Tik-Tok of Oz

In the land of Oz, absurdity reigns supreme, and nowhere is this more apparent than in the small kingdom of Oogaboo, where Queen Ann Soforth assembles the most unlikely army in all the fairy realms and sets off to conquer her neighbors. Meanwhile, plain-speaking Betsy Bobbin, whisked from Oklahoma by a tornado, finds herself washing ashore in the Rose Kingdom, where flowers speak in verse and the air hums with magic. Alongside her loyal companion Hank the mule, she falls in with the Shaggy Man, a wandering philosopher with a heart of gold on a dangerous quest to rescue his brother from the clutches of the immortal Nome King. What follows is a delightfully tangled adventure through Baum's most fantastical creation, where robots think, magic fails at the worst moments, and courage matters more than sorcery. Though not as iconic as its predecessor 'The Wonderful Wizard of Oz,' this seventh Oz novel captures Baum at his most playful, trading grand allegory for pure, giddy storytelling. It is for readers who have already met the Wizard and long to return to that world where nonsense is a virtue and every problem has a absurd solution waiting to be discovered.