Well, this was a disappointment. In my review of the fourth 'Oz' book, 'Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz', I suggested that L. Frank Baum's greatest attribute was his imagination but his weakest was his actual writing. Here, that holds true, because, a few clever moments of playful language aside, it's once again a bundle of inconsistencies and plot conveniences with Oz on the front to make his young readers happy. It's not difficult at all to imagine that Baum really didn't want to churn out yet another 'Oz' novel but, hey his adoring public wanted it and he just couldn't say no to them, or, more cynically, to the guaranteed paycheck.

There is value here, but it takes a while to manifest. Mostly it's another trip to the well, but with a set of new companions to accompany Dorothy on the titular Road to Oz that's far more creepy and lacklustre than imaginative.

First up is the Shaggy Man, who's the creepiest of the creepy characters. He's in Kansas where he stops Dorothy because he wants to know the way to Butterfield. Acutely unaware of the concept of stranger danger, she shows him, only to discover that he doesn't actually want to go to Butterfield; he just wants to know which road would take him there, so he can avoid taking it. By this point, he has stuffed Toto into his pocket, so I think it's fair for us to assume that, Butterfield be damned, he had the same intentions for Dorothy, a beautiful young girl who he's managed to get far enough away from home that she has no idea where she is.

Dare I mention that he possesses a Love Magnet, which means that everyone automatically loves him. Maybe this means that we should cut Dorothy some slack because she was suckered into this situation by magic powers, but I'm not convinced. Talking of magic powers, they're at a crossroads where five roads meet, except that five suddenly become seventeen so they're completely lost and I couldn't help but wonder if this entire story constitutes Dorothy searching for her happy place in her mind, while she languishes in some basement, having been roofied by the Shaggy Man.

But hey, let's not go there. Let's go down road number seven, chosen at random, and see where it leads us. Given the title, there's not a lot of suspense here and the approach is perfect for Baum's patented episodic approach. Here's one thing. Here's another thing. Oh look, a third thing. Once we get past the fourth and fifth and sixth things, we'll be in Oz and we can spend a lot of chapters watching everyone we've ever met in Oz enjoying an annoyingly detailed reunion that's entirely free of any substance whatsoever. Is that cynical of me? Let's see how it goes.

First up, we need to start acquiring new companions because this journey needs to be a lot busier than just Dorothy and the Shaggy Man. Enter Button-Bright who doesn't know anything at all, to the degree that he has no idea who he is. To reach the magical number of three new characters, let's add Polychrome, who's a daughter of the Rainbow, found dancing in the middle of the road, just as lost as everyone else. She's beautiful and shimmery and an easy favourite for girls reading. So far so good, but neither of them really has any meaning. The Scarecrow, the Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion were all looking for something. These three are just lost.

Then we need to go places, which is pretty easy on a road. That's why Baum used one first time out and it's why he went back to it here. The first stop is Foxville, entirely populated by... you'll never guess... foxes. That's pretty cool, but what struck me here was that Dorothy hadn't realised that she was back in Oz even chatting away with a bunch of talking foxes. It's only when King Dox points out that he knows all about her because her exploits in Oz are famous that she twigs. Yet Dorothy has the gall to call other people stupid? She uses that specific word on both the Shaggy Man and Button-Bright.

King Dox lets them go if Dorothy will try to wangle him an invitation to Ozma's upcoming birthday celebrations on the 21st, but he turns Button-Bright's head into the head of a fox. He can't change it back, you understand, and it was all meant as a compliment, but what's done is done.

The next stop is Dunkiton, a town of beasts according to the foxes. It turns out to be a town entirely populated by donkeys. Here, the ruler is King Kik-a-Bray and he lets them go if Dorothy will try to wangle him an invitation to Ozma's upcoming birthday celebrations on the 21st, but he turns the Shaggy Man's head into the head of a donkey. He can't change it back, you understand, and it was all meant as a compliment, but what's done is done. Sound familiar much? Anyway, the only way to change these heads back is to visit the Truth Pond.

Then it's a mere house on the roadside, where Allegro da Capo lives, on his own because he's what they call a musicker, someone who makes music merely by breathing. He's like a one man band, if a one man band could do what it does without a single instrument. And, even though our travellers acknowledge that it must be awful living with such a curse, they quickly move on because he's just annoying and never mind the fact that he might well also want to go to Ozma's upcoming birthday celebrations on the 21st.

That's an odd lesson to give here, because I was starting to realise that there's an awful lot in this book about appearances. The Shaggy Man appears to be a creepy paedophile but he isn't. Donkeys use big words but it doesn't make them intelligent, just selectively educated. Button-Bright has no idea about anything but that doesn't make him stupid, just ill-informed or maybe amnesiac. Just because Button-Bright has a fox's head and the Shaggy Man a donkey's head doesn’t make them a fox or a donkey. Just because the donkeys make a lot of noise to scare the foxes doesn't mean that they're dangerous. They're just scared.

And, most tellingly, later in the book when we get into reunion territory, when Jack Pumpkinhead talks about Ozma, he uses female pronouns because she's female and he thinks of her as his mum, even though she was wearing a male body and going by Tip when she carved him. Just because she had a penis at the time doesn't make her male. That's a seriously progressive statement for 1909, arguably even more so than having her transform from the imprisonment of a fake male body into her true female self in 'The Marvelous Land of Oz'. Yet, we can victimise the musicker because we think he's annoying? Hmm.

Anyway, you won't be shocked to discover that they stumble right onto the Truth Pond so the pair with replacement heads can get their real ones back. You won't be shocked either to discover that they start bumping into characters Dorothy knows the moment they get to Oz. Oh look, there's Tik Tok and Billina just walking down the road towards them. For some reason, Ozma doesn't merely whisk them to Oz this time, instead sending characters to meet them on the road, presumably as a means of elongating all the reunions.

Maybe Baum realised that, five books in, there were now a lot more of those characters than last time out so maybe he ought to ration these encounters. Then again, he adds a whole bunch more, when Ozma tasks Dorothy with greeting guests in her stead. Hello, Gingerbread Man, King Dough I, Chick the Cherub and Para Bruin, the rubber bear. No, let's not go there. Just because Dorothy spent time with friends in San Francisco between books three and four doesn't mean she's part of that scene! Hello, Ryls from the Happy Valley, Knooks from the Forest of Burzee and, oh hey, Santa Claus, just because. No doubt they'll all be in the reunion scenes in book six.

Instead, I'll talk geography. I'm reading these books in the Del Rey paperback editions, which have a detailed map added to them, created in 1979 by James E. Haff and Dick Martin. It's been useful throughout the first four books but it's starting to highlight more of Baum's inconsistencies.

For instance, we learn in Foxville that it's on the other side of the Dreadful Desert from Oz. Then, further down the road, our travellers reach the Deadly Sands. Looking at Haff and Martin's map, is this the Shifting Sands to the east of Oz or the Deadly Desert to the west? I seem to remember that the Land of Ev in 'Ozma of Oz' was to the east, on the other side of the Shifting Sands, but in this case, they reach Winkie Country, which is to the west, and the Truth Pond is there on the map at the very southwest, close to the border with Quadling Country. So that's the Deadly Desert to cross, which they manage courtesy of a deus in machina called Johnny Dooit, rapid fire contractor, who can build you a boat out of trees in the time it takes you to eat lunch.

And that means that Foxville and Dunkiton and the musicker's house aren't actually in Oz. They're in what Baum calls fairy country, not because it contains fairies but because it's where fairy tales work. In other words, foxes and donkeys can talk and musickers exist and crossroads can suddenly grow more roads. And that means two things. For one, Dorothy doesn't need yet another natural disaster to whisk her away to Oz; she can simply walk down the road in Kansas to find fairy country. And for two, Toto must be a stubborn dog, given that every animal in fairy country can talk, even if it didn't start out there, but he only ever talks with his tail.

As you can imagine, I don't think a lot of this book. I've been enjoying the 'Oz' series thus far and I will continue through, especially now I've picked up a later bunch of the 'Famous Forty', the books written by other hands after Baum died fourteen novels into the series. However, now I have a few abiding questions. How often does his imagination falter? For me, this marks the first time in five books. When does he get his passion for the series back? It doesn't seem like he had any here. And will he quit with the reunions? There's precious little substance within the final ten chapters here and that's only going to get worse if the trends continue. ~~ Hal C F Astell

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