This is the twelfth of the fourteen 'Oz' books written by L. Frank Baum but it was the last one to be published while he was still alive. 'The Magic of Oz' after it was published a month after his death in 1919 and 'Glinda of Oz' a year later. He wasn't young but his death was relatively sudden, as he had an unexpected stroke, slipped into a coma and died the following day. However, I wonder if he had some inclination that he wasn't going to be able to write these books forever and so took the opportunity to set some things straight in this one before he couldn't do that anymore.

The most obvious is that he provides some details about Oz that had never seemed important to him before. Apparently, it wasn't always a fairyland, just a land like any other but for its isolation inside the confines of a deadly desert. However, the fairy band of Queen Lurline pass over it and enchant the whole place, leaving one of them there to rule it. If that makes it sound like the place is inherently magical, casting serious doubt on the effectiveness of the edict that only Glinda can use magic within the bounds of Oz. Given how many magic users we've met in the previous eleven books, we know that's nonsense, but Baum acknowledges that here. She isn't omniscient after all and there are still magic wielders out there in Oz.

There are other long held assumptions that Oz is a wonderful place where everybody loves their ruler and nobody wants for anything, but we've also encountered many characters without a clue about who she is and characters who are so poor that they have nothing. Here, Baum takes us to Gillikin, the northern quarter of Oz, which can be unpleasant, according to Woot the Wanderer, a pivotal character introduced here. He's a Gillikin himself but found it frustratingly boring and so took to the road, ending up at the Tin Castle of the Tin Woodman, where he sparks the story.

While it's a new story to us, it's one that goes back to the very first book, 'The Wonderful Wizard of Oz', in which we first met the Tin Woodman, Nick Chopper, long before he became the Emperor of the Winkies. As you'll recall, he was cursed by the Wicked Witch of the East so that he chopped off all his limbs, which were subsequently replaced by tin equivalents. That even made it into the famous 1939 movie, but the reason has been long forgotten. Put simply, he fell in love with a girl who worked for that witch who didn't want them to marry. She was called Nimmie Amee and she never appeared in the series, because the Tin Woodman left her after realising that he no longer loved her, on account of not actually having a heart any more.

Well, Woot stirs that old memory up and he decides that he should seek her out and do the honest thing by her by marrying her. After all, the Wicked Witch of the East is long gone, so nothing's left in between them. I won't spoil where this story goes, other than suggesting that the whole thing seemed completely off to me; given that the Tin Woodman conjures up no end of plans for his life with Nimmie Amee, who will surely be happy about becoming the Empress of the Winkies, without her ever appearing to say what she thinks about the matter. However, that matter is complicated greatly and eventually brought to a perfectly appropriate resolution. I hated how it all built but I loved how it ended.

What matters, given how episodic Baum treated these stories, is that this quest takes Woot, the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman into Gillikin country, hence the warning. Woot suggests that the worst part is around Oogaboo, as we found in 'Tik-Tok of Oz' but they're soon confronted by a sign warning them not to go to Loonville. So they go. And quickly regret it, as the Loons are inflatable creatures who fear outsiders and stab them with a thorn. Woot pops a bunch of them in return to allow their escape, which is a bizarre visual and a terrible example for children. However, my focus was on the naming convention, all the Loons being named Loon. There's King Bal Loon and Panta Loon, but also Til Loon. I know what balloons and pantaloons are but what are tilloons?

Next up is Mrs. Yoop, the magic user of the book that prompted my comments about that earlier. She's a giantess who's married to Mr. Yoop, who we last met in a cage in 'The Patchwork Girl of Oz' and who she doesn't miss in the slightest because he was abusive to her. However, we don't feel a lot of sympathy because she's promptly awful to her guests in her giant castle. She's a Yookoohoo who specialises in transformative magic. She turns the Tin Woodman into a tin owl, the Scarecrow into a bear and Woot into a green monkey. They've already discovered that the canary she keeps in a cage is actually Polychrome, the daughter of the Rainbow, last seen in 'Tik-Tok of Oz'.

Of course, all these indignities are eventually solved but I'll leave you to discover how. I wasn't at all sold on the logic applied to doing so, but hey, I don't want to argue about the logistics of magic that exists in a world someone else created. Their world, their rules, however wrong it sounds to me. It's hardly the most outrageous detail in Oz. In fact, it's hardly the most outrageous detail in this book. We spend time at Jinjur's farm, where she raises cream puffs, macaroons and chocolate caramels. We've already met the inflatable Loons we end up in Herbert West territory, as Ku-Klip the tinsmith didn't just fix Nick Chopper, he did the same for someone else too, then built a new sentient creature out of the leftover pieces from both bodies. Using Magic Glue. So I guess I'm OK with how Ozma manages to change everybody back.

I rather liked this book, but it seems a little inconsistent. There are parts I thought were glorious and parts that left me dry. The core of the story felt wrong to me until it was made very right. It's odd to effectively chalk off a quarter of Oz as unpleasant and dangerous but I enjoyed the scenes set there. There are motivations that feel off and others that play out wonderfully. For instance, the Scarecrow gets a heroic moment, sacrificing his straw to get them across a ditch and filling up with scratchy hay on the other side. One part of the book that I deliberately haven't mentioned is as convenient as anything in the entire series, but Baum takes it to a good place and it works out well.

The bottom line is that I've loved some of these 'Oz' books, liked most of the rest and despised an early entry, but, in each instance, I knew what I felt. Here, I'm entirely unsure how I'll feel about this one after it settles in my brain. ~~ Hal C F Astell

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