The latest Oz reading

I can honestly say that this book has been one of the most excruciating Oz reading experiences I've had in a long time. Because Halloween in Oz: Dorothy Returns by Leo Moser and Carol Nelson has the audacity of being nothing more than a rewrite of The Marvelous Land of Oz, only not as good. For one thing, this book is 550 pages long, with only a few spot illustrations! Baum was able to tell the same story much more simply in a lot fewer pages. And then there were the additions. As you can guess from the subtitle, Dorothy has been shoehorned into this book, and not always comfortably. Not only that, she gets an "arc" with lots of angst and "character development" that just felt tacked on. Most of the rest of the characters get new, different names as well, but not to any improved effect. Jack Pumpkinhead becomes Punk N. Hedd. Tip becomes Mitt. Mombi becomes Salmanta. And Jinjur becomes...Ginger. Literally, as she's frequently described as a ravishing redhead. There's an awful lot of padding, too, such as an attempted invasion of Munchkin land, and some weirdness about Dorothy's mother having visited Oz as a kid during the Civil War (probably setting up a prequel...). There are a few nods to other Oz books and cameos from other characters, too. This whole book just felt so pointless to me, and more than once I almost gave in and didn't finish (which I've only done with an Oz book once before, and this would have been the first fictional book I'd given up on if I had). I've actually read much worse Oz books before, but those at least had the courtesy of being short enough to be tolerable! But I'm glad I stuck to it, because then I got to find out just how badly they changed the ending! Oh, the princess is found (not that she's named Ozma any more), but it's not in the same way as in The Marvelous Land of Oz, and not well set-up, either.

The website for this book makes a big deal about the end of the Harry Potter series, and how this book will fill that void. Well let me tell you, a large page count does not make a book anything like a Harry Potter book. The sheer chutzpah of trying to rewrite an already established Oz book — with much of Baum's original still intact, I might add — made this a tough sell from the start, and the clunkiness just made it harder. I will, however, give the writers kudos for the spelling, grammar, and punctuation. These can all be major problems in these types of self-published books, and a lot of authors don't seem to care, or think the readers won't notice. This book, at least, had very few errors. If only the story had been crafted with the same care...