Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

note: the version i was reading had a 9-chapter preview of the next book included which i don't count as part of the book, so i was probably closer to about 50% through the book by my estimation.ok so overall this book was weird and there were a lot of things that kinda threw me off just in general, not even in comparison to the musical/movie, so i wasn't committed super hard to finishing it in the first place. i was more reading it to see how much it differed to the adaptations and what the author would do with it, so it was easy to ignore the occasional slut-shaming and use of the g-slur, which is kind of expected in a book from the 90s.

this, however, is inexcusable and turned me off the entire book:

“What's he wearing such silly paint for?” said Avaric. “He only draws attention to himself. And that skin. I wouldn't want to have skin the color of shit.”

that is an INSANE amount of racism and it soured the whole book for me. i'm looking up a plot summary but i am not touching this book again.