(Book Review--Land of Oz, Classics, Fantasy, Children's Books)
(Read from The Complete Stories of Oz)
Started: November 08, 2021
Finished: November 18, 2021
(This review is written using my new format for book reviews.)
Background Information
Originally published in 1908, this is the 4th book in the Land of Oz series. (For my previous reviews, see The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, The Marvelous Land of Oz, and Ozma of Oz.)
My History With This Book
I read this book 5 years ago when I first attempted to work my way through The Complete Stories of Oz (as I mentioned HERE and HERE.)
Summary of the Book (*SPOILERS*)
When visiting relatives in California, Dorothy falls into the center of the earth when she gets swallowed up by an earthquake. (Dorothy just has the worst luck--picked up by a cyclone in the first book, swept into the ocean in the third book, and now swallowed by an earthquake in the fourth book.)
The Wizard from the original "Wonderful Wizard of Oz" book is also back as well, having also been swallowed up by the same earthquake. And good news, the Wizard is now a good guy again. (Apparently readers reacted badly to the Wizard becoming a bad guy in the second book, so that whole angle is gone now, and we're back to the kind-hearted Wizard that we know and love from the first book.)
Dorothy and the Wizard--along with their other friends Zeb the boy, Jim the horse, Eureka the kitten, and 9 miniature piglets, make their way through the various lands in the center of the earth. They fight off the vegetable people in the land of the Mangaboos, and then go to the valley of Voe, where they have to fight off invisible bears. Then they climb up a wooden pyramid, where they fight wooden gargoyles, and then encounter dragonettes (young dragons), before getting rescued by Ozma and the magic belt and being brought back to Oz.
Evaluation
By now the formula for these Oz books is established. Our heroes journey through a strange land and encounter strange creatures.
In the first two books, this strange land was Oz, but from the 3rd book on, Oz is now the safe place, and the dangerous lands are outside Oz. In this book, the strange land is the center of the earth.
I remember reading this book 5 years ago, and when I got to the part about the vegetable people who live in glass house and can float on the air in the middle of the earth, I remember thinking, "this seems like something that would be written in the drug induced haze of the psychedelic era in the 1960s or 70s. How strange that L. Frank Baum was writing these kind of trippy stories way back in 1908."
I thought about it some more, and then wondered if my initial thoughts were a bit narrow-minded. Plenty of authors have wrote surreal fantasy before the age of psychedelics. I mean, even just within this Land of Oz series, we've had quite a few bizarre moments, but I still think the adventures of this book are the most bizarre thus far. Fighting invisible bears, running on water to escape the bears, climbing up a pyramid and fighting wooden gargoyles--it's all really wonderfully bizarre.
And also violent. The Wizard has a sword which he uses to kill one of the vegetable people and also one of the invisible bears.
And the Wizard even pulls out guns to fight the wooden gargoyles. (Picture the Wizard of Oz from your childhood memories. Do you imagine him shooting revolvers at wooden gargoyles?)
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| Illustration from the original edition |
Ozma rescuing everyone with her magic belt at the end feels like a bit of a cheat, but at least they had a lot of crazy adventures before the deus-ex-magic-belt saved the day.
Once back in Oz, the action slows down a bit, as all the characters mill around meeting each other. (Another staple of these Oz books is that each book introduces new characters, while having them meet the previous characters.) There's some attempts to establish drama by having Jim the horse race the sawhorse, or putting Eureka the Kitten on trial for eating one of the tiny piglets. But it doesn't match the made energy of the first part of the book.
Characters do a lot of things in this book that don't make logical sense. Logic and consistency are not the strong points of this series, but wonderfully imaginative lands and strange creatures are the reasons to keep reading.
Links
The Wikipedia entry for this book is HERE. Lots of interesting little tidbits on Wikipedia, including the fact that this book was written shortly after the 1906 California earthquake, which probably influenced Baum. Also speculation on Wikipedia that the quality of this book and the dark tone were affected by the fact that Baum was rushing it out shortly after the previous book.
Also via Wikipedia's entry on the Wizard of Oz, I learned that the reason he went back to being a good-guy in this book is that readers didn't like his portrayal as a bad-guy in the second book.
I'm also continuing to read Mari Ness's reviews on Tor.com: Hating Fairyland: Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz
Mari Ness makes a number of observations, including:
* Pointing out that the part about the Gargoyles is really dark. In the book, it's left implied that there's a good chance there whole world will burn down, and Mari Ness points out that this is genocide in the land of Oz series!
* The fact that Jim the horse and Zeb the boy feel uncomfortable in Oz is a series first (and apparently only). They apparently do not show up in any future Oz books.
* Mari Ness points out that the trial of Eureka the kitten is more proof that Ozma is really a poor ruler.
...and other observations. Go read her review, she's really interesting.
Also, I'm doing this as a buddy read with Dane Reads, so check out his review:
and his written review HERE.
Connections With Other Books I've Read
For another book about a journey through a hollow earth, see: Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne.
Extended Quotation
The houses of the city were all made of glass, so clear and transparent that one could look through the walls as easily as though a window. Dorothy saw, underneath the roof on which she stood, several rooms used for rest chambers, and even thought she could make out a number of queer forms huddled into the corners of these rooms.
The roof beside them had a great hole smashed through it, and pieces of glass were lying scattered in every direction. A near by steeple had been broken off short and the fragments lay heaped beside it. Other buildings were cracked in places or had corners chipped off from them; but they must have been very beautiful before these accidents had happened to mar their perfection. The rainbow tints from the colored suns fell upon the glass city softly and gave to the buildings many delicate, shifting hues which were very pretty to see.
But not a sound had broken the stillness since the strangers had arrived, except that of their own voices. They began to wonder if there were no people to inhabit this magnificent city of the inner world.
Suddenly a man appeared through a hole in the roof next to the one they were on and stepped into plain view. He was not a very large man, but was well formed and had a beautiful face—calm and serene as the face of a fine portrait. His clothing fitted his form snugly and was gorgeously colored in brilliant shades of green, which varied as the sunbeams touched them but was not wholly influenced by the solar rays.
The man had taken a step or two across the glass roof before he noticed the presence of the strangers; but then he stopped abruptly. There was no expression of either fear or surprise upon his tranquil face, yet he must have been both astonished and afraid; for after his eyes had rested upon the ungainly form of the horse for a moment he walked rapidly to the furthest edge of the roof, his head turned back over his shoulder to gaze at the strange animal.
"Look out!" cried Dorothy, who noticed that the beautiful man did not look where he was going; "be careful, or you'll fall off!"
But he paid no attention to her warning. He reached the edge of the tall roof, stepped one foot out into the air, and walked into space as calmly as if he were on firm ground.
The girl, greatly astonished, ran to lean over the edge of the roof, and saw the man walking rapidly through the air toward the ground. Soon he reached the street and disappeared through a glass doorway into one of the glass buildings.
"How strange!" she exclaimed, drawing a long breath.
****END QUOTE****--from chapter 2: The Glass City.
I thought this whole section about the floating people in the glass city was really trippy.
6 out of 10 Stars. The first part of this book was so bizarre and so crazy I thought it was going to be a 7, but then the ending parts in Oz were pretty boring, so I'm going to keep it as a 6.
* November 14, 2021 Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz p.290-326
* November 21, 2021 Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz p.326-386
Video Review (Playlist HERE)
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