The Battle for Oz by Jenna Grace

Recently, I discovered a site which would allow me to read galley copies of soon-to-be released books. The first book I read was called The Battle for Oz.  I am a confessed Oz fan (owning most of the original Frank L. Baum Oz books) and my favorite book is Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by  Lewis Carroll.

This book has an interesting premise: if Oz is a magical world people can travel to, can people also travel between other magical worlds, like Wonderland. It starts with an invasion of Oz from Wonderland, and our two heroines of the original books, Dorothy and Alice, must return to save Oz and defeat the nemesis of Wonderland.

Of course, Dorothy and Alice have grown up. However, they don't feel like the Dorothy or Alice we know from books or movies. In fact, they are very flat. The reader is left to fill in who these young women are from previous readings or movies of Oz and Wonderland.

In some places, the stories overlap in truly odd ways. There's a mixture of real people (The Brother's Grimm, who have seemingly traveled Oz and are perhaps Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum from Wonderland), and an odd reference to the Munich Pact of 1938 and an odd reference to the Nazi Party and Hitler. The marriage of real people and fictional characters creates a disconnect in the suspension of disbelief required for the story to flow.

While this book reminds me of The Looking Glass Wars, I would have preferred more show versus tell from the author. The characters seem very one dimensional, and there's much exposition instead of letting the characters tell their stories through dialogue and character development.

At times, I was unsure of the intended audience. While the story is easy to follow and there's no problem with the teen/YA, Dorothy and Alice are consistently killing or destroying trolls, guards, and other characters. They are remorseless, and that is completely out of character for either of them in their previous novels. Understanding this is a war, Dorothy carries a pretty deadly whip and odd cookies and candies that do unusual things, like creating a shape-shifting Toto. Alice carries a sword and has specialty potions from Cheshire Cat that make her a formidable foe. A lot of characters are simply wiped out at the end of the novel.

Would I recommend this book? I consider it a "mash-up" that reminds me of the TV show Once Upon a Time. I won't purchase this book for my classroom, but I can see that people who are nostalgic about Oz will read this book, especially people who have loved The Looking Glass Wars or Alice in Zombieland.