YMMV / Dorothy Must Die

• Anti-Climax Boss: Even though there are some detailed fights, they simply end with the target escaping - the only one that ends in an actual defeat for the villains is the Tin Woodman dying within the last ten pages of the first book. In The Wicked Will Rise, Lion gets a much better fight.
  • Dorothy herself in Yellow Brick War. Three books of buildup and constant escapes, and Dorothy is instead simply burned by Oz's magic so bad and Amy leaves her. However, the characters know this might not be the case...
• Genius Bonus:
  • Doubles as a Call-Back — Jellia Jamb is actually a character from The Marvelous Land of Oz.
  • Amy's last name is Gumm. The birth name of Judy Garland, who famously played Dorothy in the 1939 film, was Frances Gumm.
  • Two more Call Backs — Button Bright and Polychrome, who are now, um, "consorts". Trot, former companion of Button Bright, doesn't appear.
  • The city-state of Pumperdink is mentioned as one of the towns the Lion rampages through in Gillikin Country; this was one of the main locations in Kabumpo of Oz, the relatively obscure 16th Oz book.
  • There are quite a few more cameos during Dorothy's ball, such as Cayke the Cookie Cook, Frogman, some Flutterbudgets and Scraps the Patchwork Girl, who will really only be known to those who have read deep into the original book sequels.
• Harsher in Hindsight: The idea that Oz's magic essentially causes people from Kansas to go insane, looking at some of the happenings before may be a little harder to read... especially for the prequels.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Nox isn't the first character in an Oz book with that name, as there is an unrelated ox named Nox in Ruth Plumly Thompson's Handy Mandy in Oz.
• Moral Event Horizon: If Dorothy hasn't crossed it already, then she certainly will when she reanimates Jellia Jamb's corpse after having her tortured to death and makes it serve drinks at the party, to show the people of Oz what she does to traitors.
  • In-universe, this is also when Dorothy crosses it, from Amy's point of view. Jellia Jamb had taken the fall for Amy, for saving the winged monkey Maude. Amy wondered why she ever hesitated in killing Dorothy.
  • For Oz as a whole, Dorothy had crossed the Moral Event Horizon long ago, with all the Body Horror she caused, and becoming a ruthless dictator.
  • If the Nome King didn't cross it at some point before, when he nearly causes Madison's baby to fall to the floor (Which would be very bad at that age), it'll probably be then.
• Spiritual Adaptation: Allegedly, there was to be another American McGee's Alice game, this one set in Oz. This honestly makes a good adaptation of this.
• Writer Copout: Some may view the Bittersweet Ending / Sequel Hook in the first book as this, mostly due to the fact that Young Adult Literature is frequently intended as a series and a book that didn't end with a Sequel Hook would have stood out.
• The Woobie: Many.
  • Amy - she's trapped in another world, has to become a killer at her age, is actually denied a place of power, is stuck between two worlds.... yikes.
  • Madison herself. It's revealed that after her brief moment in the first book, she was cast out of her social ladder to the bottom, wherein she learned that she was such a horrid girl to Amy.
  • Jerk Ass Woobie: DOROTHY of all people, when she narrates her own chapters in End of Oz. She explains how much pain she's in, actually treats a munchkin servant well and feels sympathy for her, and starts to become a pawn in the Nome King and Glinda's games.

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