Droids, Clones and Technowitches, Oh My!

Ding Dong, the Techno Witch is dead?

Over the Moon by S.E. Anderson is a retelling of the Wizard of Oz with droids, clones and techno witches in space.

This world is full of twists and turns that will keep you on your toes if you can get past the first couple of chapters. While retellings can be dull and repetitive, Anderson does an amazing job with giving you a little taste of the Oz world but still making it her own. 

Even the audiobook adds a bit of flavor with beeps and boops for the droids and intense music when things go horribly wrong for Dora and her friends.

The first couple of chapters follows Dora, an illegal clone with the face of a murdered galactic princess, as she grows up on a dull farming moon. She spends her days tinkering with tech and building droid friends such as Tau, her kitchen-timer bot, while her family reminds her daily that if she leaves their farm she could be killed instantly. 

But all Dora can think about is a life off her moon and in the stars. 

That daydreaming and wishful thinking eventually brings danger to her family. In Dora’s attempt to remedy her family’s situation, she has landed herself in the Outer Zone, an area in space that was thought of as just a myth where ships disappear, and on top of the Techno Witch of Night, one of four daughters to the Techno mage. 

Lost and alone in a new world, Dora has to find a way to the Emerald moon to see the mysterious Techno mage, but she can’t do that without the help of some friends she finds along the way. 

At first it is hard to see how this could be a retelling of the Wizard of Oz. Dora seems two-dimensional and doesn’t have a lot of personality to her. She just seems like a 14-year-old going through the motions, but that turns out to be one of the best things Anderson could have done for this book.

Retellings can be repetitive and predictable like a lot of books, movies and TV shows these days. It did take me a couple chapters to start to feel for any of the characters. Like most world building stories, it has to start somewhere. 

This very unlikely trio – a cryogenically preserved girl with no memory, an obsolete theme park droid, and a bioengineered beast with a penchant for the dramatics – will face many dangerous encounters while unmasking the truth and re-writing history. 

Not only does Anderson hook you into Dora’s storyline but she has also built in-depth stories for every character that bring them more into light then the traditional Lion looking for courage, Tin Man looking for a heart and Scarecrow looking for a brain. 

Every time I thought I would have a theory of how it would all play out I was proven wrong the next minute. At times it does seem rushed and there are many questions I had by the last page, but this does leave Anderson room to grow the love interests and each character in future books.

★★★★☆
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