Boy, was this one fun! No, it's not the best novel I've read this year and it's not the heaviest either, but it has a good shot at winning out as the most fun. I devoured it in a single sitting and found myself with a grin on my face for a good chunk of it. However, it's far from challenging, even as a YA read, and it has a sort of interactive mindset where we guess at what's going to be waiting for Dory on the next floor of her new apartment building. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's back up.
Dory is a lonely young lady who keeps to herself, which is simple to do in the Kansas Heights apartment block, where everyone does that. But a storm blows in and the block blows out, so she's forced to move, her father finding her a first floor apartment in the Optical Zenith building. If you're paying attention to those details, you'll see a common theme developing already and that's very much deliberate. Dory is short for Dorothea, or Dorothy, and, well, she's not in Kansas anymore. She's in OZ. And, just as 'The Wizard of Oz' is a fantasy that takes place within a fantasy, there's a picture book in the wreckage that neatly telegraphs what Dory is going to see, including a vampire, a werewolf and a ghost.
'The Wizard of Oz' was a children's book, of course, before it became a whole slew of movies, and this is a children's story too, even if it's dressed up for Hallowe'en. I'd love to have read this at five, but I have no complaints reading it at fifty and change. Sure, it's light. Sure, Dory takes everything that happens in a childlike fashion, accepting things immediately for what they are and moving right along, as if it's usual to deal with the supernatural on a constant basis. Sure, it's easy to see how a different filter could have been applied to the entire book and every scene in it to turn it into an adult horror novel. But that's not what Megan Vaughn had in mind and that's fine.
I liked how everything was just a little off once Dory gets to OZ. This isn't a picture book, so Vaughn had no way of shifting from sepia to TechniColor, but she makes a shift in tone to mimic that. The first person Dory meets in OZ is "boringly handsome" like a model, but also sick and obviously so. And, of course, he's far from the last strange character she will meet as she makes her way upstairs. Right after moving in she discovers that the three month lease that she signed says three years on it. She needs to talk to the landlord to square it away, but he lives on the tenth floor, behind the Emerald Door of the title. What's more, he has no phone and he only communicates through a newsletter. So, up the stairs she goes.
What's waiting on the second floor is a crazy cat lady who provides her with some important back story. The previous tenant of Dory's room was a hermit who died there after fifty years of residency. And her sister, up on thirteen, wants something of hers. No prizes for guessing that what she wants is what Dory found there on her first day, but it's good to have a MacGuffin.
What's waiting on the third floor is the scarecrow. OK, he's a ghost with a shock of straw-coloured hair, but I doubt anyone will fail to acknowledge that he's the scarecrow at this point. We're in OZ and we're off to see the wizard. Of course, once we're past the witch, we're going to meet the scarecrow. He's called Ghost and he's amnesiac, so wants his memory back; he also wants to learn how to scare people as he's really not very good at that.
Similarly, the vampire on four is Raleigh who has no empathy and wants to be able to feel again, while the werewolf on five is Winston, who's scared of almost everything, an agoraphobic and claustrophobic mess. No brain, no heart, no courage. Scarecrow, tin man, cowardly lion. Did I mention that Dory has a little dog too, called Frank? Did I tell you what colour her sneakers are? Hey, you know already. I can tell that you're following nicely.
And, as transparent a translation of 'The Wizard of Oz' into a mildly spooky apartment block as this is, I was absolutely following too, as Dory climbs each flight of stairs on her way to the Emerald Door on the tenth floor. Hey, I'm a poet and I don't know it! And that's about the only thing she doesn't meet on her way. Well, their way, because you won't be shocked to discover that Ghost, Raleigh and Winston join her on her quest, because they have their own reasons to talk to the landlord and there's safety in numbers.
As you can imagine, there are precious few surprises here. We all know the story because we've read it and we've watched it and probably more than once in both cases. What Vaughn does to counter that is to make this highly episodic, with each floor of the OZ building offering a new shock and a new solution. I liked how she made sure that it wasn't just Dory's show, by being even-handed with these characters. Everyone is involved in conversation. Everyone gets opportunity to look both good and bad. Everyone develops as a character, even if that development is inevitably rather predictable.
What isn't predictable is what's waiting on the next floor because, while everything is so episodic that this novel could have been twice the length just by doubling the height of the building, Vaughn doesn't go for cliffhangers to set us up for the next chapter. Maybe there were a couple here and there, but it's not a routine approach, so we find ourselves climbing the stairs with our colourful party, knowing that something's going to be up there but knowing too that it's not just going to jump out to scare us. This is a YA fantasy, remember, not an adult horror novel.
And, as little as the progression of monsters really matters in the grand scheme of things, I'll leave you to experience them with Dory and her crew. I'll just mention that they're all fun in their way, they each add to the lessons learned and they run through the vast majority of monsters you're going to imagine will show up at some point. Yes, there's a giant spider. Of course, there's a giant spider. There are also... nah, you won't trick me into telling you. Buy the book and read it for yourself. Or read it aloud to the kids in your life. They'll have fun with it and so will you.
Given that we know that the Wizard of Oz isn't what he pretends to be, we can safely assume that there are some shenanigans planned for when our heroes make it all the way to the tenth floor, the Emerald Door, and Vaughn does her job when we get to that point. The quest changes a little and, if you were at all paying attention early on, you'll probably have guessed exactly how it changes already. But this isn't a book to read for surprises, it's a book to read for comfort. It's an old favourite that you simply haven't read yet.
If you're old and curmudgeonly like me, this is going to seem a little light. I don't know what age group this was written for, but it's an age group a lot younger than me. My eighteen-year old granddaughter might get a kick out of this, but it's going to seem a little light to her too. Maybe the fourteen-year-old is the right age. Maybe it would be better sitting on a shelf, waiting for the eight-year-old to reach double digits. And, as I mentioned, it feels like it would be a great book to read aloud, even without pictures to bolster the experience.
Certainly the biggest downside to the book would vanish if it's read aloud, because there are a number of typos here that won't show up that way. They're the sort of typos that show up when you spellcheck a book diligently but don't proof it particularly well. You only have to wait until page nine to track down a couple: "stared" for "started" and "deigned" for "designed". Both words are real words; they're merely not the right words. And so it goes, with "dating sights", "scrapped fingertips" and a "forth pumpkin". I could add that the entire book is laid out in a sans-serif font, which is a little jarring, but that's fair for the audience, I think.
Quite frankly, if those are the biggest problems with the book, they're pretty minor and not difficult to fix in a second edition. And they're hardly unusual problems for small press publications. At least, this has justified text with good margins. I've seen a heck of a lot worse. And I'm hardly immune either. Just look at the spine on my second book. I'm still tempted to put out a second edition just to change that to something readable. And, if I did, I could also fix... yeah, that way lies madness. Just like the thirteenth floor. ~~ Hal C F Astell
