Into a Wicked World

A Romance in Oz: Book 1

by Jordan Riley Swan

Lions, and tigers, and an emotionally unavailable woodsman, oh my!

When Dorothy Gale said she wanted to get as far away from her narcissistic mother as she possibly could, she didn’t mean an entirely new world altogether. Mystically transported to the Land of Oz, the Kansas college student must navigate the dangers of angry trees, poisonous poppies, and wicked witches, all on her quest to find the Wizard who might be able to get her home.

It doesn’t take Dorothy long to assemble a group of unlikely allies—including a talkative-yet-naïve scarecrow, a princely lionman, and a woodsman whose looks are as sharp as the magical axe on his hip. But when the seemingly cold-hearted woodsman escorting Dorothy through Oz begins to warm her heart, she starts wanting more than just a return trip to Kansas.

Enchanted by a curse that has earned him the nickname Tinman, Nick Chopper just wants to live his lonely life safe in the Blue Forest with the nonjudgmental Fighting Trees and the occasional trip into town for some Munchkin desserts. But his routine is about to be blown away when Glinda the Good orders him to escort a whirlwind of a woman, who has just flown in from a faraway land, to the bustling Emerald City.

Every moment with Dorothy makes his curse harder and harder to bear. But being around her starts to feel worth the pain, and Nick slowly begins to hope Dorothy can see that home is where the tin heart is…

REVIEW

5 out of 5

This was such a fun re-telling, and it whirls you off to the land of Oz. First, I must admit I’m a huge fan of the original Oz book series, so I was excited to see where this new spin would take me. A lot of the familiar characters are there (that fans of the movie will recognize), but they’re a little different, and have more depth to them than the movie gives. We get to see new facets that aren’t present in the books, and I love how Dorothy is a college student from the modern world. She’s a lot different from the little girl in the books, and a lot more sassy (which I absolutely adore about her). Honestly, the hardest part of reading this was reaching the end. The world was brought to life just as vividly as it is in my memories, with a few changes, but it was so fun to explore through this new lens. Cannot recommend this enough, and I’m looking forward to seeing what comes next in this series!

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jordan Riley Swan is a wild word hunter living in the far and dangerous reaches of rural Ohio. He spends his nights tracking down big-game stories, capturing them in paper cages, and training them to be better tales.

The Heart’s Bidding was the first novel he’d dared to use the keys of his typewriter to release back into the wild.

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