Title: Failed Potential
Review: What an exciting concept! The backstory of the Wicked Witch of the West. It takes a really inept writer, however, to squander such gold on a tirelessly unappealing novel. Instead of fleshing out the narrative of one of literature's all-time greatest villains, Macguire bogs down his plot with inconsequential details. Sixty pages into the Elphaba story, Macguire apparently grows weary of his main character and inserts uninteresting, lackluster characters and plotlines. Had he focused on his main character instead and trimmed the useless fat (including plastic characters like Boq), he could have created a fantasy novel for all time. What he has produced instead is a book with more power to induce sleep than Oz's poppy fields. Sadly, this idea fell into the hands of a writer lacking the imaginative vitality to pull it off. But who really cares? He's published AND his book is now the inspiration of a new Broadway play. Bad writing apparently does pay off in the end.
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