of high moral sense and great courage. But neither of these qualities enables a single one of her brave, ethical actions to succeed. What are we to conclude from this?

How is it that Dorothy, the sturdy little nobody from nowhere who committed manslaughter as she landed in Oz, skips down the Yellow Brick Road impervious to danger while Elphaba strives and plots to reap only negative results?

Why is one protected while the other is doomed? Read Wicked and you will learn how the witch's monkeys became winged, where the rubies for those slippers came from, and, indeed, why the witch's skin was green. But you will wrestle, long afterward, with Maguire's moral pessimism and the snarl of grace and doom that underlies this novel. I know I will."

Although, in the interest of complete disclosure, I must admit there were bad reviews there as well.
I liked it a lot - but I can't guarantee that you will.

Here's a review from the Boston Globe of the sequel, "Son of a Witch":
:n a dangerous Oz, there's no place like home
By Sarah Smith | October 16, 2005

Son of a Witch
By Gregory Maguire
HarperCollins, 334 pp., $26.95

It's an awkward thing to be a fairy-tale villain. Evil, like goodness, flattens the character; a villain can't blow his nose without trying (and failing) to destroy the universe. But how does a person become wicked?

Ten years ago Gregory Maguire visited the inner life of a great American fairy tale and came back with a woman, lover, and witch named Elphaba. Elphaba was plain, poor, and intelligent; Elphaba was green; Elphaba became wicked. Elphaba has taken to the sky of the popular imagination. Stores and websites are named after her; her name is on license plates; Elphaba lives. Most recently ''Wicked" has become a Tony Award-winning Broadway musical.

The business plan clearly called for a sequel, and sequels, like fairy tales, can be awkward things. But Maguire has done it again: ''Son of a Witch" is as wicked as they come.

The title is a question rather than a description: teenage Liir is trying to find out whether he is Elphaba's son. She was ''his earliest memory, his bête noire, his Auntie, his jail-keeper, his sage friend" -- but she was green and magical, he's dirty pink and only Liir; how can he be hers? As we meet him at the beginning of the book, he is in mid-journey through the ruinous land of Oz, searching not only for the family he needs, but for what it means to have a family.

Maguire, the accomplished author of ''Mirror Mirror" and ''Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister," knows that a family is a set of stories, not all of them pretty ones. The fairy-tale story works for a fairy-tale hero. But if Liir is wicked Elphaba's son, finding his family may be finding his villainy: '' 'A family.' Liir whispered the word as if it meant gelignite."

Everyone else believes he's a hero, so Liir is given tasks of fairy-tale danger and complexity. He has to rescue his foster sister Nor from an impregnable prison, deliver a vital message for the Swan Princess, and save the entire Folk of the Air. He must release the Elephant princess Nastoya, caught between her nature and her long disguise as a human. Can he fulfill all his quests and become a hero? Meanwhile, he must try to make up the idea of family from scattered acts of kindness, from the attention paid to him by people who have other things to do -- and from a graffiti artist's scrawl on the walls of the Emerald City, ''Elphaba lives." Can he rediscover the one person who might not laugh at the idea that he belongs to her?

''Pitiably normal" Liir isn't suited for the hero's life. He has Elphaba's broom and cape, but the broom flies only when it pleases, and the cape, ordinary mildewy wool, does nothing more magical than keep him warm. Liir charges into Southstairs to rescue his foster sister, and gets into worse trouble than she. He delays 10 years in rescuing Princess Nastoya, with ghastly results, and in one of the book's many funny scenes, he falls back on an entirely prosaic way to battle dragons.

Maguire is far too good a writer to protect Liir from evil. He finds it in a darker, more political Oz, as familiar as the reflection of a flag in a funhouse mirror. Despots come and go while despotism flourishes. The country's current leader (who may be Liir's uncle) is a former drunk who turned religious; now he foments rebellions to take credit for stopping them, and recruits the Unnamed God as a political ally. Liir bumbles toward wickedness out of moral apathy and a desire to do well. He joins the army and gets a taste of command -- and, as Maguire shows in heartbreaking detail, Liir finds out for himself just how wicked a man trying to be good can be.

''Son of a Witch" is vintage Maguire, thoroughly entertaining even at its darkest. Oz is as complex and satisfying a fantastic world as ever, wonderfully described, from the steam rising out of the marshes to the sloe-eyed young homeless on the Emerald City streets. Lady Glinda is as politically astute a piece of glitter and tulle as ever; Mother Yackle mutters prophecies with Shakespearean glee; Nanny revels in her dotage. Chistery the flying monkey is joined by some fine new characters: musical near-mute Candle, the Dragonmaster Trism bon Cavalish, and Sister Apothecaire and Sister Doctor, restrained from actual killing by ''vows of gentility and all that." The sentient animals include some of the best characters in the book: a wonderful tiger, a pig, and a wren who, like Elphaba, knows what it is to fly.

Oz may be imaginary, but heroes are real: ''Son of a Witch" is full of characters trying to find who they are and do what they can do. Knowing yourself, Maguire says, is a possible heroism, the uncomfortable, unmagical happy ending that is not an ending at all. To know yourself is to create your family, through an act of reinterpretation, of shared imagination, a joining of self to others through a story. In the splendid climax of ''Son of a Witch," fairy tales do come true, families do get reestablished, and, in an unexpected and completely satisfying way, Liir does find exactly what he needs, not to finish a story, but to begin one.

Elphaba lives."

and here's a bookseller's review of "Wicked":

"When I was a child in the early '70s, one of the Big Three networks aired the classic movie "The Wizard of Oz" with some regularity, about once a year or so. I watched it every time it was on, captivated again and again by the struggle between Dorothy's innocent "good" (ironic, given Judy Garland's eventual reputation) and the absolute "evil" of the green-skinned Wicked Witch of the West.

In early junior high school, I discovered L. Frank Baum's whole blessed series of Oz books and raced through them all. I decided that the original creation was far superior to the movie --which I now own on video, so it's still beloved to me-- in delving deeper into the society of Oz and depicting in loving detail the quirkier aspects of that enchanted land. It occurs to me that Oz is a venerable ancestor of Piers Anthony's Xanth, but that strays from the point at hand.

A few years ago, I picked up a brand-new hardcover by Gregory Maguire called Wicked, purely on the basis of its subtitle: "The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West." I started reading and honestly could not stop, enchanted by Oz once again, and this time from a vastly different point of view and of sympathy.

Wicked's flavor is the gothic freakishness of Carson McCullers and Flannery O'Connor blended with liberal amounts of dark humor and socio-political satire a la Kurt Vonnegut and Tom Robbins, seasoned with honesty, sympathy and earnestness. It is the heretofore untold story of the Wicked Witch of the West. In it we learn about:

her name (Elphaba)
her childhood (really weird parents and unfortunate skin)
her sister (Nessarose, an armless conservative zealot who will become Wicked Witch of the East and who will die when Dorothy's Kansas house lands on her)
her schoolgirl days (where she and Glinda the "Good" will become reluctant pals)
her politics (she becomes a freedom fighter, working with an underground resistance movement to bring social rights to the thinking Animals, among other things)
her life's great sorrow, the loss of her one true love.
The infamous Dorothy is seen briefly in the prologue, but doesn't appear in the story proper until the fifth and final part of the book. Dorothy is depicted as a large-boned farm girl, a dull-witted but well-intentioned sort; Toto is "merely annoying." If you rewatch the movie, you'll grudgingly admit that this seemingly cruel characterization is actually pretty on-the-mark as far as the motion picture Dorothy goes.
Kirkus Reviews said "Save a place on the shelf between Alice and The Hobbit -- that spot is well-deserved." Wicked does earn a spot on the shelves of classic fantasy, but so does it earn a niche alongside the best modern literary fiction. Maguire has created a truly great -- and flawed -- heroine in a novel that is a psychological analysis on one of the most "evil" characters of the twentieth century.

I made this book my in-store staff recommendation twice when I was a bookseller, in hardcover and paperback, and my evident love for Wicked caused nearly half our store staff to read it for themselves. Two things we all agreed on: Wicked is one hell of a good book, and we will never look at Oz in the same way."

Answer 2

don't think the two are really comparable. I enjoyed both, but the only thing the two really share are character/place names and the basic enemy. The musical doesn't really explain WHY she gets so mad at the Wizard and if you haven't read the book, you're like, "Why is she getting so mad about one goat?" However, even some of the similarities are different...confused? Well, for example, Avaric is in the musical, but as Fiyero's driver. And Fiyero of the play is really more like Avaric in the book.

The book is much darker and intended for adult audiences. The musical is more light-hearted, but it does carry the message of friendship and devotion.

I, personally, like the musical better. The book had a tendency to drone on.

Answer 3

I saw the musical and i loved it. I havent read the book myself, but alot of my friends have, they like it. It is just very different from the musical. It isn't as happy, it has a darker mood. But i've heard it's good all the same.

Answer 4

The book is not very similar to the play.
The play is much lighter/happier.
The book is very literary. It will read like an assigned reading novel in school.
So it depends if you like literary type reading.
I read a lot, but it took me awhile to get through that book, because it doesn't suck you in.
The other books by that author (Gregory Maguire) are better.

Answer 5

Since we are all sinners, and therefore all wicked, if that person was correct then no-one would have their prayers answered. Also, by applying the same logic, if a wicked person prayed for gods forgiveness through the sacrifice of Jesus, then that would not be answered either. If a wicked person prayed for, say, healing of a Christian, would that not be answered? God loves all mankind. He answers prayers from anyone who genuinely prays for something valid (i.e. not for winning the lotto).

Answer 6

Unfortunately, I have not seen the musical--it was in Toronto around Christmas but I was just not able to get to the city. However, I have read the novel--quite quirky--a good read for me--in fact, I have started on the sequel "Son of a Witch".

Answer 7

I really like the book. It's long and thought provoking and shows you a completely different side of Oz. I've never seen the musical so I don't know how well they compare.

Answer 8

The play is great. The book is horrible. Don't let the book ruin the play for you - read something else!

Answer 9

It is nothing like the musical. I found the book very tedious and dull and hard to get into. Some people have read it and loved it, I wasnt one of them. Pax - C.

Answer 10

The book is okay. Not bad, not great, just okay. There are many better books out there, but there are worse ones as well. If you like mediocrity, this is the one for you.

Answer 11

I liked it, but the ending was hard to get into. I would reccomend it, definitey, but you may not like it.