Five books in, I've become familiar with what Ruth Plumly Thompson brought to the 'Oz' books and what she didn't. They're still episodic and convenient; they adhere to tradition but change things that don't need to be changed, for no apparent reason; and they're full of wordplay which mostly works very well indeed. This one does all of those things, but unfortunately it adds retreading of old ground, because a lot of 'The Hungry Tiger of Oz' feels very reminiscent indeed.

The first retread comes early, because we start out in Rash with a despotic ruler who's locked up half his population. He's Irasha the Rough, the Pasha of Rash and he's a Rash Sovereign. Yes, that pun gets milked an awful lot here, but I like it. What I don't like is the rerun of 'The Cowardly Lion of Oz', only three books earlier, because Irasha decides that he needs a tiger to eat prisoners and thus free up space for more and, hey, there's one in Oz. Let's send someone over to get him. That someone turns out to be Ippty, the Chief Scribe of Rash, whose hands are a Swiss army knife for a writer.

I should add that Rash isn't in Oz. It's on the other side of the Deadly Desert in Ev, which poses an immediate problem. The series started out with the mindset that Oz was isolated by the deserts that fully surround it. They're so deadly that nobody can cross them, but then Baum found a need  to get characters from one side to the other and conjured up a method. OK, so there's one way to cross. Then he conjured up another. And another. And suddenly, everyone and their dog has their own method to cross the Deadly Desert. In fact, Thompson gives us three here, Ippty's choice the  hurry-cane that whisks him across without noticing it. Useful that.

Ippty arrives at the Emerald City during Betsy Bobbin's birthday party and proves able to talk the Hungry Tiger into returning to Rash with him. It's not too much of a stretch, because there's food aplenty at the party and, even though the Cowardly Lion naturally eats a lion's share, the Hungry Tiger consumes the most but still stubbornly remains hungry at the end of it. He dearly wants to eat living people but his conscience won't allow it. But hey, what if they're prisoners in Ev? That's not too bad, right? Well, no surprise that, once he's in Rash and suddenly confined to a courtyard, he finds he can't even eat the first prisoner thrown to him. He hides him within an underground chamber instead. Why a prison courtyard would have such a thing, I have no idea.

Tradition decrees two stories that will eventually merge, so we should skip over to the other one. That's initially Betsy Bobbin, who encounters the Vegetable Man, Carter Green. He both sells the things and is made of them and he's the source of a whole slew of conveniences. For one, he has a way to cross the Deadly Desert, though he doesn't intend to. They've been whisked away to parts unknown by a Winding Road, so decide to use Quick Sandals to take them somewhere else. Boom, they're in Rash on the other side of the Deadly Desert. He also has a ruby with an R etched into it, but we haven't got a clue what that is at this point and so have no idea how convenient that is yet.

At least, that's reusing one of Baum's ideas rather than one of Thompson's, which tells me that it was very deliberate. If you'll remember back to 'Rinkitink in Oz', the tenth book in the series, the kingdom of Pingaree has wonderful defences in the form of three magic pearls: the blue one gives superhuman strength, the pink one protects from all harm and the white one conveys wisdom. In this book, the kingdom of Rash had wonderful defences in the form of three magic rubies, each of which has an R engraved in it: one protects from danger in water, another from danger in air and the third from danger in or under the earth. However, they've been lost. What are the odds that the apparently random wanderings in this book will encounter all three?

I'm being cynical here because this retreading of old ground is cheap and unnecessary, but there's also quite a lot of fun here. The best aspect of any Thompson 'Oz' novel is the wordplay and that's on quick and frequent display here. We've already covered the Rash puns and the hurry-cane, but there are plenty more, especially once everyone's got into and out of Rash and picked up a prince in the process, the Scarlet Prince, Evered of Rash, rightful ruler of the land who the Pasha threw to the Hungry Tiger. They bounce from one imaginative place to another, each of them only viable in the land of Oz and in a Thompson book, because of the wordplay.

That underground chamber leads into a tunnel and the tunnel is a rollercoaster ride into fields of down. Ah, they're in Down Town! The rulers here are King Dad and Queen Nance. They're literally made of money so it shouldn't shock to discover that her first name is Fi. Get it? Our travellers owe $99.68 for the food the Hungry Tiger ate on arrival and they don't have it. So to the Indus Tree, to take what they want from it and use it to make money. They escape instead, via a subway ride to Up Town that takes them to Cave Inn. Suddenly the puns are everywhere.

They find a sign warning them to beware of ants, but that turns out to mean Giants. Now they're in Immense City dealing with the gigantic Big Wigs who are only gigantic when they're wearing a wig. I had a blast reading about the Hungry Tiger being dressed in doll clothes and wheeled about in a doll coach, because, as massive as he is, he's just a kitten to Elma, Princess of Immense City. In a different thread, Ozma is carried off by the Airman of Oz, Atmos-Fere. I liked him and his story. He's one of a balloon-like community living in the clouds and he's exploring the bottom of the sky.

Thompson even finds a moment to visit the Nome King, because that kingdom isn't far from Rash in the land of Ev, however mangled the directions are at the beginning of the book. I guess that's a tradition too, given how inept Baum was at that sort of thing. Kaliko is still king there and may well stay that way with his magic future-seeing glasses that he neatly calls expectacles, but I see that he's now a Gnome not a Nome. Why? We visit Jellia Jamb too, but she's carelessly lost the B from her surname. Again, why? Is nothing sacred? With Gillikins becoming Gillikens last time out, I'm expecting Thompson to decide that Oz needs a new spelling at some point. Aus? Ozz? Oughs?

As surprising as it might seem after all my complaints, I did enjoy this. Ruth Plumly Thompson has the precise sort of imagination to follow in L. Frank Baum's footsteps and I'm a confirmed fan of a majority of her wordplay, something Baum never quite mastered. That her stories are episodic is due to her following him rather than poor writing on her behalf. All the outrageous conveniences fit that bill too. I can forgive all that because they're a way to keep expanding our understanding of the geography and anthropology of Oz and, increasingly, its surrounding nations. What I can't forgive is the fact that so much of this one was rehashed from earlier books. That was cheap when Baum did it and it's still cheap when Thompson follows suit. ~~ Hal C F Astell

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