It isn't remotely surprising to find that L. Frank Baum originally wrote this book as a standalone story that had nothing to do with Oz in the slightest, because, well, it mostly doesn't. That story starts outside of Oz, develops outside of Oz and only ends up in Oz at the very end, when we get a traditional reunion that, for once, only takes up two pages. It seems a little cheap to take this approach, but I rather appreciate it because it firms up how various parts of Fairyland fit, even ones that don't show up in this story, because there's a map.

Of course, the map of Oz that I've got used to seeing in every volume in the Del Rey paperback reprint series thus far isn't totally consistent with Prof. Wogglebug T.E.'s "map of the countries near to the marvelous land of Oz", but then neither are consistent with the actual stories. That isn't bad mapmaking, I should add; it's because the stories aren't consistent with each other as consistency is apparently a modern conceit about which Baum didn't care a whit.

As a perfect example, this map does at least put the "dominions of the Nome King" back to the east of Oz, where they were originally in 'Ozma of Oz', on the other side of the Deadly Desert. It all matches, including the tunnel they dug to invade in 'The Emerald City of Oz'. Except that, as the compass points out, the map is backwards. North and south are exactly where we think they should be but east is to the left and west to the right, mimicking absolutely no map ever. So this fails to match 'Ozma of Oz' at all but does match 'The Emerald City of Oz', which shifted them to the other side. Now we see the Land of Ev to the north, the Kingdom of Ix east of there and the Rose Kingdom from 'Tik-Tok of Oz' to the west of Ev.

There are a whole bunch of others too, some of which we'll visit in this book and others that are either in non-Oz books are still to come in the series, like the Kingdom of Dreams, Ripple Land and the Vegetable Kingdom. We start out in Rinkitink, which sits between the dominions of the Nome King and the Nonestic Ocean, which I presume is what we crossed in 'The Scarecrow of Oz', even though the Land of Mo isn't on this map. Then we travel, with King Rinkitink of Rinkitink to the Island of Pingaree four days north by boat, with whom his kingdom trades pearls.

King Rinkitink is a huge gentleman who's wildly happy and rides a goat called Bilbil. In fact, he's so wildly happy that we could call him flamboyant and if you're suddenly conjuring up images of drag queens, I don't believe you'd be far off. Anyway, he ran away just because he wanted some time away from home and thought he'd come and see King Kittikut of Pingaree. Which he does, at a rather inopportune time because the island is about to invaded and everything on it razed to the ground. This is a lighthearted novel for children, but it's also full of death, genocide and slavery, hardly themes you might expect to encounter in a lighthearted novel for children.

Anyway, the warriors of Regos and Coregos, two islands even further north, have attempted an invasion before, which we hear about in the first chapter because King Kitticut worries about it happening again and wants to tell his son, Prince Inga, about their three Magic Talismans which saved the day last time. They're impressively large pearls gifted to an ancestor of theirs by the Mermaid Queen in gratitude for saving her life. The blue pearl grants irresistible strength; the pink pearl protects against all dangers; and the white pearl bestows excellent advice. The catch is that they must be physically touched for the magic to work. Last time they sank the invading fleet in a storm.

King Kittikut's worst fears are promptly realised because not only does this invasion come and soon but he can't get to the three Magic Talismans quickly enough to use them. So the warriors of Regos and Coregos steal away the entire population of Pingaree to slave in their mines and destroy every single building on the island, wiping out an entire civilisation. It's just like Lidice but without Nazis. Like I said, lighthearted novel for children.

Of course, like Pokémon, this invading force can't catch 'em all, but there are precious few folk left. There's Prince Inga, who was up a tree at the time. There's King Rinkitink, who was down a well. And there's Bilbil the goat. That's not much of an army to row north and rescue an entire population but Inga does find the three Magic Talismans and he puts them safely into his shoes so they'll be touching him at all times. The white pearl gets him a fully equipped boat and the blue pearl makes rowing it north utterly effortless. He's counting on the pink pearl to help him through whatever has to happen once they land on Regos.

Of course, there's a lot still to come and lands proceed to be conquered, unconquered and then conquered again. There's a whole lot of conquering going on in here but, as you surely imagine, two men and a goat can't be everywhere at once, whatever Magic Talismans they happen to be touching at the time. Eventually, after many adventures, including carelessly losing the Magic Talismans and retrieving them again, it gets to the point where Baum refreshes everything by shifting us to a new location.

That's because King Gos of Regos and Queen Cor of Coregos decide to secrete King Kittikut and Queen Garee of Pingaree—for all the imagination that Baum exhibited throughout this series, naming monarchs was never his forte—in the dominions of the Nome King. Following the events of 'Tiktok of Oz', that's Kaliko, which bodes much better for the would-be rescuers than were it still Ruggedo, formerly Roquat the Red. However there are plenty of ensuing fun and games in the Nome Kingdom, where Inga and Rinkitink are not prisoners but guests who can't leave. It's all very polite and very obstructive and, well, a good deal of fun.

'Rinkitink in Oz' runs twenty-four action-packed chapters and not only have we failed to set foot in Oz, not a single character from Oz has appeared. Sure, the Nomes and their King are all semi-regular characters at this point, but they don't live in Oz so they don't count; they're merely the only people we recognise. Well, until chapter twenty of those twenty-four, when suddenly we're shifted to Dorothy's perspective. She's gone to see Glinda and happens to be glancing through her Great Book of Records that records every important event anywhere in the world when she sees, well, everything that's happened in this book thus far.

Now, I may be nitpicking here but that's a little convenient, I think. All of that in one record? It's a lot of important events to wrap up in one record! Anyway, after that, she heads back to Oz and thinks of Prince Inga while looking in Ozma's Magic Picture, so gets an instant update and thinks to herself that she ought to go and help. Ozma's good with that, as long as she takes the Wizard and they ride the Sawhorse, and so suddenly this is an Oz story. I wonder how far Baum had got with his standalone fantasy novel when he decided to shoehorn it into the 'Oz' series... I believe I may only need one guess.

As flippant as I've got here, which I think was for good reason, I enjoyed this book. Prince Inga is a typical heroic type so isn't that interesting but he does what he does very well indeed and he justifies his billing as lead character. Of course, he isn't the title character for some reason, as King Rinkitink lands that honour for no apparent reason, not being "of Oz" any more than Inga is and he hardly spends much time "in Oz" either. He's huge fun, but he can't lead a novel as he is far too busy being jolly and laughing in his weird fashion. Supporting characters like the poor charcoal burner Nikobob, Kaliko the current Nome King and even Bilbil the goat all get their moments too. It's all good lighthearted fun, if rather swamped at points with death, genocide and slavery.

Of course, it doesn't progress the mythology of Oz a single step, but it does expand our grasp of Fairyland, which somehow seems better than me. Baum is so relentlessly episodic that when he takes us travelling through Oz, he’s really adding points to a nonsense map so that it's becomes a little busier than it was. It doesn't expand the territory because we already know that Oz has four impassable wastes as borders; it merely fleshes it out. Only a few of the books so far have expanded the territory by taking us past those impassable wastes and usually not for long; the trend is to start outside and work our way in. That happens here but it takes the longest of any book thus far to actually get there and I appreciated that.

Now to see if any of this new territory has meaning within the rest of the series. Baum wrote a total of fourteen 'Oz' novels and this puts me in double digits, but other authors continued the series to complete what's known as 'The Famous Forty'. I'm looking forward to seeing where we end up in the ones I have left. ~~ Hal C F Astell

For more titles by L Frank Baum click here