In which L. Frank Baum does something he had never done before: he makes Dorothy unnecessary. The seventh door to Oz opens for Betsy Bobbin, an Oklahoma girl washed ashore in the Rose Kingdom, and she brings absolutely nothing to the adventure but courage and good humor. Meanwhile, in the forgotten kingdom of Oogaboo, Queen Ann Soforth has a problem familiar to conquerors throughout history: she has ambition but only eighteen men. Her plan to take over all of Oz simply because it seems like it should be easy sets off a chain of events involving magic shoes, a resentful Nome King, and the Shaggy Man searching for his stolen brother. The clockwork wonder Tik-Tok runs down and winds up throughout, the roses speak in riddles, and Baum's legendary puns fly fast enough to constitute a contact sport. This is Oz at its most gleefully absurd: a world where an army of eighteen can matter, where machines have souls, and where a girl from nowhere becomes the hero simply by refusing to give up. The first Oz book to center a protagonist other than Dorothy remains one of the strangest and most joyful.
