Rinkitink In OZ!

Rinkitink in OZ is an odd addition to the OZ canon. The story involves a small island which is invaded and the population taken into slavery. The only folks available to save them all is a young prince spared by chance and an overweight visiting monarch of questionable character along with his talking goat. Now that I've actually written that sentence, maybe this oddball is an OZ book after all. The book began life as a non-OZ project developed soon after the success of the first OZ titles around the same time that Baum was writing classic fairy tale stuff like The Enchanted Island of Yew and Queen Zixi of Ix. But the grind to keep putting out OZ material in 1916 was such that Baum reached back to his unpublished effort and added bits to it to make it an OZ book. 

The story begins on Pingaree where a good king by the name of Kittikut is trying to maintain things on the small island of Pingaree. He dreads an invasion from the islands of Regos and Coregos and this proves to be a valid fear. Before that invasion though he and his court are visited by a portly monarch named King Rinkitink and his talking goat named Bilbil. This stout fellow is a blowhard and a gourmand. After the devastating attack Rinkitink ends up in a well and the young Prince Inga is safe because he was good distance from the savagery. These two set out to save the people, Rinkitink reluctantly. Prince Inga is aided by three magic pearls, the first of which gives him strength, the second which gives him protection, and the third which gives him wisdom. But soon after getting to where his parents and people are imprisoned, he loses the shoes. He eventually gets them back when a peasant girl finds them. He and Rinkitink then have to travel to the kingdom of the Gnomes where they discover that the Gnome King is holding his parents. The Gnome King is the first OZ character to appear in the book and later on page 190 out of 222, Dorothy and the Wizard travel to the Gnome kingdom to help. And as it turns out Bilbil has a secret as well. 

This is an OZ book by the narrowest of margins. It seems that Baum did little aside from having the Gnomes, and later Dorothy and gang arrive as a garden variety deus ex machina to save the day. We get the usual roll call of names of other OZ folks at the end. It's getting crowded in OZ, I think. I was put in mind of the Avengers who after a few decades seemed to have a roster of dozens. Rinkitink in OZ is an okay read, but it has little to do with OZ. 

Next up is an actual book about OZ titled The Lost Princess of OZ. But before that I think we need to take a look at some of Baum's other OZ-adjacent titles. 

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