This book is a strange combination of massive inconsistencies and rehashed Oz plots and then one glorious moment of plot hole filling that almost redeems the whole thing. (Except doesn’t.)
Though the invention of the mobile phone goes a pretty long way towards doing so, as well.
The rehashed Plots include an attempt to invade Oz and an Earth girl washed overboard and ending up in Oz. The inconsistencies include a) Polychrome, the rainbow’s daughter, and our old creepy friend The Shaggy Man already know each other and b) that is not how his hateful Love Magnet works! All very, very annoying.
But also, in this book we learn that Toto — who, alone of the animals of Oz, doesn’t talk, something I’ve been wondering about for a while — has been silent in Oz because he didn’t have anything to say and not because he couldn’t speak, and I very much appreciated that retcon right there, and I must give thanks to the early-20th-century kids who doubtless prompted it.
And then this happened:
… Shaggy suspected the truth, and believing that Ozma was now taking an interest in the party he drew from his pocket a tiny instrument which he placed against his ear.
Ozma, observing this action in her Magic Picture, at once caught up a similar instrument from a table beside her and held it to her own ear. The two instruments recorded the same delicate vibrations of sound and formed a wireless telephone, an invention of the Wizard. Those separated by any distance were thus enabled to converse together with perfect ease and without any wire connection.
“Do you hear me, Shaggy Man?” asked Ozma.
“Yes, Your Highness,” he replied.”
I mean. That is pretty cool.
Oh, yeah. And Tik-Tok is in this book, too — and he sucks now. Sigh.
Wogglebug Report: Nope. Just makes the book even worse.
SCORECARD
TBR DAY 120: Tik-Tok of Oz (Oz #8) by L. Frank Baum
GENRE: Children’s Fiction, Classics
PUBLISHED: 1914
TIME ON THE TBR: 3 years.
PURCHASED FROM: Amazon.
KEEP: Yep!