Dorothy And The Wizard Of OZ!

Dorothy and the Wizard in OZ is the fourth installment of the legendary OZ series by L. Frank Baum. And sadly it is easily the weakest installment to date. Published in 1908 this book follows on after the previous year's Ozma of OZ, finding Dorothy in California. In place of Toto and Billina we get Eureka the cat. Dorothy is getting pretty accustomed to weird happenings, so her reactions to the strangeness of the story is muted and we are given a brand-new character to help us experience the shock of the new. 

Dorothy employs a young man named Zeb and his horse Jim to help carry her when they are all fall victim to one of California's notorious earthquakes. But this singular earthquake causes the quartet to fall to deep into the unknown reaches inside the Earth (perhaps) and they find themselves in a land filled with glass houses and light. It is a land of intelligent if inhospitable plant people, called "Mangaboos". Dorothy and Zeb are saved when the Wizard of OZ arrives via his balloon. The gang escape into another land called the Valley of Voe where people are invisible thanks to strange fruits and where they dread deadly bears. The gang escapes this land and heads up Pyramid Mountain to hopefully find the surface of the Earth. Along the way they meet the "Braided Man", a lost salesman of holes (my favorite new character in this story). Next they are threatened by flying wooden gargoyles. Later they find a den of tiny dragons eager to eat them, but they escape that threat as well. They find the surface and are stymied. With no way out the story suddenly shifts gears. 

In an utterly deus ex machina move Ozma of OZ makes a wish on the Gnome King's magic belt and soon all the cast are whisked to OZ where we are treated to a who's who of the last three novels and abundant pageantry. There's a little trouble with Eureka wanting to eat some tiny pigs but that's about all the tension we get save for the horse Jim getting buffeted by the Cowardly Lion and the Hungry Tiger when he takes issue with the Wooden Sawhorse. 

If it sounds somewhat random and disjointed, then that would be an accurate description. Our heroes encounter threats because threats are required. Their mission to return to the surface is ultimately a failure but without any cost. The narrative tumbles from event to event and seeks to wow us with oddities. Baum certainly creates strange critters in strange places, but in this case, it lacks the momentum the earlier books demonstrated. On the upside we do find out why OZ is called OZ and how it came to be one country. 

Next time we venture down The Road to OZ. 

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