Book Review: Dark Oz-Book 1

Recently, there have been plans to do a live-action movie(or possibly evan a series of movies)based on the original Oz comic book series from Caliber Comics and Arrow Comics written by Stuart Kerr & Ralph Griffith with art by Bill Bryan. The film is being planned by Perry Tao under the name Dark Oz. Aaron Deneberg has written the first of a trilogy of books which is supposed to act as the established storyline for the movie. The book is titled, Dark Oz: Book One- Of Courage And Witchcraft.

This takes place in modern day where Dorothy is an adult pilots her own plane. After flying through a heavy storm, she ends up in Oz which has been taken over by the Nome King. He has kidnapped Ozma, and turned Scarecrow, Lion, and Tin Man evil. Dorothy comes across the Freedom Fighters who are a group of rebels trying to free Oz from the Nome King. Since this book acts as a direct sequal to the original Wizard Of Oz, it has Dorothy running into post-WOO characters for the first time. So, the majority of the Freedom Fighters is made of characters like Jack Pumpkinhead and Hungry Tiger who Dorothy has never met. Meanwhile, Scraps betrays Jinjur to leave for the possessed Scarecrow whom she is in love with. This leads to an all-out animal attack lead by Lion on the Quadling Country where the Freedom Fighters battle their former ally, some to the death!

This is a fresh take on the comic, even though there are some differences, like Dorothy being the one to return to Oz instead of a trio of newbies from Earth, plus Dorothy is more of the central character in this version as apposed to the comic where she was left out of the majority of it due to being in a trance for ten years. There are some suprising twists from the original story too which make for a truly darker tale. Overall, this is worth getting a copy of. It's in paperback form through Createspace or Amazon, and also available for download at Scribd.