L. Frank Baum was tired of OZ and so he tried his hand at creating new and varied fantasy landscapes to entertain the vast audience which checked in for the OZ. He mostly failed at this endeavor. He'd written a few tales titled The Enchanted Island of Yew and Queen Zixi od Ix among others when he tried to break away from OZ the first time.
The second time in 1911 he went under the sea with two new protagonists, the first of which was titled The Sea Faires. We meet Trot whose real name is Mayre Griffith and her unofficial uncle Cap'n Bill Weedles. They are a pair, her representing the hope of youth and him showcasing the relative cynicism of age. Trot's father is captain of the same ship that Cap'n Bill once helmed and during his long absences Bill helped her mother look after Trot. One day they muse about mermaids and before you know heads appear from the sea and real mermaids prove the myth. Quicker than that both Trot and Bill agree to go under the sea with the mermaids to explore and the story kicks off. The duo is given a tour of the undersea world until they fall into the clutches of the villainous Zog the Magician, a rather horrid creature not unmindful of Lovecraft.
This is a little bit darker than any of the OZ books I've read so far. There is even a bit of actual potential terror in the story. The whimsy though is still abundant throughout the majority of the yarn.
In 1912's Sky Island Trot and Cap'n Bill are back. But this time, due to a hope to juice the sales, they meet up OZ characters Button Bright and Polychrome, thus making these books an OZ spin-off series. It begins when Trot meets a strange boy with a magic flying umbrella that has transported him across the country. (Mary Poppins was published two decades later. Just saying.) That boy is Button Bright and soon enough Trot and Cap'n Bill are trying to figure out how the three of them can use the umbrella to go aloft. They touch down on a floating island called appropriately enough "Sky Island" and are made prisoners by the crazed and cruel king of a strange race of rubber-necked, blue-skinned people who likes to "Patch" people or to be specific, slice them in half and combine them with other people who have likewise been sliced. Later they escape and get to the other side of the island after crossing a foggy boundary full of giant frogs and discover a race of roly-poly, pink-skinned folks who are only a little bit more pleasant. And to top it all off a war breaks out between these two types of folks.
This book felt a little lighter in tone than its predecessor as Baum was clearly trying to evoke the OZ atmosphere in a new realm. That said, there are a number of rather stark situations in this yarn such as the torturous "Patching" and the war itself. But like its mate, a decent read.
Why did I take time to look at these two non-OZ books. Check in tomorrow to find out.
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I'm tempted to read these because of (a) the second one's crossover status, and (b) the fact that Baum was trying something different. Glad to hear they're decent reads, even if they didn't tap that wide appeal the Oz books got from the first.
ReplyDeleteEnjoyed them. They weren't bogged down by the continuously growing cast found in the OZ books.
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