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A review by lejoy
Tik-Tok of Oz by L. Frank Baum
3.0
If you read 'Tik-Tok of Oz' (Book 8) because you're a fan of the mechanical man Tik-Tok, first introduced in Ozma of Oz (Book 3), you will be sorely disappointed. While Tik-Tok does feature in this book, he is absolutely not the main character, nor the main focus, in fact I regularly forgot he was there at all, so little impact does he have on the story. He is also useless now, constantly falling over, despite having been rather talented and cunning originally.
To start off, Book 8 is a bad cover version of Book 3 (according to Wikipedia, this is because Baum adapted it from a script written for a film of Ozma of Oz). We get another army made up of officers with only one private, we get a little girl and an animal washed overboard, we get Tik-Tok and we get the Nome King. But don't worry, it also reuses ideas from Book 4 (royalty grown on a bush that the heroes pluck to save their lives) and Book 5 (Polychrome and Shaggy Man - my least favourite character - are back, the latter once again using his creepy love magnet). The Nome King in general behaves exactly as he did in Book 6, despite having had his memory wiped at the end of that book.
Eventually this story stops being the most derivative of the series and comes up with a few new ideas. However as usual this is still a big group of dull characters (way too many characters in this one all bringing nothing to the story) going from random place to place and overcoming peril so easily that it is never exciting. Only the last two chapters are set in Oz. I did enjoy the final chapter, in which our animal friends threaten to fight each other over who is the best little girl in Oz and Dorothy finally finds out why Toto doesn't talk (after the continuity error in the previous book, which I'm sure that Baum had to correct due to fans writing to him to complain). Seeing the 'regulars' is always the best bit, so I don't understand why Baum felt it necessary to continually create new bland characters going to new random places every book. We want to see our favourites obviously!
To start off, Book 8 is a bad cover version of Book 3 (according to Wikipedia, this is because Baum adapted it from a script written for a film of Ozma of Oz). We get another army made up of officers with only one private, we get a little girl and an animal washed overboard, we get Tik-Tok and we get the Nome King. But don't worry, it also reuses ideas from Book 4 (royalty grown on a bush that the heroes pluck to save their lives) and Book 5 (Polychrome and Shaggy Man - my least favourite character - are back, the latter once again using his creepy love magnet). The Nome King in general behaves exactly as he did in Book 6, despite having had his memory wiped at the end of that book.
Eventually this story stops being the most derivative of the series and comes up with a few new ideas. However as usual this is still a big group of dull characters (way too many characters in this one all bringing nothing to the story) going from random place to place and overcoming peril so easily that it is never exciting. Only the last two chapters are set in Oz. I did enjoy the final chapter, in which our animal friends threaten to fight each other over who is the best little girl in Oz and Dorothy finally finds out why Toto doesn't talk (after the continuity error in the previous book, which I'm sure that Baum had to correct due to fans writing to him to complain). Seeing the 'regulars' is always the best bit, so I don't understand why Baum felt it necessary to continually create new bland characters going to new random places every book. We want to see our favourites obviously!