Fairy Tale Spotlight: Speedy in Oz [Book Review]

[Contains spoilers for a book that nobody reads anymore.]

Whoa! I did not see this one coming! "Speedy in Oz" is the 28th book in the Oz series started by L. Frank Baum. It was written by Ruth Plumly Thompson and published in 1934. And despite all expectations, this may actually be her best one yet.

The book sees the return of Speedy, the American boy from "The Yellow Knight of Oz." He it shot over by a geyser while investigating dinosaur bones with his Uncle Billy. The geyser sends both him and those bones to a floating island called Umbrella Island which is presently going through a bit of an emergency involving a giant.

This story barely has anything to do with Oz until the end. I never worry about that. Baum did it too. Some of these books have more to do with the outreaches of Fairyland than Oz in general. Umbrella Island is an entire island that can fly around by use of a giant magical umbrella planted in the middle. An entire civilization lives here. The author goes out of her way to explain how it all works, and I was pleasantly surprised with how sensible she was with something so fantastic.

On the latter note, Ruth is not commonly known for explaining anything at all. She just says what happens. This was a refreshing change and one of the many reasons this book is superior to all her other written works.

So, the island accidently bumped into the head of a giant named Loxo. As recompense, he required the king's daughter be handed over to be his tiny (or regular sized) slave. They agreed to it but bought some time in order to train her, but it was really in the hopes that their wizard, named Waddy, could figure a way out of the deal.

Enter Speedy and a magical walking, and talking pile of dinosaur bones named Terrybubble. Instantly, they become the talk of the whole island. Speedy is a brave and interesting boy who likes girls, namely princesses. Terrybubble is huge and ugly, yet he is as innocent as a puppy. He strives to be the best and most loyal companion Speedy could ever have. The contrast between the dinosaur's looks and his personality is what makes him so endearing and wonderful.

Speedy's interest in women is a major shift from most of Ruth's boy characters. Usually women frustrate them, and they often would rather be around other male characters. But Speedy is a heterosexual through and through. He even often thinks about marrying girls. Many on the island assume he will come back someday to marry the princess of this story. This one quality makes Speedy different then all the other boys who have traveled to Oz.

The workings of the umbrella that causes Umbrella Island to fly was fascinating. And it even had settings that could put up protective shields which were not perfect. They had weaknesses which were important within the plot of the book. The controls for the island and how they worked was well addressed and made me wish I could have been there to operate it myself. Seriously, every detail of this story was planned out and delivered with precision. I was not expecting this. Her last story was good but it was nowhere near this level of quality.

Although I won't spoil the entire ending, I do want to mention one thing. After the plot was resolved, Speedy had the option of taking Terrybubble back to America, but that could cause the dinosaur to become lifeless again... and likely just end up in a boring museum. For this reason, Speedy choose to quietly slip away and allow his dinosaur friend to remain on Umbrella Island so that he could be much happier. There was only one very sad problem.

Terrybubble had lost Speedy and had no idea what happened to him. He spent long hours on the edge of the island looking for his old friend to whom he would always be loyal. Terrybubble was the very model of a loyal dog-like companion. He was naïve to a fault and never could quite get over the fact that he wasn't very smart. That last little moment where you see him sadly looking out for Speedy really struck hard. He just could not understand that Speedy had done him a favor. The boy wanted his dinosaur friend to live a good life rather than coming back home where he would return to the grave. Brilliant.

Throughout this story, the plot is hard driven towards the end. It is absolutely worth the read, and may actually be the best Oz book up to that point. It even goes right up against some of Baum's better stories. As an interesting caveat, "Speedy in Oz" was the 14th Oz book of Ruth Plumly Thompson. Before Baum died, he managed to also write 14 Oz books. It seems that 14 is the magic number because she finally wrote a good one, and it is my sincere hope that she kept it up. What a fine piece of literature this was!

Thank you for reading my blog! Did you enjoy it? Either way, you can comment below, or you can email me at tkwadeauthor@gmail.com. You can also visit my website at www.tkwade.com. Check out my books! Thanks!

Fairy Tale Spotlight: Numbers [Book Review]

"Numbers" is the fourth book of the "Holy Bible," and it was written entirely by Moses who is really not that great of an author. What he does excel at is accounting. A good portion of this book is a glorified accounting document. It gives the numbers of each of the tribes of Israel and their fighting forces.

Like in Leviticus, it continues a list of laws. So there was a rule that if anyone runs into a situation that they are not sure what should be done about it, they would ask Moses about it, and in turn, Moses would ask God. God would then explain what the law should be in the matter and then they would have to comply to that law for any similar situations in the future.

An example of this had to do with some daughters who wanted the inheritance of their father who had no sons. Back then, all inheritances were passed down to the first born son, or to the other sons based on who was still alive. In this case, God allowed the daughters to have the inheritance since there were no males left. He then added a list of other similar scenarios just so they would not need to ask about them too.

Although "Numbers" has its fair share of accounting and laws, the real fun begins when the Israelites do what they do best and start whining and complaining that God is ruining their lives. Apparently the number 10 is where God looses it and he just begins killing people en mass whenever they bitch.

And the more I think about it, I can't really blame God for doing it. Up until this point, the Israelites bore witness to countless miracles. Daily and nightly, they saw a pillar of smoke and fire follow them through the wilderness. Before that, there was the parting of the Red Sea and all of the insane things that happened in Egypt. They absolutely knew God existed and was powerful. I guess they just didn't wanna have anything to do with a very real God and so turned against him. So God killed them. He killed thousands of them. He just got tired of putting up with their shit.

The stress got to Moses. The old man had been quite faithful up to that point. In "Exodus" and "Leviticus," Moses had been able to quell God's wrath to an extent, but now he had to contend with massive piles of dead bodies as his pleading words to God did not hold much weight anymore. And finally there came a moment where he was told to speak to a rock so that it would pour out water.

Moses did not speak to the rock... he just struck it twice. It worked, but God saw doubt in Moses for the first time which lead to two very sad things:

1: His brother Aaron would be ceremoniously killed.

2: He would never get to enter into the land promised to the Israelites.

As to the second, I have already begun reading the next book. I know for a fact that Moses was very upset about not getting to see the land. He accepted the punishment, but it broke his heart. Even so, I still think God really liked Moses. He had been remarkably long suffering and patient with him up to that one point.

"Numbers" has a bad reputation because of its boring parts, but it actually has more narrative in it than I thought. It's worth the read. Much of the middle has to do with the fury of God against his own people. And they did deserve what they got. The whole group was full of dumbasses. The book is hereby recommended by me. I actually liked it a bit more than "Leviticus."

Thank you for reading my blog! Did you enjoy it? Either way, you can comment below, or you can email me at tkwadeauthor@gmail.com. You can also visit my website at www.tkwade.com. Check out my books! Thanks!

Fairy Tale Spotlight: The Enchanted Forest

Throughout my journey into my vast collection of fairy tales, I often come across different types of forests. I am a bit fascinated by them. In many ways, they hold the same mystique as going into a building. I suppose it's the canopy that give it this feel. Yes, you can occasionally see the sky, but unless you are some sort of bird, you aren't escaping it. Similarly, you can look out of a window from within a building, but that doesn't mean it will open for you.

Forests are one of the ways people end up getting trapped in fairy tales. Many types of beasts and creatures can live there. Despite seeming very open, a person can very easily get lost, walking in complete circles while thinking they are going in a straight line. It's a wonderful trap.

Another interesting thing about forests is that they are forever primitive in nature. There is no way to modernize a forest. The moment people move into them, they cease to really be a forest at all. No, a forest is merely a collection of trees and grass overgrowing but for what pathways people have stomped into them over time, and if such a forest be afflicted by fairy magic, one may have a little bit of trouble escaping. Because the forest cannot be modernized, they exist as they have since the days fairies inhabited them in old stories and could likely still inhabit them now.

In classic fairy tales, the forest has always been a good staging ground for encounters. Since most fairies tend to be uncivilized by nature, they tend to prefer such areas the most. Little Red Riding Hood first meets the wolf in a forested area. Although it seemed like a friendly meeting, there was a sinister work in progress. The famed Rumpelstiltskin was a forest dweller as well.

I've seen many cases of an enchanted forest that simply sends people in circles so that they never find a way out. In some cases the trees will actually stand up and walk around, rearranging themselves to throw off the traveler. In the Disney movie Babes in Toyland, the trees out rightly would prevent the travelers from leaving through threat of violence. In the case of that movie, the characters knew what they were getting into, as the forest was plainly known as "The Forest of No Return." Quite a good movie, by the way! I'll review it sometime.

If you were to meet a talking animal near your home, you might ask it where it came from. There is a very high chance that it will lead you into the forest first, and from there it will take you either to its home or somewhere entirely out of this world. I've fantasized about this a little bit. Back when I was working on my book "A Wolf in my Bedroom," I had an original version where the wolf had a portal to his own world hidden within a nearby forest. I went in a different direction, but the idea is still very strong in my mind. I expect to do something with it at some point.

Next time you are walking about in the woods, think about it within the context of older, more fantastic, times. Consider that there might still be things out there somewhere. You may not be as alone as you think. By its very nature, the forest is a very large and living thing. It's brimming with life. Sometimes I wonder just what sorts of mysterious things might still be in there. Ancient... impossible things.

Thank you for reading my blog! Did you enjoy it? Either way, you can comment below, or you can email me at tkwadeauthor@gmail.com. You can also visit my website at www.tkwade.com. Check out my books! Thanks!

Fairy Tale Spotlight: Supraland [Video Game Review]

I'm a bit mixed on Supraland. I admire it for many of the things it accomplished. Yet there are problems with it that I could never shake. Even so, I choose to review it so that I can get my feelings out.

Supraland is a video game released in 2018. It is a first person game that combines elements of Zelda, Portal, and Metroidvania type gameplay. The basic idea of it is that you are a little toy figure, placed down into an elaborate sandbox by a human child. Here, all the other toy figures have life and go about their daily tasks with little to no awareness that they are living in a child's sandbox.

There are two colors of toy figures: blue and red. They have their own kingdoms and, for the most part, don't like each other very much. The moving force of the plot is that the Blue Kingdom turns off the Red Kingdom's water, and so you, being the prince of the Red King, have to travel over there and find out why they are doing it.

Getting there isn't so simple. The entire world is laid out like a puzzle. Just to get inside of the Blue Kingdom's walls you have to just about travel the entire sandbox world just to get what you need to break inside. Along the way, enemies spawn in at these points where crosses are posted like gravesites. Fighting is extremely frequent and often difficult and punishing if you are not very swift on your feet.

I was able to finish the game in about 30 hours. It was long and punishing. The ending was a bit confusing and seemed to have very strange religious undertones that I had difficulty understanding. My main problem with the game is that I can't figure out if they are making fun of Christianity or not. It doesn't come up very much, but when it does I always got uncomfortable. Even so, there are very interesting religious aspects to the game of which I did like.

Every so often, you can spot the human child standing high above the sandbox, gazing down at you with an eerie domineering look. He isn't always there. There are just random moments I just looked up and saw him there. None of the other figures seems to be aware of him, although a religion did form around the idea of him. Those who were believers are shown to have halos above there heads.

The whole idea that this strange boy was able to give these toys life is utterly fascinating to me. But there is also a creep factor in that he is not really acting much like a child. It had to do with the way he just stares at you, acting more like an adult. That effect is probably the thing that drew me so hard to this game.

The thing that made me most uncomfortable was the character of Mr. Miracle which was sort of a take on Jesus. He looked like a toy but had a really odd looking face which seemed a bit more human that the others... but it was twisted and hideous.

If you are a fan of innovative fighting, puzzling, and platformer games, then I recommend Supraland for it's genuinely fun and challenging gameplay. It will take a lot of skill and mental abilities to push through it though. If you don't want a challenge, then skip by it. For me, it was really that human boy that did it for me. All the connotations surrounding that was what make this game wonderful. Still, you gotta wonder what they were thinking.

Thank you for reading my blog! Did you enjoy it? Either way, you can comment below, or you can email me at tkwadeauthor@gmail.com. You can also visit my website at www.tkwade.com. Check out my books! Thanks!

Fairy Tale Spotlight: Is God Primitive?

Whenever most people think of God, they usually think of him in context of the Bible. What is the state of things in the Bible? Well, for the most part, it seems like everyone is living in a primitive society. No cars. No airplanes. No electricity. Everyone is living off of the land. They all have cattle. Leprosy is a thing. Sand. There was a lot of sand. Sand everywhere.

The point is that most of the bible is incredibly primitive by dint of being set in a primitive time, and it is the basis of today's Christianity. Not to mention that most every time I hear people quote God or the Bible they obsessively add old English "thy's" and "thou's" to their language, even if they aren't directly quoting anything. It's gotten so bad that it's become a part of Christian culture.

There's some weird psychology that goes along with this that has even affected me. Because the religion seems primitive, it sometimes makes God feel primitive as well. But how can this be? Realistically, how could God be primitive? Yes, He's much older than dirt. He's one of the few people who can actually say that and mean it. But I don't understand how God can be primitive and remain that way throughout all of history. I don't buy it.

One problem with the idea of a primitive God is that we would be expected to be primitive as well in service to Him. Once more, how can this be? What sort of God would not want us to progress? I don't understand the whole mentality of this. Sometimes I look at people like the Amish, and I just cannot understand why they would put themselves through that sort of torture. How is remaining primitive a benefit to anyone?

I think perhaps the Amish believe that modern innovations lead to corruption. There is a modicum of truth to what they are saying, but the innovations themselves are not the source of evil. It is the humans utilizing it. In that light, the human race has always had evil no matter what tech level has been in place. This leads me to believe that the whole concept of a tech level to evil ratio to be a moot point. People and the individuals among them are either good or evil, period.

Another thing that seems apparent to me is that the resources to create such things as computer, cars, and airplanes were always available on this planet. They were here in staggering abundance. They had to be or else we would have never gotten to the point at which we finally arrived. If God intended us to remain primitive, He certainly planned everything with a ridiculous amount of redundant material. This of course leads me to assume that, even in primitive days, God was a modern thinker.

I am also reminded of that very interesting command "Be fruitful and multiply." "Fruitful" would be the operable word in this case. The word essentially means to be productive. Now, the primitive view of this word just means to keep harvesting more and more crops, but a more modern take would be to keep innovating. In and of itself, there is no evil in innovation. We can make lives easier on everyone through innovation. Evil people can still ruin it. An axe is just as good at chopping wood as it is in murdering someone.

But in summary, I should say that I think God is and has always been modern, perhaps far more than even we can understand in this day and age--ahead of our time, if you will. He must be. And to equalize Christianity with the primitive times in which the Bible was written does it an extreme disservice. He is not the God of the primitive; He is simply God. All that exists happened because he could imagine it. He is beyond all the things we use to hold ourselves back: culture, laws, language, accents, and levels of technology. None of these things could not even have happened if He did not exist first. Again, He is not the God of the primitive; He is only God. And we exist because of him. Please consider it.

Thank you for reading my blog! Did you enjoy it? Either way, you can comment below, or you can email me at tkwadeauthor@gmail.com. You can also visit my website at www.tkwade.com. Check out my books! Thanks!

Fairy Tale Spotlight: Leviticus [Book Review]

"Leviticus" is the third book of the "Holy Bible" and was written by Moses in his usual redundant fashion. Seriously, I cannot stand him as an author, but the stuff he wrote was still important. I'll suffer him for now.

"Leviticus" is a list of laws given out by God to Moses while he was still back on Mount Sinai. It covers various topics:

1. Sacrifices and how they must be performed.

2. Information pertaining to the priesthood.

3. Uncleanliness, such as how to deal with leprosy.

4. Another pass at sin and what is considered a sin.

5. Punishment for sin.

All in all, the book is just a list, save for one interesting moment where a man is caught swearing against God outside of the camp and that he ends up being stoned for it.

I particularly found the parts about sinful acts to be interesting. God talks a lot about bestiality and incest in every way that it could redundantly be described. At one point he refers to both acts as "confusion." That is an interesting perspective from God himself, and it should be important to remember that in context. God has the greatest third party perspective on us, and such acts would seem confusing to Him.

There was also a passage about delivering your seed unto Moloch. Moloch was a god who demanded the sacrifice of infant children where they would be burned in the fire. This was the precursor to what later became abortion. It was actually done for the same reason but in the style of infanticide. The context of Moloch is not actually given in the book, because such things were just known at the time. However, I just happen to know what they were talking about.

The only other thing I should mention is the confusing name of this book. "Leviticus" has to do with the tribe of Levi who where the priestly tribe of the Israelites. The name actually just translates into "Law of the Priests." That should clear things up a bit more.

Should I recommend "Leviticus?" If you are interested in the original laws given out by God to Moses, then go for it. If you are looking for a more narrative story, then skip it. Once again, Moses is not a pleasant writer.

Thank you for reading my blog! Did you enjoy it? Either way, you can comment below, or you can email me at tkwadeauthor@gmail.com. You can also visit my website at www.tkwade.com. Check out my books! Thanks!

Fairy Tale Spotlight: Herbert West--Reanimator [Book Review]

[Some spoilers included.]

"Herbert West--Reanimator" is a serialized story that ran between October 1921 to June 1922 in a publication called "Home Brew." It was written by H. P. Lovecraft, and it is the first of his stories I have ever read in my life. The reason for me picking this one first was because I am a super-fan of the 1985 film and its sequels. Another reason was because I felt a little jipped out of a mad scientist story after the incredibly disappointing "Frankenstein." Whatever the case may be, "Reanimator" ended up being one hell of a story!

The story is told by the assistant to the titular Herbert West as he attempts to quite literally cure death. He developed a reagent that can revitalize humans, but in order to get the formula correct, he needs a constant flow of "fresh" bodies. This necessity is what leads this story to sink into the realm of madness.

West comes across as a sociopath that is dedicated to his work. He seems to believe in what he is doing to the bitter end. The only reason his associate stays with him is because of the belief that this really has some strong scientific significance. The problem is that the reanimated humans always come back acting more like animals rather than people.

"Reanimator" morbidly crosses every line of comfortability that exists. It shows how far science can go without regulation, and ultimately, this one ends up a horrific failure. But I still really like and admire people like this. I don't think he was doing anything wrong. He never killed anyone. He was just trying to cure death. No big deal, right?

The Mad Scientist genre is one of my favorites. I adore these men who break free of the rules and regulations of the world and strike out on their own to discover the strange truths of the universe. Although evil, they have more ambition than most, and that makes them so very interesting.

I do recommend "Herbert West--Reanimator." It takes about an hour to read and I found it on Kindle for $.99. Worth every penny.

Thank you for reading my blog! Did you enjoy it? Either way, you can comment below, or you can email me at tkwadeauthor@gmail.com. You can also visit my website at www.tkwade.com. Check out my books! Thanks!