A Barnstormer in Oz

1919



We return to Oz courtesy of Phillip Jose Farmer. Barnstormer falls somewhere between the convoluted sequels of the original books and the adult-skewed Wicked series with PJ's take on the land of Oz. Farmer sets the groundrules of his version of Oz quickly: Oz is real, but so are the books by Baum, who interviewed Dorothy and turned her story into a successful series of fantasy books for children. Where the original books describe Oz as a hidden land existing in the real world, Farmer drops a dimensional portal to transport his protagonist, Dorothy's grown son.

Having read the Wicked series so recently, I couldn't help but compare the two. They are both similiar in that they attempt to flesh out Oz with a grown-up dose of realism, and a blatant sexuality. But the differences are too great. You can tell that McGuire was either completely unaware of this prior version (likely) or had read it and set out to be as contrary as possible (possible). Glenda is very different, Ozma is non-existant, the politics are topsy-turvy, the talking animals are different, the Scarecrow is very different... you get the idea.

How to reconcile this in a crossover context? Like always- parallel universes of Oz! I'd feel more nerdy about this issue except that Farmer is the Forefather of Crossover Fiction. If there can be 6,667 versions of Earth as we know it, constantly diverging, merging and experiencing crisis that require artistic retcons, why not multiple realities of Oz, disparate enough to have their own warped versions of storybook and adulterized realities (let's not even get into The Wiz or Tin Man!)

The best part of old-school seventies writers like PJ Farmer is his tendancy to dissect every nuance of every character and situation. Sometimes this gets too carried away, though, and bogs down the pace of the story too much, as I've noted in my Riverworld reviews. However, in Barnstormer it is put to good use, as Farmer puts a microscope on the existance of Dorothy's friends. Just how is a talking scarecrow and tin man possible, even in a world of magic? Their existance is an anomoly, a fact that all other Oz historians choose to ignore.

Despite my inability to merge this Oz with other versions of Oz, or accept it as the real Oz as PJ might like, it's a great book with a nice fusion of post WWI warfare and magic, and is a great follow-up to Wicked versus the lame sequals from it's own author.

A Lion Among Men

Eight years after Son of a Witch (1907)

As I teased in the last blog regarding the Wicked series, I found the first chapter of A Lion Among Men much better than the last book in the 'Wicked' series and full of promise of more action, better characters and an all around better story. Well, for the most part all of that is true, but....

Given Maguire's prediliction toward apathetic characters doing a lackluster job of finding their purpose in life, I was hardly suprised to find the focus of his third book in the Wicked series to be on the Cowardly Lion.

Sure to form the lion is hardly a character the reader can or wants to sympathise with. The saving grace is Yackle, a character who hid in the shadows of the first two books, but comes to the forefront of a Lion Among Men.

Sadly, Maguire ultimately has learned too well how to tease, and the number of unresolved mysteries are far too many to hold the reader's sense of suspense. What's the point if we're bloody never going to know or understand anything???

I don't know if there are further novels planned for the Wicked Years, and I don't care. The important point is that this book is better than Son of a Witch, has a more satisfying ending, and is also a quick read. Therefore I recommend this book only if you have read the first two and would like to have a better taste left in your mouth for the world of Oz.

Son of a Witch

1899

Son of a Witch is the sequel to Wicked and was published ten years later. Maguire dedicated the novel to the cast of the musical 'Wicked', although the title character, Liir, had been written out of the musical. I found it to be a very inconsistant book. It alternated between fascinating and dull, fast-paced and slow. It never establishes itself as a continuation of Wicked or a story in it's own right. Even the style seems to alternate between mature and juvenile. It's no surprise that the growth and maturity of Liir's character is anticlimactic being that he is such an apathetic character- and never really grows out of it.

I continued on with this series because of my interest in how Oz is being handled, and Son of a Witch is a much quicker and easier read than Wicked. The first chapter of the third book, A Lion Among Men, is in of itself more entertaining than all of Son of a Witch put together. I can only really recommend the second book to committed fans of Oz and the Wicked novels.

Wicked

1889

Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West


Let me start off by clarifying that I have never seen the musical. My family owns and listens to the soundtrack, so I am passingly familiar with some of the songs, but never really listened to it. I read this book because of my interest in the original series by Baum, which I read as a kid.



As I read through Wicked, I occasionally asked my wife about the musical and was able to ascertain pretty quickly that there is not a ton of similarity between the two. The original novel treats the characters of Oz very seriously within the context of the fantasy world. Although much of the story is about the friendship (and sometime rivalry) between Elpheba and Glinda, most of the subplot is quite political. The corruption of the Wizard, the supression of animal rights and other adult themes contrast to Elpheba's maturation from cynical young maid into political activist and eventual hermetic "witch".

I couldn't help but compare the anti-heroism of Elpheba to another character who let young idealism twist his moral compass, however much less plausibly.

Yeah, well, we could list a whole slew of reasons why Star Wars fans are disappointed in Anakin Skywalker's transformation into Vader. Ultimately, Anakin had every reason to be a great jedi, and even though Kenobi told us how he failed as a mentor, he really wasn't that bad. Anakin is just a dumb jerk, really.

Elpheba, however, fights off misconceptions about her from day one until the end. The reader knows it will all end in a puddle on the floor, and yet we care about this chick and hope that someone will "get it" before it's all over. The fact that she is still grossly misunderstood and feared when she finally meets Dorothy is the greatest tragedy.

There is nothing in the Wicked series to pinpoint an exact time setting, and it was written as a children's format where relation to the real world is completely subjective, changing and unimportant. The original novel was published in 1900, and the stories were always written to take place in current time. Where the movie is fairly explicit in writing Oz off as a dream, every novel written treats it as an actual land, although it is inconsistant in whether it is a hidden desert with the US, sitting in a seperate continent hidden by magic, or most likely existing in another dimensional plane.

The Oz books were subject to sequels and revisions by numurous other authors, some of whom I have tracked down and read in addition to Maguire's series. I will cover them soon in this blog.

As I write this it is Thanksgiving evening and as I sit here with a filled belly, I remember childhood nights tucked into hotel beds (grew up in hotels) falling asleep watching the Wizard of Oz on TV. As I look forward to doing the same thing tonight, it seems fitting that I should whip out this blog first. 'Wicked: the Life and times of the Wicked Witch of the West' may put a very different spin on the childhood tale, but it still manages to transport us back into a land of talking animals and emerald cities of magic.