The Emerald City of Oz

This book was clearly written to be the final in the Oz series. It very much isn't, so I guess Baum went through a similar thing to Doyle.

Anyway, at first I was shocked and excited to discover A PLOT. It was like Baum was answering all my wishes (complaints) from the previous instalment (or two). First of all we revisit an old antagonist, the Nome King from Ozma of Oz, who wants revenge on Ozma and Dorothy. Then we learn that Uncle Henry can't afford the mortgage on the farm in Kansas due to the costly events from the first and third books. Already this is tonnes more depth and story than any of the previous Oz books. I was overjoyed.

Dorothy asks Ozma if she and Uncle Henry and Aunt Em (and Toto) can live in Oz instead, while the Nomes show more start gathering evil allies to help them defeat the people of Oz.

And then the plot peters out and you're back in familiar dull territory. Dorothy spends the rest of the novel travelling around Oz with her guardians and some random established Oz characters that I'm pretty sure Baum chose out of a hat. Many of the villages they visit are just an excuse for some puns or satire about the type of people Baum finds annoying. That's it. Total surface level stuff. EVENTUALLY Dorothy and co learn about their impending doom, but that gets sorted out so easily, using something that is just made up right at the end, that it is an infuriating way to write a story. A simple solution is fine if it is set up, but if you just make stuff up in the final chapter that's... cheating. It's certainly lazy.

And that's that, Ozma wants to cut the land of Oz off from the rest of the world so that Baum doesn't have to write about it any more. Oh, and the Wizard can do ACTUAL magic now which is much less interesting than him being a humbug. Also, Toto is a murderer but whatever. Glinda remains terrifyingly all-powerful.

Although the plots often contradict this, Oz is a utopia of pacificism, communism and vegetarianism and everyone is immortal. May they all live happily ever after. Until Book 7 that definitely exists anyway. show less

Originally published in 1910, this sixth entry in L. Frank Baum's Oz series alternates between two main story-lines. In the first, Dorothy, Aunt Em and Uncle Henry confront hard times at home in Kansas, with poor weather and Uncle Henry's worsening health threatening the family farm, which is shortly to be repossessed by the bank. Dorothy is encouraged by her aunt and uncle to escape to her fairyland (which her elderly relatives only partially believe in), but with Ozma's help she brings them to live with her in Oz, where they all will henceforth make their permanent home. After meeting Oz's girl ruler and seeing the Emerald City, they set out with some companions on a tour of the land, seeing some unique villages and settlements. show more Meanwhile, in the second story-line, the Nome King, still smarting from his defeat at the hands of Ozma and her friends in Ozma of Oz, decides that the beautiful fairy-land must be conquered and its people enslaved. His new general, Guph, hits upon a cunning scheme: the nomes will dig a tunnel under the terrible desert that protects Oz, and thereby invade the country. Enlisting the help of three terrible bands of evil creatures - the Whimsies, the Growleywogs, and the Phanfasms (a type of Erb) - the Nomes grow ever closer to their goal. Not unexpectedly, these two story-lines eventually converge at the end of the book, as the Ozites confront their invaders in the gardens of Ozma's palace...

I always enjoyed certain aspects of The Emerald City of Oz as a girl, happy in the knowledge that Dorothy was finally in Oz to stay, and that in the end she didn't need to choose between Uncle Henry and Aunt Em and her magical friends and their marvelous land. I also always appreciated the many entertaining puns Baum employed in depicting his various new characters. The chapters devoted to Utensia, a settlement of living kitchen implements, and to Bunbury, a village of living pastries, stand out in this regard. That said, I have always felt (and continued to do so on this rereading) that the author ignored a rather significant plot hole in his story of the invading Nome army and their allies. Namely, that Ozma had only to use her Magic Belt (originally the Nome King's, and a major motivation for the invasion) to wish her enemies back to their own countries. This is, in fact, what she does at the end. Of course this wouldn't have been a long-term solution, as Oz's enemies would not have been reformed, and would have continued to wish her ill, but given the fact that Ozma was considering closing the borders to Oz permanently, it would have worked well enough. Leaving that rather glaring inconsistency of story aside, this is still an entertaining entry in the series, one which Baum clearly envisioned as the final chapter. Clearly that wasn't meant to be... show less

Since The Wizard of Oz, my elder son and I pretty much plunged from Oz book to Oz book, a chapter most days, if not two or more. In September, having finished The Road to Oz, we went straight into The Emerald City of Oz.

And about halfway through, we just stopped. I don't know what it was exactly; he's grasping narrative more and more, but articulating this I guess was beyond him. But he suddenly stopped asking if we could read Oz, and started rejecting my offers to read it. Eventually, I stopped offering; I did bring it with us on a trip to New Jersey to October, and one time he picked it as his bedtime book, but other than that, nothing, no interest. Was this the end of our great experiment? It sat forlorn on an end table for show more months.No, because totally unprompted one December day, he said, "I want to read Oz!" And so it was back on, in a consistent run that has pretty much gone straight through to February, though he shows signs of slowing down again as of late.

Was it just general Oz burnout? Or did he dislike this Oz book in particular? Or was my own disdain for it influencing my performance? Because it is by my count, the weakest of the original six books.

I do know that it seemed as though he wasn't into any of the chapters detailing what the Nomes were up to; this is the first Oz book to use a device that Baum would periodically return to, of switching between different groups of characters in different places, instead of staying with a single person or group the entire time. Exactly what General Guph was doing with what set of would-be Nome allies seemed to be something he never really grasped the importance of.

The problem is, though, that nothing really happens in this book. While the Nomes plot their invasion of Oz, Dorothy and her family move to the Emerald City... and then just go on a pleasant tour of the Land of Oz. They are literally not trying to accomplish anything! And without that sense of forward progress, there's no interest to the individual encounters, Baum introduces no new characters of note. The defeat of the Nomes is almost by accident. I didn't much enjoy reading this one aloud, and it seems that my son didn't either. No wonder he gave up, and I am pretty grateful he reversed his decision!

As always, the Books of Wonder facsimile looks pretty nice. The green ink is a cool touch... that said, I don't really remember any standout illustrations. show less

I don't remember this as one of my favorite Oz books, and it's easy to see why: though I always loved Baum's journey plot, in this one the journey has no stakes, as it is simply a way to keep Uncle Henry and Aunt Em occupied while they acclimate to living in the Land of Oz. But it's by no means bad, as Baum invents his usual variety of fanciful places with fanciful creatures to occupy the protagonists; I especially liked the two Defensive Settlements, despite how creepy I found their premises (apparently Ozites with undesirable social traits are concentrated in their own cities to keep them from irritating the majority of society). The book has two standout parts. The first is Em and Henry, who get what is really their best material in show more the entire series. Their attempts to fit into a world that wants to serve them, a premise they are so unused to, provides Baum with some nice fodder for character work. Em's battle with the Cowardly Lion is fantastic. The second, and best, part of the book is General Guph's visits to the various evil races he is bringing into his alliance against Oz. They're some of Baum's best creations, especially the Whimsies with their pasteboard heads. I wish the invasion plotline offered more narrative drive to the rest of the book, however; Ozma just watches it unfold on her Magic Picture and frets unhelpfully.

What struck me this time was how weirdly reminiscent some parts of the book were of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Dorothy's adventure in Utensia, where she's surrounded by strangely logical wordplay about utensils, reminded me of the sort of thing Lewis Carroll would engage in, and later on, Dorothy meets some oversized rabbits and engages in some shrinking and growing. Weirdest of all, however, is her petulant attitude towards the inhabitants of Bunbury when they had the audacity to be angry over the fact that Toto murdered three of their citizens and Billina pecked someone's eyes out. It's unusual for the girl who is generally conscientious, and her bad attitude here made me think of the Alice who had such clueless interaction with the animals in the Caucus-Race more than it did the Dorothy who carefully avoided doing any harm in the Dainty China Country. show less

Ok, another odd little adventure (or set of adventures) in the land of Oz, very uneven (I found Utensia and Bunbury tiresome, but quite liked Rigmarole and the Flutterbudgets--the latter in dire need of some Al-Anon meetings). It was an odd little moral dilemma at the end--we wish to keep this place pristine and precious, so how do we stop people from coming?--but maybe I'm just sensitive to those issues from living in San Luis Obispo. Basically, it was decided to make it invisible to "outsiders." Could this be the end of any further communications from Oz? I hear this was meant to be the finale, but we all know how that turned out...

Wow! Baum totally woke himself up out of the daze he'd been in for a couple of books and comes up with an awesome set of villains, some real sense of _stakes_ (not since "Ozma" had he really gone for that), this great country mouse/city mouse stuff with Aunt Em and Uncle Henry IN OZ, and even a cool quasi-ending to the series...though of course we know that wouldn't last.

I thought Baum did a disservice to Dorothy by changing her speech to that of an uneducated child. I have only read this one (the last) and the first of the OZ books, so I don't know when he changed her. The puns were wonderful, and certainly put there for the adult reader.