Rough Draft. *Spoilers* 
 You would think I would give this novel a higher rating, given how absorbed I was in it most of the time. But, although the author is clearly a writer gifted in turning a phrase, the novel is empty as a whole and my absorption was due to a search for any kind of substance or heart, which I never found. 
 I was drawn in by the character of Elphaba, there seemed a likely possibility that she would grow even more rich and engaging and have a resonating story. However the strange unmoored cruelty depicted in the first chapters should have served as a warning that this would be a book more of artifice and superficiality, one where the story is random and the characters are ultimately poorly drawn, pinging through scattered circumstances and harsh, grotesque descriptions like pinballs with no overarching depth or meaning to tie them together. 
 It was rather a fairy tale for fairy tale's sake, a flourished babbling pouring over a basic cruelty, emptiness, and the maddening caprices of inconsistent characters. Except that the old fairy tales of this kind were short, whereas Wicked is really a lot of book to read for so little reward. 
 Perhaps the writer subscribes to the theory that to tell a story it must be amoral, only various happenings described and strung together in some order, for the reader to find meaning in as he or she may. I must admit I rather loathe this kind of storytelling as I also dislike journalism where the facts are spewed out with no interpretation by the journalist, as though they took place in a vacuum with no substance behind them. And I don't mean I want hollow moralizing either, just simply heart and substance, which requires connection; connection between the characters, the story, and the reader on a visceral and emotional level. 
 I did like, however, Elphaba's point that the nature of evil is that it is secret: "You figure out one side of it - the human side, say - and the eternal side goes into shadow. Or vice versa. It's like the old saw: What does a dragon in its shell look like? Well no one can ever tell, for as soon as you break the shell to see, the dragon is no longer *in* its shell. The real disaster of this inquiry is that it is the nature of evil to be *secret.*" 
 However in the realm of the animal and spiritual, I think the source of evil is a lack of connection. On the corporeal plane it is a lack of connection to each other; one's natural, animal, and human community, and on the spiritual plane it is a weak soul, which is a lack of connection to Source, or Spirit, or God, or Universal Energy, whatever term one prefers to use, usually resulting from some kind of abuse by the world impeding the ability to sense and strengthen one's connection. Whereas children are, unless born missing some key part perhaps, born powerfully equipped to connect, and are connected, on both levels. All they need is nurturing. Anyone who has truly known a child knows this, and that is another weakness of the book, its disregard and contempt for children. Certainly agreed they are not saviors, but as to whether they are holy I can think of few better sources of study when choosing how to define the word. 
 And, I know this is disjointed but before I forget, WHAT is this man's issue with the word "clotted!?" As in, why does it recur disturbingly often? Everything is in a clot or is a clotted mass. Was he channeling a red blood cell? 
 To be continued...