Read this after watching the movie, but I knew going in it would be very different. It's striking how different Elphaba is in the book, in terms of being more visibly 'monstrous' (especially as a baby), and the fact that she doesn't have magic, and that she is implied to be intersex. All of those things make her dehumanization in the book more rooted in peoples' unjustified fear of the other, rather than fear of her power. The book is interesting in that it is a critique of dehumanization and violence and fascism, a much more complicated story than the movie. These themes are what make the book interesting, while the Elphaba/Glinda dynamic is what makes the movie interesting to me.

Unfortunately, I didn't really like the style of the book. The prose itself felt a little unnecessarily complex and verbose, and it felt like the story moved constantly between different places and groups of people (and never tied those plot points back up), and also occasionally dragged (in the Vinkus, for example). It's possible that many of those threads are tied together in the further books in the series, but I probably won't continue with it. If you find themes/critiques of dehumanization and fascism interesting, and you don't mind a meandering story that is more of a character study of many different characters, then I recommend this to you, but if you need a tight plot or likeable characters, maybe leave this on the shelf.