The author of the 'Oz' books and a slew of other children's fantasies, L. Frank Baum, died in 1919, a day after having a stroke and slipping into a coma. His final words were apparently given to Maud, his wife: "Now we can cross the Shifting Sands." His most famous series, of course, continued to be published, with this novel his first to appear posthumously. It was all his work and it does many of the things that his books tended to do, including a penchant for inconsistency.

For instance, I do hope that he made it over the Shifting Sands, given that he calls the desert that surrounds Oz a bunch of different names here. In his introduction, it's the Great Sandy Desert. On page one, it's the Deadly Sandy Desert. On the map published in the Del Rey reprints, which was, admittedly not his work, it has four different names for the four different sides of Oz. As we start to the east, it ought to be the Shifting Sands, as the Deadly Desert is on the west. However, only ten pages in, it's the Deadly Desert to the east. Maybe Baum is still wandering around the many lands bordering Oz trying to find a way to get across, but he ought to be fine because he lets us in on the secret here by explaining how Kiki Aru does it.

Kiki Aru, in case you're wondering, is yet another new character in a long succession of them. He's the unhappy son of a sorcerer who lives on top of Mount Munch at the very east of Oz. It's too tall to climb, but folk live an isolated existence on the top. They're the Hyups and that sorcerer is Bini Aru, who stopped practicing magic when Ozma decreed it. Given how much magic we've run into in earlier books that was wielded by sorcerers who either didn't hear about the decree or ignored it, that makes one of him. It's frustrating to him because he knows the secret to transformation. It's easy, as long as you can correctly pronounce PYRZQXGL. No, that's not a Lovecraftian elder god.

Anyway, as you might expect, Kiki Aru finds that pronunciation, hidden within his father's lab, so turns himself into a hawk and flies over the Deadly Desert or whatever the heck it's really called to Hiland. Beyond that is Loland and both are ruled over by the Gingerbread Man, John Dough. I like that. His prime minister is Chick the Cherub. Kiki enjoys travelling and so we quickly move on to Merryland, run by Wax Doll, and Noland, ruled by King Bud. Then it's countries we know about, the Land of Ev and the Kingdom of Ix, where he discovers that things cost money, of which he has precisely none.

Without anything to pay for a room, he turns into a magpie and steals a piece of gold through an open window. He learns that this is wicked behaviour, so he decides to be wicked and, as he states that, Ruggedo overhears his words. You remember him, I'm sure. He's the former Nome King, who also loves being wicked mostly for the sake of it. And, because he's a former Nome King without a versatile imagination, he wants Kiki to help him conquer Oz. Again. The lesson here for readers is that you can never trust wicked people. They're betrayers and Kiki and Ruggedo promptly plan to betray each other. It's as instinctual as breathing.

From here, the book splits into three separate plot strands, all of which gradually come together by the end. The first is Ruggedo and Kiki, who fly over to Oz as birds and try to convert the many animals in the Gugu Forest, the largest such in the land, to become their army. The second is the quest of Trot and Cap'n Bill to retrieve a magic flower the Glass Cat told them about, so they can give it to Ozma for her birthday. Needless to say, they run into trouble. The third follows Dorothy as she tries to figure out a present of her own for Ozma, eventually taking Glinda's advice to give her a thoroughly unusual cake. Needless to say, she runs into trouble too.

I rather liked this one, partly because there's so much trouble to be run into and partly because it unfolds smoothly. As endless reunions are one of my least favourite aspects to the 'Oz' books, I'm rather happy that Baum came up with the wonderful idea of giving old favourites a fresh moment in the spotlight by having Dorothy ask them in turn about what present she should give. Glinda is far from the first person she asks, so we meet plenty of friends in this sequence. Scraps wrote her a song, the Tin Woodman is having an emerald studded tin girdle made—and you know you've all wanted one of those—and the Scarecrow is making straw slippers.

Each strand gets its own regulars too. Trot and Cap'n head off to retrieve the magic flower with guidance from the Glass Cat, but after they're stuck there because of the magic of the island the flower is on, others have to come and rescue them. That's after Dorothy and the Wizard get past their own strand, where they're accompanied by the Cowardly Lion and the Hungry Tiger, as the quest inherently involves animals. You might wonder why, given that they're making a cake, but there is a reason and it's an outrageous one and it's not likely to be one you'd see in a children's story today. It treads on far too many slippery slopes to do nothing more than enjoy whimsy.

The most substantial is the one with Kiki Aru and Ruggedo, because they get to the forest first so manage to sow their discord like twisted politicians, having transformed themselves into a weird conglomeration of creatures they call Li-Mon-Eags, because they're part lions, part monkeys and part eagles. That confuses Gugu, the leopard who rules the Gugu Forest, and his massed throngs of animals, and the ensuing barrage of transformations boggles their minds even further. For my part, I found myself wondering how different earlier books, such as 'The Road to Oz' and 'The Tin Woodman of Oz', would have played had their participants known how to pronounce PYRZQXGL.

Of course, everything works in the end, mostly because the Wizard of Oz has grown considerably from the bumbling humbug he often seemed to be, and the back and forth of how we get there is a decent amount of fun. We also meet memorable new characters on the way like the Lonesome Duck, who I'd love to meet again in future books. I have no idea yet how the other hands, starting with Ruth Plumly Thompson, tackled the sheer abundance of minor characters Baum created as they continued the 'Oz' series.

After Ozma's eventual birthday party, which fortunately doesn't turn into an endless reunion, my first driving thought was to return to the back cover blurb on my Del Rey paperback edition and wonder what the folk there were smoking there when they wrote it. Yes, Kiki Aru and Ruggedo do cause trouble here. That's fair. However, they certainly do not bring mayhem to the Emerald City, given that the story is over by the time they get there and they certainly don't get there in their human forms. Most of all, they don't transform anyone in the Emerald City into a strange beast. I wonder if someone at Del Rey confused the expansive land of Oz with the Emerald City that sits at its heart. That seems like a pretty huge mistake and it isn't one Baum made himself. That's new.

Next month, the final 'Oz' book written by L. Frank Baum, 'Glinda of Oz', which was published one year on from his death. Then it's time to dive into Ruth Plumly Thompson's contributions to the series, starting with 'The Royal Book of Oz'. ~~ Hal C F Astell

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