It's fair to say that I've found the 'Oz' series fascinating and whimsical but I completely despised its fifth entry, 'The Road to Oz'. Re-reading my review of that book suggests that I hated it more than I remember doing, but it was an awful novel, an episodic journey with new companions that had no value through experiences that didn't work to an interminable reunion that served little purpose except to mark off a guestlist and then add a few additional names to the bottom. As everything that was wrong with it continued a gradual downward trend, that didn't bode well for book six.

However, this is much more like it and I can answer the three questions I asked at the very end of my review of 'The Land of Oz' much more positively than I ever expected to.

How often does Baum's imagination falter? Well, it faltered in that book for sure, if really for the first time in the series, but it's back here with a vengeance, with an abundance of new characters as joyously whimsical as they are cute, quirky or dangerous. When does he get his passion for the series back? Well, there's far more of that on display here but it ends with a clear statement that it's done, ended, finished, no takebacksies. And will he quit with the reunions? No, but he's able to manage it far more elegantly than the one last time out, enough so that it's almost enjoyable and certainly not frustratingly pointless.

Moreover, this isn't entirely as episodic as every 'Oz' book thus far, because there are two—count 'em—stories rather than one. And, while they're both largely episodic, they're also circular rather than linear, as if Baum knew how he was going to wrap them both up from the outset, rather than just pouring out ideas on the page until his target word count was met. I liked one more than the other but there's much to praise in both.

The first story centres around the fact that the Nome King, Roquat the Red, wants his magic belt back. If you'll remember, Dorothy took that off him in 'Ozma of Oz' and left it with Ozma ongoing. It means that the Nome King can't do any of the magical things that he used to do and that royally pisses him off. So he's going to invade Oz, destroy everything and steal back the belt. Given that they can't cross the Deadly Desert, on account of it being appropriately named, he's going to dig under it. After all, the Nomes are miners. They can just dig an invasion tunnel.

And, given that Ozma proved more powerful than him last time out, back when he had the magic belt, he promotes Guph to be his new general and tasks him with enlisting allies. As useless as the Nome King is, General Guph turns out to be pretty darn good at enlisting allies, even though they all plan on betraying the Nomes after they get what they want. Baum has fun conjuring up a host of big bads, only one reason why his imagination is firmly back in gear in this book.

First up are the Whimsies, who wear big fake heads over tiny real ones. They're immensely strong but they don't have a lot of brains, size apparently being everything. Their nameless chief agrees to join the Nomes if they'll get big heads from the deal, once Muquat gets his magic belt. Then it's the Growleywogs over the Ripple Lands. They're gigantic but all skin and bones. Their chief, called the Grand Gallipoot, agrees to be part of the invasion force in return for twenty thousand people of Oz to use as slaves. Finally, there are the Phanfasms on the dread Mountain of Phantastico, who are Erbs, masters of illusion who can read minds. They already have everything they want, but the First and Foremost agrees to join them just for "the exquisite joy of making the happy unhappy".

So far so good and so far so dark. Baum has delved into darkness here and there in this series but this marks his most deliberate and sustained journey into the dark side. Sure, they're cartoonishly villainous but the 'Oz' books were aimed at a young audience and I can see a lot of young readers back in the day being scared silly by the Whimsies, Growleywogs and especially Phanfasms. These scenes are also alternated with the other story but, once the combined force is assembled, there are few of them as we wait along with the Nome King for his tunnel to be completed.

That other story is triggered by some real life consequences. Back in Kansas, Uncle Henry only has thirty days to pay the mortgage on his farm or they're out. Fortunately, Dorothy has a plan and is quick to carry it out. One 4:00pm secret sign in Ozma's magic spying picture later, she's wondering to Ozma whether she can bring her aunt and uncle to the Emerald City. And, sure enough, Ozma's on board and the very next morning, she uses her magic belt to blink Aunt Em and Uncle Henry in from Kansas. There's no warning, I should add, which is pretty risky. They could have been on the toilet. Hey, they could have been getting jiggy with it one last time before they lose the farm but I'm not judging. I'm just saying you ought to give people a heads up before you beam them up.

Anyway, they're there now with rich clothes and spacious rooms in the palace, but they're workers and court life is boring to them. Ozma won't let them help do anything, so she sends them all on a tour of Oz. Show the newcomers what the place is like, that sort of thing. And get their complaints out of the palace in the process. And so the three of them head south into Quadling country to go see the Cuttenclips and a whole bunch of other stops after that. They're escorted by Omby Pamby, the Captain General of Ozma's army, the Wizard of Oz, the Shaggy Man and Billina, all in a wagon drawn by the Sawhorse. Let's get some of that reunion stuff out of the way early!

Again, Baum's whimsical imagination is on fire here. For a start, the Cuttenclips are living paper dolls. Miss Cuttenclip herself is a real girl but she made the village and its inhabitants out of the living paper that Glinda gave her. They're delightful but it's clearly dangerous for them to be in a paper village, as the Shaggy Man ably proves when he sneezes and knocks down houses. So, on to Fiddlecumjig—no, I'm not kidding—to meet the Fuddles, who are living 3D puzzles. This time Toto causes the faux pas by barking at a bee, at which point all the Fuddles go to pieces. Literally. Be in their company for long and you'll be putting them all back together again, like Humpty Dumpty.

Some of these stops are intensely fun, like when their entourage is captured by the Spoon Brigade of Utensia, which is ruled over by King Kleaver with the Colander the High Priest, the holiest thing there. My favourite character is the Corkscrew, a lawyer because he's used to appearing at the bar. Damn, Baum hauls out the puns! I'm all for this. Unfortunately, others are weaker, like twin towns of Bunbury and Bunnybury. The former is entirely made out of bread and butter, which prompts a hungry Dorothy to be intensely rude. Can't they just eat the people of Bunbury? No? But they can eat some fences and wheelbarrows? Entitled much?

So there's plenty of imagination here, which I've realised has been Baum's strong point from the outset. However, there's also plenty of convenience and plenty of inconsistency, which I learned a while back was his weakest spot. The most frustrating is the ever-moving map. In 'Ozma of Oz', the land of Ev where the Nome King's mine is located was on the east of Oz on the opposite side of the Deadly Desert, even though the map at the beginning of the Del Rey editions places the Shifting Sands to the east and the Deadly Desert to the west. Here, the Land of Ev is still on the other side of the Deadly Desert, but now it's located to the south of Oz. Does Oz rotate or something?

Baum lets us in on some data from the latest Emerald City census. There are 57,318 people in the city, occupying 9,654 buildings. Damn, that's six per house on average! Can't they build more and not out of either paper or bread? Oz as a whole has half a million inhabitants, none of whom are poor, even though everything's owned by their respective rulers. Then again, there's no money in Oz, so what does "poor" even mean? There's also no disease, no evil (except what's on the way in that underground tunnel) and no death, except by accident (which is an odd loophole to leave in). In other words, this is a happy Communist society with an all-powerful monarch.

Another odd question that arose for me here had to do with animals. We learned in 'Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz' that there are no horses in Oz, because nobody had a clue what Jim was when he showed up with the rest of Dorothy's party. However, there's a Sawhorse. Why did they call him a Sawhorse? I know the folk in Oz might actually have sawhorses but they wouldn't call them that if they didn't have horses, right? Why didn't they call it a sawzebra given that they do in fact have a zebra, one that has better language skills and enunciation than Dorothy, I do b'lieve. Similarly, it seems weird that Toto can be the only dog in Oz but the rabbits in Bunnybury already dislike dogs more than anything else. Why and how would they know?

Anyway, this is a mixture of gloriously whimsical imagination and frustrating inconsistency with a side order of convenience. Isn't it great that we learn that the Wizard now knows some real magic at the point they need him to conjure up food and shelter? And, given that the book is running out of pages by the time the tunnel opens, isn't it convenient that the Forbidden Fountain sits on top of where it comes out? To be fair, Ozma uses that fact cleverly and sets up the finalé rather calmly, but still. All in all, I liked this one a lot, in some ways more than any of the other five. Maybe it sits behind only the first one and maybe 'Ozma in Oz'. More important, it sits entire leagues above 'The Road to Oz'.

Oh, and it all ends here apparently. After the book wraps, "the writer of the Oz stories" lets us in on something he's received from a certain Dorothy Gale, written on a "broad white feather from a stork's wing". "You will never hear anything more about Oz," she tells him, "because we are now cut off forever from all the rest of the world." If that wasn't enough, he adds telling words of his own: "we have had enough of the history of the Land of Oz to fill six story books". And if Baum has "had enough", then that's it. There'll be no book seven for me to read next month.

So, with that said, I'll see you next month for book seven, 'The Patchwork Girl of Oz' by L. Frank Baum. Apparently he hadn't "had enough" after all. ~~ Hal C F Astell

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