It's absolutely no secret that I adore the musical Wicked, and as soon as I rediscovered it it back in 2018 I was eager to read the book it's based on. I knew before going in that the book and the musical were almost completely different and that it was a lot deeper and darker, but I was excited for any additional character development and to perhaps better understand elements of the musical that might otherwise seem irrelevant (such as the Time Dragon! I never really realised the musical is supposed to be taking place inside the Time Dragon, I just thought it was a cool piece of stage design and that the cogs were for a more steampunk aesthetic. Turns out it serves a purpose!) Although I read the book a while ago now, I’ve been getting into BookTube and watching book reviews which made me want to put my own thoughts out there, especially as I want to start reading its sequel soon so I want to preserve my thoughts before they get muddied by that. There will absolutely be spoilers ahead!
Also as a bit of a disclaimer if it wasn't obvious, but I can't help but make comparisons with the musical and view the book through that lens. Like I said, I knew they were different before I read it but I love the musical, it's my all time favourite, and I have a lot of personal history and meaning attached to it. In all honestly I doubt I'd of ever even read this book if I didn't, and I definitely wouldn't of persevered with it as much as I did without already having that interest and connection to the characters, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
For anyone who hasn't seen the musical or read the book and has decided to read this anyway with no idea what I'm talking about - Wicked: The Life and Times of The Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire is essentially a prequel to L Frank Baum's novel and the MGM movie The Wizard of Oz. It's an alternative take on the land of Oz, what went down before Dorothy dropped in, and gives a backstory and motivation to the Wicked Witch of the West (who is nameless in Baum's Oz but now named Elphaba after Baum's initials: LFB) and why the Wizard wanted her killed by Dorothy. Although The Wizard of Oz is family fun for all ages, the book of Wicked is very much a more adult take on events.
The book is very political which I really loved and felt it perfectly matched the original Wizard of Oz books, as despite being seen as for children and nothing deeper Baum was very politically active and wrote them as social commentary for his own time so it feels appropriate that this should be updated to more modern issues: there’s the racism surrounding Fiyero and the general xenophobia of him being an indigenous “Winkie” (which is now a slur, the proper term is Vinkun and the Vinkuns themselves are all from various different tribes with their own cultures and languages so the proper term for Fiyero specifically is Arjiki. Although fictional, from the physical descriptions, the prejudice imposed on them, and the way their behaviour and cultures are described they’re clearly based on Native Americans, and the Vinkus is similar in terrain and landscape to the Great Plains). Elphaba is an Animal rights activist and becomes a full blown terrorist by joining a radical extremist group which blows up buildings in the Emerald City, there's a general sense of classism prevalent in Oz which is particularly noticeable when the characters are at Shiz University, Glinda is canonically gay and enters a marriage of convenience with a gay man to uphold both of their positions in society, the Wizard is an actual dictator, there's a prevalent use of Tik-Toks (which are robots basically) which symbolises the rise of technology and the paranoia that comes with that, religious divide, and that WHOLE SCENE at the Philosophy Club with the tiger orgy. Basically everything in the book is always a metaphor for something, which I'm not going to lie does get a little exhausting.
Throughout the book I both loved and hated Elphaba. Very little of the book is told from her point of view, and because of that she feels really elusive and we don’t really get to know her so she's difficult to connect with. Several elements of Elphaba's description are also a bit weird and don't make much sense and just felt like an excuse to make her extra strange and didn't really serve any purpose beyond that. When she’s born it’s implied that she’s intersex which is then never brought up again, and she has sharp teeth for reasons I don’t even know. It's just excuses to 'other' her more, and I wish it wasn’t there as it only makes her less human. The book does stick to the original Oz lore of Elphaba being burnt by water, and even makes the point of her tears burning her so she learns from a very young age to be emotionally detached because if she were to feel any extremes of any emotion and cry it would cause her severe physical pain and scar her face. Which explains a lot of her character and why she reacts the way she does when she loses Fiyero and was just a nice touch.
More than anything the book really made me fall in love with Fiyero and his relationship with Elphaba, and ever since reading it I’m annoyed by how badly he got shafted in the musical. I know, there have to be some sacrifices due to run time, but still. He’s a huge catalyst between Elphaba and Glinda and deserves to be fleshed out at least a little. I also just wish that the musical had stuck to the very basic core of his character in that he’s an indigenous man trying to live in a white world, regularly the butt of casual racism and othered for his “ochre” skin colour (one of the characters literally says “I wouldn’t want skin the colour of shit” when referring to him, and Glinda is scandalized at rumours of her potentially dating him purely because he’s “dark skinned”) It’s a huge part of why he connects with Elphaba, aka the green woman who is also being discriminated against for her skin colour.
In terms of Fiyero it's also a very frustrating book. The narrative goes on and on about seemingly mundane details - we get about 10 pages describing a journey that offers no character development or movement of plot - but the death of Fiyero, a major central character, is just two paragraphs and one of the biggest events to happen in the whole book which is incredibly unsatisfying. Like, it's a major turning point to EVERYTHING that follows, why are you downplaying it??? Fiyero deserved so much better than that! Even Elphaba just gets one paragraph describing her death, and it began to feel like Maguire loved the world he'd created more than the characters themselves and Elphaba, Fiyero and Glinda were just a vehicle to introduce his own OCs to Baum’s Oz rather than because he had any real attachment to them. It's really annoying!
The second half of the book is the hardest to read, and in all honesty it's because it’s kind of boring. Elphaba is still in mourning for Fiyero and decides that she has to travel to his castle in the Vinkus to tell his wife Sarima that she had an affair with her husband, and it’s just kind of weird? I get her wanting to go somewhere to be closer to Fiyero and to see his family and what his life was like there, and I even understand her feeling some resentment at having the status of mistress and not being able to publicly grieve. But she’s openly hostile towards them, moves her own family in, and becomes hellbent on forcing Sarima to be friends with her because she wants her to trust her just so she can tell her she slept with her dead husband to ease her own conscience and it’s a lot and doesn’t make Elphaba in any way sympathetic or likable. Also compared to the preceding parts of the book which get really rushed over it’s tediously slow and the most drawn out. It’s the part of the book that I flat out disliked and it’s such a shame because I was super into it up to that point and was willing to overlook all of the negatives, but it really turns it from an incredible book to just so-so.
Overall this is one of the most exhausting books I've ever read and I was drained by the end and had to really force myself to get through the last 15 pages. Not because it was necessarily dull, it's just so much, all of the time. After Fiyero dies I had to actually put it down for a few weeks as that scene was so impactful for me and really broke my heart, and because it’s only glossed over you're never given time to process it. I guess it’s perhaps to represent the mystery Elphaba feels surrounding what happened, but it also means that even the reader isn’t sure. That’s really one aspect that I love the musical for and that they did right with Fiyero's character. I get that turning him into the Scarecrow creates some timeline issues within the entire Oz lore, and yeah it definitely gives it that fantasy fairytale ending, but I hate that the book essentially creates a mystery and gives the reader hope that Fiyero might be alive only to never deliver on that and just have it fizzle out. Although many criticize the happy ending of the musical, I’m not sure the gloomy “everyone's dead and that’s that” is any better, it feels kind of fake deep like when you’re trying to be an edgy nihilistic teenager. Whereas the musical is bittersweet: Elphaba has to leave and can’t tell her closest friend that she’s not dead so Glinda is forever racked with the guilt of not being able to save her friend and having to watch everyone rejoice while she’s hurting, and Fiyero has lost his actual body and sacrificed his position as Prince, his familial ties, and you know, BEING A HUMAN just to save Elphaba’s life so that they can be together. I don’t call that the happy ending that people seem to make out, and it’s one of the things I love about the musical as behind its catchy bops it’s often heartbreaking.
So for me the musical does have a better ending than the book, which slowly builds to this thing that you know is going to happen (Dorothy killing the witch) which Maguire rushes over like he did all of the other major plot points and it becomes really unsatisfying because it’s such a slog to get there and then it just ends. And if I'm going to read a sequel I’d much rather it be about Elphaba and a scarecrow version of Fiyero trying to rebuild their lives with all of the trauma they’ve both been through both individually and together and essentially going on the run together from a dictatorship led country, than about their illegitimate child Liir who I never really gave a damn about to begin with and why it’s taken until now for me to even have the inclination to pick up the next book in the series.
"'People who claim that they're evil are usually no worse than the rest of us.' he sighed. 'It's the people who claim that they're good, or anyway better than the rest of us that you have to be wary of.'"
Throughout the book I often found Maguire's writing to be a bit self-indulgent and needlessly vague. He creates these complex, deep characters and then refuses to fully reveal them, he sets up subplots that don't seem to go anywhere. He created a fully-developed world with a political scheme, mythology, and socioeconomic structure, then forces you to try and guess at what is happening with it based on his chosen narrator's limited point of view. And yet despite all that it's also one of those books that sticks with you and I have to give it credit for that. Despite my frustrations with it, it's a very emotional book, and although I love the musical far more than I will ever love this I did enjoy the book too. Gregory Maguire's writing and use of emotion absolutely shattered my heart in a way that no other book has before, and there are elements of the book that I outright prefer to the musical, particularly in some of the characterizations *cough*Fiyero*cough*. I appreciate how it helped me to understand this version of Oz, it's politics, and the plight of the Animals better than what’s explained in the musical, and it gave me a much deeper appreciation for these characters that mean so much to me, and their motivations and character arcs. So it's definitely worth reading for me just for that, and I will re-read it again at some point - or at least the first half! It's actually a book that I think would make a really great movie or TV series, and I just hope that the musical doesn't overshadow it too much from ever happening!
