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Great name. Couldn’t find it on the googs but there is a Flint Hills.
Was resentment something that grew better in small spaces, like those flowers that Mom used to force to bloom inside in little vases?
Or maybe you have more space to hide your feelings in a bigger home.
I opened the door as she slid into the front seat of Tawny’s Camaro;
A Camaro. A girl named Crystal. Everything is so perfectly redneck. Great job!
The only color for miles was in the yellowed tops of the dried-out patches of grass that dotted the dirt.
I like the imagery and otherworldly experience Amy is feeling in this familiar place.
From my side, Star squeaked and scrambled into the pocket of my hoodie.
I guess we're getting a rat instead of dog. Though Toto was pretty much a rat dog.
Everything I owned was in there. Every piece of ugly clothing. Every bad memory. I was free of all of it.
Interesting thought here. The loss of Amy's home being equivalent to a sort of freedom taking the "ugly" parts of her life with it. The traditional imagery of home is of safety and welcoming, even though we know that's not true for many people.
It was like he had whole worlds behind his eyes.
I like this description. It imparts that feeling of someone who has seen some crap. That cliched old eyes in a young face description stated in a new way.
“The road wants you to go to the city.” “The road? Wants . . . me?” I rubbed my head in confusion. “It wants everyone. That’s what it’s for. The road’s been here longer than any of us. There’s deep magic in there—magic even she doesn’t understand. Some people think it has a mind of its own. It wants you to go to the city, but it doesn’t like to make the trip easy.”
I like this idea of the road being a living entity drawing people toward a destination.
It was already infinite and still it wanted more.
Nice description.
After a while, the bedraggled fields by the side of the road turned into huge cornfields on either side, with stalks as tall as my body. I was used to cornfields back in Kansas, obviously, but these were different: every ear was as black and shiny as oil. It looked like each one had been dipped in tar. Or like all the life had been sucked out of them and had something dead and evil pumped back in their place.
Well that can't bode well. Like the description.
Her T-shirt revealed arms covered in complicated tattoo sleeves.
Nice.
She marched right over to where I stood and grabbed her bag from where it lay at my feet.
I'm confused where this bag came from. Did the munchkin throw it out the window? Did it fall off the statue?
Something familiar that I couldn’t place. She had to be at least a couple of hundred feet away,
She trudged up a hill, looked across a field, and the figure is 200 feet away?
distance. Instead of the beautiful, flowing dress that the character had worn in the book, this gown was more like armor: thin metallic petals made up the voluminous skirt while magenta jewels dipped and curved across her chest in a tight, plunging bodice.
That's pretty cool.
Yes, she was delicate-featured with exquisite bone structure, her perfect strawberry-blonde curls escaping from underneath a blinged-out golden crown as she smiled benevolently down at her loyal subjects. But that smile. It was—I don’t know how else to put it—kind of super-gross. It stretched unnaturally wide, spreading out maniacally all the way across her jaw from one cheekbone to the other, and it was twitching at the corners like her lips had been pinned into place.
I like this description.
She pulled out a small tube and held it up. “I never wear it, but it comes in handy to have around,” she said, uncapping the top and smearing it across her mouth like lipstick. As she did, her scowling lips stretched like putty into a wide, maniacal grin and stayed that way.
1984. We love the state!
Indigo gave a loud, angry snort. “It’s never enough. Never enough for her, and sure as hell never enough for Dorothy. They’re digging holes from here to the capital and sucking it right up out of the land. Why do you think all of Munchkin Country’s such a dump? Oz needs magic to survive. Without it, it just dries up.”
What happens when it all runs out? There’s a parallel here between the worlds with fuel and magic.
That’s funny.
His long, spindly legs were a complex construction of rods and springs and joints, and bent backward at his ankles like a horse’s legs;
Like a tin satyr. Cool.
his face was pinched and mean, with beady, flashing metal eyes and a thin, cylindrical nose that jutted out several inches from his face and ended in a nasty little point. His oversize jaw jutted out from the rest of his face in a nasty underbite, revealing a mess of little blades where his teeth should have been.
I'm Enjoying this new tin man so far.
He had been a flesh-and-blood man until a witch had enchanted his ax to make him chop off pieces of his body one by one, and one by one he had replaced
Wow! Is that from the book? I don't remember that from the movie at all.
He was just a disembodied head grafted to the body of a bicycle, with two robotic arms where the handlebars should have been, the knuckles of his mechanized hands scraping the bricks on the road.
Nice.
All I could see of what had been Indigo was a red splatter of bone and blood where she had knelt just a few seconds ago. I felt myself gagging, but nothing came up. I leaned over, hands on my knees, trying to get a breath.
That was surprisingly hard core.
Her eyes didn’t look evil. They looked curious and almost kind. Like she was just trying to figure me out. She was so pretty that it was hard to imagine she was responsible for Indigo’s death or any of the other atrocities I’d been told were her fault.
Always trust a hot person.
There was no place to hide except under the bed, and anyway, only Star was small enough to fit down there.
At this point I'm thinking the animal companion is a total tripple U. Unneeded, unwanted, underwhelming. Star feels like an add on. Like Dorothy had a pet, so Amy needs one too.
I could still feel the coldness of the knife in my clenched palm.
Didn't she drop it in the cell?
Standing there in the dark, it was like all those alones had just been tiny, interlocking pieces of a picture so big that you could only see the whole thing from a mile away.
Great imagery.
and a gorgeous silk robe
Interesting there are quite a few pieces of excellent imagery here but sprinkled heavily in between with generic descriptions like this.
It was Glinda. Glinda the not-so-good witch. The one who was besties with Dorothy, who had made the Munchkins her slaves and was using them to mine giant holes all over Oz.
Nice.
Despite how tired I was and despite
Repetitive. Use a different word or eliminate the extra word.
My first lesson with Glamora was something completely different.
Disappointed this isn’t Glinda. Double agent would have been more interesting.
Glamora ran her fingers over the scar almost lovingly. “When she faces me, I want her to face what she’s done.”
Is it a scar or a hole? How can we see her tongue and teeth if it’s just a scar?
She tossed her own hair, and it changed from deep auburn to pale lavender. Then back again.
Just realized we haven’t heard from the rat for a while. Which is fine with me, but it’s one of the dangers of putting in creatures that don’t talk or serve a purpose other than to exist. The rat feels like an add on just because Dorothy had a pet.
I just learned a new word.
“But you beat her fair and square.
She’s in another world. This cliche feels so pedestrian.
I wondered, thinking of Star.
It’s a Star sighting. Sort of.
With any luck, Pete was keeping her nice and safe,
I forgot the rat was with Pete. Good way to not have to worry about writing for it, but with so little mentioning it may as well not exist. It
From the regimented schedule, the way they eat in unison, whispers in the hall, to random acts of defiance, Dorothy’s world has a 1984 feel to it.
until I slipped up and got beheaded for the crime of Soap Scum.
Haha.
The maid’s face was stoic.
How can her face be stoic when she has PermaSmile on?
I realized suddenly how long we’d been talking. Jellia would have noticed me missing by now.
I've been thinking the same thing for a couple paragraphs now.
No more waiting. I had made a promise to myself that I would help Ollie. Now I had a chance to make good on
Be nice to know where exactly this secret entrance is.
where they’d probably discovered her mutilated wings by now.
Good observation considering the Woodsman already told her the monkey had no wings.
The spike heels of her magic shoes—which I pointedly avoided looking at—sparked against the marble with her every step.
Not looking at them but knows what they’re doing?
Once Dorothy was dead, the first thing I planned to do was free Jellia.
Seems to me Jellia has plenty of opportunity to assassinate Dorothy. Amy shouldn’t be taking any crap from anyone in the order about this.
I had already changed, I knew.
This whole thing feels rushed to me. I’m not sold on this so called transformation.
I shoved forward in a tackle, heard Dorothy cry out as her back struck the parapet, and then together we flipped over the edge.
What happened to the dog she was holding? And how old is that damn thing? Too bad it’s not a zombie dog. That would be bad ass.
There’s a lot of inner monologuing going on in all these fights. Makes them feel like they go on forever.
Where the mysterious gardener who was my friend had been just a moment ago, Oz’s One True Princess now stood. She blinked.
Well that’s cool. Didn’t see that coming.
