I'm eight books into the 'Oz' series and I've noted frequently that L. Frank Baum didn't care too much about things like consistency. To him, this was clearly all about imagination and, with the odd exception, like the dire 'The Road to Oz', he allowed that to run riot throughout the land of Oz with engaging results. The consistency issues (appropriately named "goofs" in the cinematic world) are so outrageous here that I almost gave up on talking about them, except that, right at the very end, Baum demonstrates that he does actually care about this sort of thing.

How? Well, you'll remember from multiple books that any time an animal from our world finds themselves in Oz, they magically become able to speak and, what's more, are fluent in English. It doesn't matter if the animal is a horse, a duck or a cat. They can all talk in Oz because Baum's happy to point out that that's just how it is in Fairyland. Except Toto, the first such animal that we ever saw in Oz, hasn't uttered a single word in eight books, barking his way through however many of them he was actually in. Was the rule implemented after Toto arrived?

Well, Baum, answers that here. Clearly, he was a writer who cared what his audience thought so much so that he kept writing 'Oz' books even after pausing after book one and then burying it after book six, nailing the coffin shut so forcefully that even he wouldn't be able to open it again. I can only assume that he must have been fed up to the teeth with readers asking him why Toto couldn't speak when all of the other animals could that he dedicates the final chapter to that specific question. Spoiler: of course Toto can talk! He merely chooses not to and that's absolutely fine. Woof! So there. The end.

I'll take that as license to continue to call this sort of thing out in the hopes that readers back in the noughties saw exactly the same issues I do and wrote to Baum about them in sufficient numbers that he felt the need to address them in similar fashion in future books. I doubt that he did that with the first such, which shows up as soon as paragraph three of page one. But... other hands may have done, because 'Tik-Tok of Oz' has a sequel, 'Queen Ann in Oz', published as late as 1993 by Karyl Carlson and Eric Gjovag, so not part of the Famous Forty, which end in 1963 with 'Merry Go Round in Oz'.

The problem is that Baum starts out by introducing us to the wonderfully named Ann Soforth, Queen of Oogaboo, a kingdom that counts as "the smallest and the poorest in all the land of Oz". Now, it may indeed be the smallest, given that it comprises of only eighteen men, twenty-seven women and forty-four children, but the poorest? I must object, your honour, and ask the meaning of "poorest" in a land that has no money and no need for it. Are we simply suggesting that Ozma, as Princess of all Oz, and the Tin Man, as Emperor of the Winkies, aren't doing their jobs when it comes to looking after their subjects?

Anyway, Queen Ann decides to conquer the world because she doesn't want to sweep the floor, which seems eminently reasonable in Oz logic. She conscripts every man in her kingdom into an optimistically tiny army, especially given that Jo Candy won't go. By the way, every man in the kingdom of Oogaboo is named Jo, with their surname a reflection of what their trees bear as fruit. Jo Apple you might expect. Jo Egg and Jo Banjo maybe not, but that's Oz for you. And, in true Oz tradition, that means sixteen officers and one private set out with their queen to take over the world. Except, of course, Glinda's magic book promptly lets her know what's about to happen, so she makes them lost.

Meanwhile, in another world entirely, namely ours, Betsy Bobbin and her mule Hank are on a boat that's tossing and turning enough in a storm that they're thrown off it and wash up on a strange shore that turns out to be the Rose Kingdom. It doesn't bode well for them, given that everything appears to be illegal there, including washing up on the shore in a storm, so they're suddenly facing the death penalty. So says the Royal Gardener. Fortunately, the solution falls, quite literally, through the glass ceiling of the royal greenhouse, in the memorable form of the Shaggy Man. Of course, that's illegal too.

Anyway, the Shaggy Man has been looking for his brother, who's been lost for ten years. What happened to Glinda's magic book? Or are they outside Oz here? I never quite figured that out. Fortunately, he has the Love Magnet, so everybody in the Rose Kingdom suddenly loves him, but they're still technically sentenced to death and there's no ruler until their new king is ripe enough to pluck, given that the Roses grow on stems just like the Mangaboos in 'Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz'. While they're waiting on a king, Betsy notices a Royal Princess ripe enough to pluck, so she does just that and somehow she's Ozga, cousin to Ozma. Don't ask me for the family tree, please! Anyway, they reject her because they're wild misogynists and that means that they have a new companion for the road.

So we have Queen Ann of the Oogaboos marching with her tiny army to conquer the world and Betsy, with Hank, Ozga and the Shaggy Man, in search of the latter's brother. Soon they team up with Polychrome, daughter of the Rainbow, last seen in 'The Road to Oz', and Tik-Tok, who's been confined at the bottom of a well. Why the book is called 'Tik-Tok of Oz', I have no idea. Yes, he's in it. No, he isn't the lead. No, he doesn't do anything to warrant us thinking he might be the lead even though he isn't. He's just in the book. So's Pvt. Jo Files of the Oogaboo army and he shoots a very polite monster called the Rak but the book isn't called 'Private Files of Oz'.

Anyway, all roads lead to the Nome Kingdom, which sparks the most egregious continuity error in the book. We're well aware from 'Ozma of Oz' that the Nome Kingdom is located in Ev, which is a neighbouring land to Oz. That's reinforced in 'The Emerald City of Oz', in which Roquat the Red, the Nome King decides to invade Oz and has his Nomes dig a long tunnel under the Deadly Desert so they can emerge to take over. Sure, it's suddenly on the other side of Oz but it's still not in Oz there. So, how is the Nome Kingdom suddenly in Oz here?

To be fair, Baum remembers that Glinda orchestrated a neat save by having the Nomes need a drink when they exited their tunnel and the Waters of Oblivion took their memories so making them forget why they were there. We know that because Roquat the Red is now Ruggedo, but he remembered he was the Nome King and how to make it home to the Nome Kingdom, even though it's not where it used to be at the other end of the tunnel. What's more, the new Nome Kingdom has been there (wherever there is) long enough that it has a tunnel in it that goes all the way through the planet to a kingdom ruled by Tititi-Hoochoo, the Great Jinjin, who has an abiding beef with the Nome King, whatever his name is and wherever his kingdom is this week.

So, when Ruggedo hurls our heroes into the Hollow Tube to slide through the planet, that sets the stage for his karmic removal from power. Tititi-Hoochoo sends them on a return trip on the back of Quox, a young dragon who needs something to do. Quox is equipped with a ribbon that removes all of the magic that Ruggedo has learned and a bunch of neatly concealed eggs, kryptonite to Nomes, ready to deploy them as needed. And these aren't regular eggs, they're self-aware eggs that function exactly like the Terminator. When released, they'll find Ruggedo. It's what they do. It's all they do.

None of the various plot strands are remotely surprising. No, Queen Ann doesn't conquer the world. Yes, Ruggedo is deposed and his long suffering chief steward Kaliko takes over. Yes, the Shaggy Man's brother is found and returned to some semblance of normality. No, Tik-Tok isn't given anything to do justify his name being in the title. Everyone learns a moral lesson, even the animals back in Oz during the inevitable reunion at the end of the book. The Cowardly Lion, the Hungry Tiger and Hank the Mule honestly argue about who the most wonderful girl in Oz might be, until Ozma calms them down.

But hey, I'm not reading the 'Oz' series for its surprising plot strands and I'm certainly not here for the continuity. Did I mention that a whole slew of characters seem to use magic here, even though Glinda has prohibited everyone else in Oz from practicing it and, as we well know, she's got a magic book that lets her know everything that's happening anywhere in Oz. So suddenly the Nome King has learned a lot of magic, even though it's taken away. Quox has tons of magic, but he is at least from the other side of the globe. Even the Wizard of Oz now has magic, all his days as a humbug now firmly in the past. In fact, it's Glinda who's been teaching him!

I'm reading the 'Oz' books for their imagination. That's the most abiding element and it's the strongest one by far. Maybe it's a little stretched here, with at least one example reused from elsewhere in the series, but it's still apparent. Once again, Baum provides us with brand new characters to serve as our focus and, while Betsy Bobbin and Hank the Mule don't impress too much, Quox certainly does and I both adore the name of Ann Soforth and got a kick out of her tiny inept army of men named Jo. They're  far more interesting than any returning characters, except maybe the Shaggy Man. Polychrome and Tik-Tok get as little to do as Betsy and Hank.

OK, maybe the Nome King is pretty cool, even if he's an asshole, and he apparently has both magnetic rubber and dry water, which are exactly what I want from this series. The Nome King and the Nomes in general could easily have been one time villains, and should have been, but I'm still enjoying their antics on this third outing for them. I wonder if they'll be back later in the series and, if they are, if Roquat/Ruggedo will have reclaimed his throne from the worthy Kaliko.

Now, I know that I've been rather flippant this time, especially given that I enjoyed this eighth 'Oz' book, but it was warranted because the continuity errors absolutely define it. It's as full of goofs as it is imagination and I kept imagining Peter Falk as Columbo walk up in his trenchcoat and mutter, 'Just one more thing, Mr. Baum." Maybe that's what happens when you constantly adapt your work into other media and then adapt it back again. And, while that sounds insane, it's exactly what happened here.

I've already read and reviewed 'Ozma of Oz', which was the third book in the series, published in 1907. Well, in 1913, he adapted that book, rather loosely, into a stage play called 'The Tik-Tok Man of Oz'. That probably made sense, because Tik-Tok was introduced in 'Ozma of Oz' and was a pivotal character. However, presumably needing to knock out another 'Oz' book for his ever-demanding audience, he then adapted the adaptation back into book form, loosely yet again, ending up as something mostly new but which sometimes feels rather like he hurled the book at an online tool and had it translated into Mandarin, then hurled the results at another tool and had it translated back into English.

All in all, it's fun enough, wildly better than 'The Road to Oz' but lagging behind the rest of the series. Let's see how  Baum does with another adaptation next month, because 'The Scarecrow of Oz' started out as 'His Majesty, the Scarecrow of Oz', a 1914 movie from Baum's own Oz Film Manufacturing Company, that was loosely based on the original book, 'The Wonderful Wizard of Oz', then loosely translated back again into book nine. ~~ Hal C F Astell

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