I've enjoyed a lot of what Ruth Plumly Thompson brought to the 'Oz' series, after she took it over following the death of L. Frank Baum, and she had plenty of opportunity, with seven books behind her going into this one. I particularly love her wordplay and I particularly dislike how she changed established details for no apparent reason, but I've been waiting in vain for a book from her that flows as well as this one. 'The Giant Horse of Oz' is easily the most consistent story that she's told thus far and it benefits from a few moments of nightmarish visuals.

While she killed off—quite literally—the wicked witch Mombi three books earlier in 'The Lost King of Oz', this could be seen as a further take on the earlier misdeeds that were undone in that book. She doesn't appear here, on account of being dead, but she's the cause of much of the misery that gets addressed here, and so hangs over the entire story like a shadow. We're in the Ozure Isles, in the Lost Lake of Orizon, towards the north of Munchkin territory, which are still suffering because of Mombi, who had long ago kidnapped the local queen, Erin, and left a sea serpent, Quiberon, to keep the local population effectively imprisoned in their own land.

Otherwise, it looks like a wonderful place, if we don't think about how dangerous it would be for a beach to be populated with precious gems instead of pebbles. King Cheeriobed seems like a good leader and his son, Prince Philador, a decent sort too, as are the various other characters who live there. Even Akbad the soothsayer, who could be fairly considered a villain of the piece, given that he kidnaps Trot from the Emerald City to appease Quiberon, really only does so for the benefit of the Ozure Isles. It's a bad deed, certainly, and he compounds that by lying about it to his own king, but it's all done with the best of intentions.

Akbad's kidnapping of Trot constitutes one of the traditional two plot strands. He picks the magic Golden Pear, sprouts wings and flies off to steal one of the three mortal maidens in the Emerald City—unlike 'The Cowardly Lion of Oz' or 'The Hungry Tiger of Oz', there isn't one specific target—and, in grabbing Trot, brings back the Scarecrow and Benny with her. I should explain who Benny is because he's new. Dan, the second-hand man in Boston, read from a book he found in his pocket and a nearby statue of the Great Benefactor came to life, causing a little chaos before falling through a river into Oz. As a large statue made out of some sort of metal, presumably bronze, he prompts Quiberon to break eight tusks trying to devour him. I liked that.

The other strand follows Prince Philador, who decides not to appease the sea serpent by bringing him a mortal maiden but to seek help, riding Mo-gull, the king of birds, to the Good Witch of the North, named Tattypoo. It seems that Mombi fell on hard times when Tattypoo deposed her, thus leading to the events of 'The Lost King of Oz'. Given what I know, having read this book, but you'll not know unless you have too, there's plenty of irony in play there, if not quite the circular logic it might initially seem to utilise. Anyway, he gets there just in time to miss the witch, as she and her pet dragon, Agnes, both jumped out of a window for no apparent reason and disappeared.

The witch's slate tells the prince that Tattypoo won't ever return, but that he should travel to the Emerald City and seek Ozma's aid instead. He does precisely that, of course, and that gives him all the opportunity he needs to do the traditional things in 'Oz' novels: acquire new and suitably odd companions for the journey and encounter strange new communities during it. This time, the bias is firmly towards the former rather than the latter, which I'm not going to complain about but will underline one detail that became apparent for me here. These two things happen in every earlier novel, I believe, and neither works every single time, but I would suggest that new companions do have a much higher rate of success than the new communities.

Philador's new companions include the giant horse of the title, whose name is appropriately High Boy, given that he has telescopic legs. He belongs to Joe King, a jovial mountaineering monarch who rules over the Uplanders with Queen Hyacinth and their Chief Adviser High Jinx. Yes, I'm into my seventh paragraph and that's the first time I've raised wordplay. It isn't really the first time it comes up in the book, as Trot, Benny and the Scarecrow needed three rocks to enter Cave City and found them by rocking with laughter, but that was sixty-seven pages in and it's forty more before we get another example.

That comes not with Joe King and High Jinx but right before them, with another new companion, a Gilliken medicine man freed from the bottle in which he's been captive for thirty years when the prince drops it. He's Herby and he has a medicine chest. Literally. His chest opens to display a host of medicines, like laugh lozenges to stop you laughing uncontrollably, just as cough drops stop you coughing. He has a jumping rope too, which allows him and Philador to jump over a river. However, there aren't anywhere near as many examples of wordplay this time out as usual. I might see that as a negative but the consistent story makes up for it without any trouble.

Both these plot strands, the one with Trot and her companions fleeing into Cave City with Orpah, a merman using crutches on land, and the one with Philador and his companions seeking aid from Ozma, bump into the nightmarish scenes that I mentioned earlier. Orpah used to be the keeper of King Cheeriobed's sea horses, which Mombi killed, but now he works for the cave men, who aren't merely men who live inside a cave but who are apparently part of it. They're silhouettes on walls that move. And if you think that's creepy, Philador encounters the Shutter Faces, who are people whose faces open like shutters. That's extremely freaky and wouldn't take much to translate into a 'Hellraiser' visual.

Eventually, of course, the two strands of plot meet and combine and Thompson can start to wrap up everything she's set in motion. You can probably guess some of it, but likely not all of it. Queen Erin appears as if out of nowhere, for instance, catching me by surprise, but Thompson had set up that scene earlier and I hadn't quite twigged at the time. Maybe she cheats a little by bringing in a character to take care of a few too many things at once, but I have no complaints. However, I do wonder whether Thompson will adhere to the changes she makes at the very end. Going forward, King Cheeriobad and Queen Orin will rule Munchkin territory while King Joe and Queen Hyacinth will rule the northern land of Gilliken. Let's see if that plays a part in 'Jack Pumpkinhead of Oz', my 'Famous Forty' title next month.  ~~ Hal C F Astell

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