I recieved this book as a gift, along with tickets to see Wicked. I was so excited to start reading the book, until I actually started to read it. There was just way too many charecters to keep track of. When one of them died, I had to page back in the book to jog my memory on who in the heck it was. It took me 4 months to get through the book. I just found it rambling on & on. So needless to say, I was not excited to see the show after reading the book, but I was surprised. The show was great, the book sucked. If you are going to write a spinoff from one of the most loved movies of all time, thing should really be a little more accurate. I watched the Wizard of Oz again, and the book is inconsistant with the movie. It's a shame because I think this book had tons of potential but fell really flat.