See full review for The Wicked will Rise at: https://toomanybooksnotenoughshelves.... 
 Amy Gumm is from Kansas and like a certain other Kansan before her - Dorothy Gale - she found her way to Oz in a tornado. What she never expected to find though when she got there was Dorothy and the twisted world she had created. Glinda the Good Witch isn't good anymore. The Scarecrow is downright terrifying. The Cowardly Lion has found his courage and has become Dorothy's assassin. And the Tin Man was lethal with his axe, until Amy took out his heart. The Wicked Witches aren't evil, and have in fact formed a group called The Order to save Oz from Dorothy's rule. They take in and train Amy to defeat the girl with the ruby red shoes, but it didn't go according to plan. Now all of the Emerald City is burning and the Order is thrown in every which direction in Oz. And Amy has a mission to achieve, she can't kill Dorothy unless she takes the Tin Man's heart, the Lion's courage, and the Scarecrow's brain. 
 She already has the Tin Man's heart and as she escapes the Emerald City she runs into the Lion and takes his courage. The only problem is that in the process of doing so, she tapped into some rather dark magic and became a little bit different herself. She's not sure if she should continue on, not if she can't control this dark side of herself, but how else is she supposed to get home? But as she should know by now in Oz, not everything is what the story book made it out to be... 
 So the violence really escalated in this book and I'm not really sure if I liked that or not. On one hand I like having a proactive main character who struggles with the darkness within herself, but on the other hand the story line got a little bit too confusing.