The Emerald City Of OZ!

After a few novels which were largely structured as whimsical travelogues we get something of a proper plot in The Emeral City of OZ. Dorothy Gale does not abandon her Auntie Em and Uncle Henry this time, but rather goes to OZ with the express mission to help them. It seems that the combination of age and bad luck have threatened the farm and soon they expect to be homeless. So, Dorothy goes to OZ to see if she and her family can move to that resplendent address. Ozma agrees and soon Uncle Henry and Auntie Em are whisked to OZ where we are reintroduced yet again to the wonders of this fairly land through their eyes. 

Meanwhile Roquet the Red the Gnome King plots to regain his magic belt, lost to Dorothy several novels back, and so schemes to have his vast forces construct a tunnel to OZ beneath the forbidding desert which separates these two magic territories. He puts his top heel named Guph in charge of the project, and then Guph proceeds to gather allies from other bizarre creatures before the drive toward OZ begins. He travels to the lands of the creepy Whimsies, the creepier Growlywogs, and the even creepier  still Phanfasms. There is much treachery plotted among these groups as they scheme to plunder OZ. They are a baleful group indeed. 

But then the story seems to abruptly turn a third of the way in as Dorothy, Auntie Em, Uncle Henry, the Wizard, and others trot off for a tour of some of the surrounding areas of OZ. They meet up with a cavalcade of strange beings including the Cuttenclips (a paper doll people), the Fuddlecumjigs (a puzzle piece people), the Rigamaroles (an endlessly chattering people), and the Flutterbudgets (a tribe of hypochondriacs). At one point Dorothy and Toto get separated from the rest and has a little excursion her own where she encounters the cutlery people of Untensia, the cake and pastry people of Bunbury, and the civilized bunnies of Bunnybury. (She has to shrink to enter that last one and is escorted by a white rabbit. Sounds a tad familiar.) 

Finally, when they get to the land of the Winkies and meet up with Nick Chopper the Tin Woodman and the Scarecrow we return to the main story of the Gnome invasion and the party sets out to return to OZ to confront a seemingly unbeatable enemy, alongside Queen Ozma. 

While I have praise for Baum's inventiveness, it seems a tad strained in this book as he seems to be just going around his house animating the things he sees there with a little help from a certain Mr. Dodgson. Maybe that approach was a source of joy for his readers, but I can't shake the feeling he was intending to sell OZ paper dolls and OZ jigsaw puzzles and OZ pastries to his eager audience. This book marks the end of the second phase of Baum's OZ series, where he was intentionally creating a sequel every year. He seems to have wanted this book to be a finale for the adventures in OZ. But alas it was not to be. 

Baum was busy adapting the OZ story to other media such as the stage and silent movies. He'd be back to writing novels about other fantastical lands, but several years later he'd return with some short tales from the land of OZ collected in Little Wizard Stories of OZ. More on that next time.

Rip Off