Kiki Aru is a nobody from nowhere, a Hyup boy stuck on Mount Munch, until he discovers the magic word that changes everything. "Kiki" can transform anyone into anything. Suddenly the invisible boy becomes a bird, a giant, a force to be reckoned with. But power without wisdom is a dangerous thing, and the exiled Nome King Ruggedo knows exactly how to exploit a lonely boy's hunger for significance. Meanwhile, in the emerald heart of Oz, Dorothy and her friends are planning something far more innocent: a birthday gift for Princess Ozma. The two threads collide in a story about what happens when innocence meets ambition, when giving meets taking. This is Oz at its most delightful and most dangerous, where a single word can reshape reality and loyalty is tested in ways no one expected. Baum wrote this book shortly before his death in 1919, and it pulses with something almost wistful, a master storyteller wrapping up threads of an entire world he'd built across thirteen books. For readers who grew up with Oz, this one carries the weight of goodbye. For newcomers, it's a perfectly constructed fairy tale that happens to have teeth.
