Probably the worst thing about the eighth and previous book in the series was that it wasn't a new story, not really. L. Frank Baum wrote 'Ozma of Oz' as the third book, turned it into a stage play called 'The Tik-Tok Man of Oz' and then turned it back into another novel, 'Tik-Tok of Oz'. It was a good third book but each translation introduced new problems and the eighth book was a bit of a mess. Its best aspects were new and its worst aspects felt like lesser retreads. Oddly, that isn't a problem here, even though Baum did exactly the same thing again.

When he formed a production company to make 'Oz' features, he loosely adapted the first book in the series, 'The Wonderful Wizard of Oz', into the feature 'His Majesty, the Scarecrow of Oz', released in 1914. Then he re-adapted that feature back into book form as 'The Scarecrow of Oz'. However, unlike last time, this feels like it's a completely different story because I have to state that that first adaptation was incredibly loose. In fact, this features an entirely different cast until Baum shifts back into reunion mode to wrap things up, the Scarecrow notably excluded.

Initially, it's all about Cap'n Bill and Trot, who had appeared in a couple of other non-'Oz' books, 'The Sea Fairies' and 'Sky Island', published after the first 'Oz' book but well before the second. Cap'n Bill is the sailor you might expect from the name, right down to his wooden leg. He's also not young. Trot, however, is young, much younger than him, as she's the daughter of one of the crew before he got his own ship and Cap'n Bill retired. The thematic similarities arrive as soon as chapter one, though it's a whirlpool not a tornado that dumps them onto a beach in an underwater cavern, no doubt so it can take them down through the sea.

An Ork soon joins them, caught up in the same way. That's not an orc, as Tolkien fans might expect but a much earlier Ork, a giant flying creature. It's intelligent and it can speak, as all creatures can in fairyland, but, unless I slept through a moment, we never learn its name. He's just the Ork. Or she. I don't think we're let in on its gender either, which is probably fine. I can appreciate Baum's imagination, as I do more and more with each successive 'Oz' book, without learning how to tell a boy Ork from a girl Ork.

They spend four chapters trying to find a way out and a fifth finding one and discovering what's on the island on the surface. That turns out to be Pessim, who's an outrageous pessimist, hence the name. Then they stumble onto a way to escape the island, because there are berries on the island that shrink you physically and others that return you to normal size. As the Ork can only carry one of them at a time, they do this deliberately and wrap themselves in Trot's sunbonnet so both can travel together and we promptly find ourselves in yet another episodic adventure.

There's a stop before they get to Oz and that's the Land of Mo, where they encounter a Bumpy Man on top of a mountain, who has the glorious title of the Mountain Ear, a job that tasks him with listening for problems so that the mountain can respond. They have some berries left, so they grow some local birds to extra-large size so they can fly them out and, before you know it, they're landing in Oz. Unfortunately, they're in Jinxland, to the very south of Quadling Country, itself south of the Emerald City, and that's isolated from the rest of Oz by a mountain range of such steep peaks that it's impassable without magic.

Because we've never seen Jinxland before, it shouldn't surprise that it's full of new characters. The monarch is King Krewl, whose name telegraphs why he isn't popular. However, Pon believes that he should be the king rather than the gardener's boy, because his father was the previous king, King Phearse, who isn't dead but, get this, is trapped at the bottom of a deep pond by an avalanche of rocks. That's especially brutal because nobody in Oz can die. Is nobody looking for the poor man?

Anyway, Pon is in love with Princess Gloria, who's the current king's niece and who really ought to be the monarch, as her father was king before the previous king, King Phearse. As that isn't going to happen, King Krewl wants to marry her off to Lord Googly-Goo, the prospect of which horrifies her and, with a name like that, us too. It's all enough to make us wonder why Glinda is doing nothing at all about any of this. After all, she has a magic book that tells her everything that happens anywhere in Oz. If it happens, she knows. Why doesn't she fix it with her magic?

Well, she belatedly decides to do just that but in a far more convoluted manner: she gives the Scarecrow a bunch of magical items and sends him to Jinxland to do the job for her and that's the only reason why this is called 'The Scarecrow of Oz'. I thought Oz was an inherently happy place. She can't be so busy with issues that she's having to outsource problem-solving to other characters? Or are the next half a dozen books the reasons why? Maybe Baum rehashed a pair of old stories into two books to give him time to flesh out how he actually wanted the series to continue.

In the meantime, it's good to see the Scarecrow and it's particularly good to see Glinda, given that she's a returning character who we haven't seen enough of. In fact, Glinda is arguably the most important such character in the land of Oz, even above Ozma herself, but she does keep herself stubbornly in the background, as I guess any magician does. After all, that's why they have lovely assistants, to keep our eyes away from whatever they're doing. The Wizard did his humbug magic from behind a curtain. Maybe Glinda does hers from the shadows.

We have met one return character already but unfortunately it's Button-Bright from 'The Land of Oz'. Maybe Baum felt that, as he'd brought one character back from that frustrating debacle of a book in 'Tik-Tok of Oz' and made her less annoying, that being Polychrome, maybe he could do the same thing here with another. Unfortunately, Button-Bright is simply doomed to never be an engaging character. He doesn't care about anything and just takes it all as it comes and, as refreshing as that might seem, it doesn't make for good storytelling. As such, he spends the vast majority of this book lost.

The Scarecrow naturally passes the impassable mountains with the aid of Glinda's magic, then stirs the pot in Jinxland until everything gets resolved. There's no yellow brick road but there is a wicked witch, this one called Blinkie, even if she's not evaporated by Trot, the substitute for Dorothy in this book, throwing a bucket of water over her. Talking of Dorothy, once the second half wraps up much how we expect it to, we leap into reunion mode but fortunately there isn't a lot of book left, so Baum is forced to remember that he's already wrapped up the story and has no business re-introducing us to what seems like every character we've ever met in Oz.

This was apparently Baum's favourite of all of his 'Oz' books and I wonder why. It's certainly an enjoyable book and a very smooth ride indeed that's just as long as 'The Wonderful Wizard of Oz' but seems to be done in half the time. It's still episodic. It still features that reunion scene. And it doesn't give us much more of an insight into any of the regulars. What it does best is to introduce us to a host of new characters, all of them brand-new to me but most new to the 'Oz' series as well. It wouldn't shock me if we saw more of Cap'n Bill and Trot, though the denizens of Jinxland would seem to have told their story here and probably don't need to return.

And I have to call out how good Baum generally is at expanding his cast of characters. There are a lot of writers out there and they've written a lot of series, but there are basic rules that they tend to follow. The core cast from this book continues on into that one, with maybe a new name here and there as the plot expands. That's what we've been long conditioned to expect. Baum's rarely interested in that. Every time he tells a new story about an old character, he prefaces the entire book with a note that he's effectively been bludgeoned into it by his fans. Otherwise, he keeps telling new stories with new characters in new places, almost like they're different books in every way except that they share a common world. I'm finding a lot of respect for that. ~~ Hal C F Astell

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