Fairy Tale Spotlight: Paradox in Oz [Book Review]

[This blog contains spoilers for a book nobody reads anymore.]

"Paradox in Oz" is the fifty-sixth book in the Oz series originally started by L. Frank Baum. It was written by Edward Einhorn and published in 1999. I would also like to point out that the illustrator was Eric Shanower, since he is so important to the Oz fandom.

The story here begins with people in Oz suddenly aging. This is not something that is supposed to happen in Oz. Everyone remains at the same age they want to be for eternity. Somehow the aging enchantment of Oz has stopped, and it is up to Ozma, the hero of this book, to find out how to fix it.

The fix for this problem actually has to do with a strange man who lives his life backwards. Of course, it is forwards from his perspective, but to everyone else, he seems like he is going in reverse. This is just one of many incredibly complicated paradoxes in this book. And what creature is best at helping with paradoxes? Why... a parrot-ox, of course!

Tempus is part parrot and part ox. He is the only one of his kind, yet he is pretty much everywhere because he can travel through time simply by flying. He is also known for being exceptionally good at doing things as long as those things are impossible. In contrast, he is actually very bad at doing normal things.

"Paradox in Oz" also shows an alternate timeline where the Wizard is actually an evil man. Also Mombi is a wonderful person. Pretty much everybody's personalities gets flipped to their opposing moral alignments. Even Dorothy is a bad person in that universe. Interestingly the Emerald City is called the Obsidian City, and it is all black instead of green. Pretty cool!

This book, please understand, deals with something that has been a running problem in the Oz books, and frankly the whole franchise, since the beginning. Oz books have always had a very poorly constructed continuity. For example, the Soldier with the Green Whiskers is supposed to be called Omby Amby according to L. Frank Baum. However when John R. Neill began writing them, he called him Wantowin Battles. This was one of the many ways that Oz books often did not agree with one another.

There was also the problem with the movies, some TV shows, and even animes and video games that did not agree with the book canon. Also what about "Wicked"? That is also not canon but it still seems to be important to some people. The whole world is full of Oz, but for some reason only a single thread of books are canon, and even within the canon we haven't been able to get a perfectly straight story.

"Paradox in Oz" is the very first time that an author tried very, VERY hard to bring everything together in a fully realized Ozziverse. The whole purpose of this book is to show that not every Oz book agrees with each other, but that doesn't mean it isn't true. They are just happening in some other version of events. This book is quite literally a science fiction and still very much canon to the series.

By the end of the book, it references nearly every single continuity of Oz that was ever made. I'm talking about even the movies, cartoons, and comic books! It's all here! It explains it all away as an airtight multiverse, and the best part of this is that "Paradox in Oz" is a canon book which by extension means everything Oz is canon. Brilliant!

I remember being upset that Oz was just a dream in the 1939 movie, but maybe it is a dream in that version of the Ozziverse. That's fine. Honestly, that's just peachy. What this book does is that it encourages you to make Oz in whatever way you want. Your imagination is the only limitation. This book single handedly gave the world a golden key to a universe to do anything and everything they wanted to do with it to make themselves happy!

This idea may have inspired a similar project for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. In 2009, there was a brilliant movie called "Turtles Forever" that dealt with very similar themes and had an ending that was nearly the same. It may have been inspired by "Paradox in Oz" since this book came out ten years earlier.

If I had to make criticisms of the book, I'd say that it isn't really suitable for children, even though the book is clearly intended for them. It's not because it is too violent or serious as much as the book is a bit too cerebral. I'm an adult and even I had trouble following some of the paradoxes found in these pages. It is can be extremely baffling at times.

I also feel that this is a terrible starter to the Oz series. If this was the first Oz book you tried out, you probably would not even finish it. It is purely written for those who have been following the books up to this point. It's like a special gift for those few who have stuck with the series for all those long years.

Because of how this book works, it is a difficult one to recommend. You have to really be ready to take in a lot if you start this one. But whether you read it or not, I do hold the opinion that this is one of the best Oz books ever made and one of the most important ones. It single handedly brought every single continuity of Oz (book, movie, ect.) together in one group and further encourages people to add to it.

Thank you, Edward Einhorn, for writing this book!

This blog was written on November 20, 2023.

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