News For 2010-09-09

And now I'll introduce a new segment on our show:

What The Hell Is John Reading Now?

In my endevour to revisit the Oz series, at least as written by L. Frank Baum, I've just finished Rinkitink in Oz. As the fourteenth book on this adventure (including the oft-maligned Little Wizard Stories and Sea Fairies, as well as the totally awesome Sky Island), I was actually getting kind of worn down by all these Ozian adventures. Luckily, Rinkitink was a breath of fresh air.

The title of the book is a misnomer, as the story - with the exception of the last few chapters - takes place entirely outside of Oz with entirely new protagonists. It began life, in fact, as a completely new (unpublished) book, simply named King Rinkitink. When Baum was asked by his publishers to deliver his yearly Oz book, he simply dusted off the old manuscript and tacked on a crazy lame ending with Dorothy and the Wizard.

Indeed, I found the book a great deal of fun and a delightful change of pace from the usual Oz adventure until the newly-added "Deux ex Wizard." In fact, the appearance of the two Oz characters comes so completely out of nowhere, and so completely undermines the book's new protagonists, that the book as a whole is almost ruined. Let there be no beating around the bush here - after 270 pages of great fantasy entertainment, the last several pages just flushes it all down the crapper.

In the future, I suppose I'll just have to imagine my own, superior ending to the book, in which the new heroes escape from their troubles by their own power and skill, and not by the power of characters hastily wedged in by the whims of demanding publishers.