It was more adventurous then the previous books of the Wizard of Oz series. Although it did mention Tik-Tok for a portion of the story as a soldier and prisoner, I thought it would be mostly of him rather than the Shaggy Man or Queen Anne's story. Its good to see some balance in story telling with different character development. Yet, the story line is quite standard of how the author made it for all Oz books after the first one in which there is a new character traveling, a squabble, it gets resolved happily and then they almost all go to the Emerald City and meet Ozma.