So over the course of reading all of the Oz books, I have had to experience the styles of many authors who contributed to the series. I am going to take this opportunity to explain what I think of them. In a later blog, I'll probably rate them from my most favorite to least.
*****
L. Frank Baum
Obviously, L. Frank Baum gets major credit for creating the series as a whole. That doesn't make him infallible though. Most of the credit he gets comes from his world-building and character creation. He has always done that well. Almost every character he created got reused by later authors down the line.
As good as his world-building is, Baum had an awful time with continuity. He would either forget things or rework his stories for personal reasons. This actually led to a tradition among Oz authors of not caring if the continuity matched or not. These discrepancies were later explained in "Paradox in Oz" charmingly.
Ruth Plumly Thompson
Hit and miss. Thompson wrote her books entirely for children. She pandered to them harder than any other author. Some might defend her in this, but it made it especially difficult for grown adults to take these books in. The majority of her books had very rigid formulas which made nearly every book seem like the same book but with the characters swapped around.
This formula also led to a sort of feel that the books were being padded out. The characters would often run into these random encounters that were never good. They always made Oz feel like an unsafe and uncomfortable place to live in. She did this far more times than was necessary.
Her much later books were not as bad. She seemed to get get better at broadening her storytelling. Those books are quite good, but they are sadly in the minority. Thompson's rigid belief in pandering to the innocence of children ultimately made most of her books feel dull and uninspired.
John R. Neill
John R. Neill was actually the illustrator of the books since the second one that Baum did. He took over as author for a little while and a lot of people dislike them. That said, however, I really enjoyed the change of pace. His Oz stories seemed directly related to the animated cartoons of his age. Everything was alive and could talk, even inanimate objects. It was chaotic, but it was all done in good fun.
Neill's books also had a main character. Jenny Jump just about turned into a fairy character herself, despite the fact she came from our world. She got extremely integrated into the world of Oz... even creepily so. The Wizard of Oz actually magically lobotomized her to make her friendlier.
My only real complaint was how he had made it so that the colors of the five areas of Oz also reflected in the skin color of their inhabitants. That was annoying to imagine. Nobody else did that and thank goodness!
Jack Snow
Jack Snow brought Oz back into the realm of believable. He was an eloquent writer who took the series seriously. He focused more on serious questing and also the beauty if Oz itself. There was something very personal about how he wrote Oz.
Rachel Cosgrove Payes
Payes is the heavenly saint that gave us Percy the Rat. But more than that, the thing that really impressed me about her writing was her ability to create interesting puzzles for the characters to solve. She also put a hell of a lot of work into making all the characters believable as people. Her dialog and character interaction is some of the best in Oz history.
Now that I think of it, it makes a lot of sense she is so good at puzzles. Her main character was usually a rat. Rats are great at solving puzzles!
Eloise Jarvis McGraw and Lauren Lynn McGraw
These two wrote a few books together. One of them was just Eloise. Their books are a little difficult for me to remember offhand. I believe that the majority of them did well in introducing new and creative characters. I don't think I have any particular complaint about them. I guess they just did not stand out all that well.
Dick Martin
He only wrote one book ("The Ozmapolitan of Oz"). He was better known as an illustrator at the time. I didn't have any real problem with him.
Gina Wickwar
Not a bad author, but she is another author that has difficulty standing out. She handled Toto really well though. I have to give her credit for that. Toto is a character that a lot of authors shy away from.
Eric Shanower
Eric took Oz so seriously that it sometimes dipped into the horror genre. He also officially brought comic books into the Oz canon. That's a big accomplishment. He will always be known as the man who tried mightily to make Oz a story that a person of any age can take seriously.
Edward Einhorn
Einhorn was clearly a science fiction writer. His two Oz books are works of science fiction while still being Oz fantasy. They dealt with things like alternate universes and time travel. He is the author who did what he could to repair the broken continuity started by Baum himself by making everything canon within its own reality. Excellent job!
Sherwood Smith
Smith was the only Oz author to bring our real world problems into the plot. She compared life in Oz to the often broken and sad existence we live here on Earth. That will ultimately be her Ozian legacy. It was a concept worth explaining, as hard as it may be to deal with. Smith wrote the final Oz book ("Sky Pirates over Oz") which was published in 2014.
*****
That's it! Can you figure out who my favorite and least favorite is just from how I reviewed them?
This blog was written on April 12, 2024.
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