Reviews

3*

The author, for this one, seems to have forgotten a bunch of things, like to Nome King's name and the fact that Shaggy Man and Polychrome have met prior to this book. The author also doesn't seem to be able to make up his mind about Ozma's decisions by the end of the book on not letting anyone in Oz and sending them back home but then this happens and so she says yes but then again this person won't go if this other one doesn't and... and I will only mention how the title of this one is, yet again, very misleading... it's starting to be a boring theme with these books...

I liked how there was a dragon in this one, however.

And I liked the little fact about Toto and him not speaking until now. That was a nice touch.

cimorene1558's review against another edition

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4.0

I love the tube travel bit, I’m not sure why, but I really do. And Quox is a great dragon.

saroz162's review against another edition

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4.0

A strange book, in that it's quite pleasant, and effortlessly readable, without feeling anything like as consequential as it should. The general plotline is lifted from a musical comedy Baum wrote, which somewhat explains the problem: a whole load of characters get added into the mix, and there's a lot of wordplay and larking about, which manages to effectively disguise that the longer the book goes on, the less actually happens. That's not necessarily a bad thing most of the time, but it manages to rob the villain of any real sense of threat, as well as effectively rendering several interesting characters background players by the end of the story. Several interesting avenues aren't really developed, and instead, Baum tidies up the loose ends a little too quickly.

It's a good Oz book, maybe even a very good one - but it never manages to be really great.

baileyjane1's review against another edition

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3.0

For some reason, I didn't like this one as much as the others. I really enjoyed Tik-Tok's character, but all the rest fell short of the original characters that I enjoyed so much.

devonadelle's review against another edition

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2.0

A little disappointing considering very few of our already-beloved characters played a role, and even Tik-Tok had such a small part! Alas, I don't think I could truly hate any book about Oz.

sqeeker's review against another edition

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3.0

- I'm really surprised this book exists. The back story is really interesting. Baum wrote a play about Ozma of Oz, but because he couldn't use the original characters for some reason, he came up with some new ones. Then Baum decided to turn the play into a book. So the book is a lot like Ozma of Oz. It has a lot of the same scenarios with different characters.

- I liked the dragon a lot. I love that there are dragons in Oz. The dragon reminded me of that flying dog from The Neverending Story.

- This was one of my least favorite in the series. I wasn't into the new characters, and it repeated a previous book.

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