The Lost King of Oz by Ruth Plumly Thompson, illustrated by John R. Neill
Famously, L. Frank Baum wrote The Tin Woodman of Oz because young readers kept writing him, wanting to know what had happened to the Munchkin girl that the Tin Woodman had intended to marry after he received his heart in Wonderful Wizard, but who was never mentioned again. I don't know if something similar happened here, but it feels to me like it must have. Baum established in Marvelous Land that the Wizard stole the throne from Ozma's father, Pastoria, and delivered his baby daughter, Ozma, into the hands of the witch Mombi, to be hidden. He provided slightly more detail about this in Dorothy and Wizard, but never followed up on what might have happened to Ozma's father. Did kids write Ruth Plumy Thompson asking about Ozma's father? It seems like the kind of thing that might have happened.
 |
| Originally published: 1925 Acquired and read aloud: July 2022 |
The Lost King of Oz provides the answer. We follow a couple parallel narratives. In one, Mombi has become the castle cook in the Gillikin pocket kingdom of Kimbaloo following her forced forgetting of her knowledge of magic at the end of Land. The goose she's about to roast for dinner reveals himself to be Pajuka, the former prime minister of Oz who she enchanted alongside the king. Pajuka demands she restore him and the king, and she agrees to track down the king in exchange for getting her magic back; she sets off with Pajuka and Snip, a Kimbaloo button boy who has the misfortune to overhear her conversation with Pajuka. I enjoyed this storyline a lot. Mombi is a fun character, but one we haven't seen in a long time; like a lot of enjoyable villains, she's smartest one in the room. I like Thompson's idea that Mombi would be dissatisfied living in a cottage even if Ozma was providing for her, and that cooking is the next best thing to making magic potions is a fun idea. Mombi solves all her problems through cooking ingredients: purple pepper to make forest beasts sneeze, gelatin to solidify a sea so she can walk across, baking powder to make things rise. She might have forgotten her magic, but she's no less clever for it. Her, Snip, and Pajuka make for an unlikely adventuring trio; I don't think we've ever seen an Oz book before where one party member is an out-and-out villain.
Meanwhile, Dorothy has left Maybe Mountain, where she visited Percy Vere from Grampa in Oz, and accidentally wishes herself into America, where she accidentally brings a motion picture stunt dummy to life, and then begins to age to her natural age if she hadn't moved to Oz. She bursts her clothes open as she ages fifteen years in moments! She wishes herself back to Oz with the dummy, who she names Humpy, and eventually meets up with Kabumpo, and then Snip, who Mombi dumped down a well to dispose of. Snip has joined up with an old tailor with detachable ears in the interim. They catch up with Mombi and Pajuka, who decides that the dummy must be the enchanted form of the old king. (Because she forgot her magic, Mombi also can't remember what she actually did to Pastoria.) This plot has some fun stuff, too; I like the idea of Dorothy becoming old again, and the perils she and Humpy encounter are fun ones, like the Back Talkers of Eht Kcab Swood. Also, it's nice to see Kabumpo back; he's Thompson's second contribution to the recurring Oz cast after Sir Hokus.
Meanwhile meanwhile, Princess Ozma and her friends at the Royal Palace (e.g., the Scarecrow, Scraps, Betsy and Trot, the Wizard) receive a cryptic message that sends them to an abandoned palace in the Quadling Country: it had been one of Pastoria's hunting lodges back in the day, and Pastoria and Ozma had hidden from Mombi there. They discover a clue about how to disenchant the lost king and then set out in search of them. As usual, Thompson is a bit more attentive to emotional lives than Baum usually was. Ozma is excited to finally meet her father for the first time since infancy; the Wizard feels awkward because he was the one who handed Ozma over to Mombi to begin with; the other characters wonder if a new ruler for Oz will be as kind and welcoming as Ozma. I think maybe more could have been done with this, especially the Wizard's guilt... but the Wizard's guilt is something that Baum himself had literally never mentioned since bringing the Wizard back to Oz, so Thompson is doing much more than him! But the scene of them visiting the hunting lodge manages to be sad and spooky all at once, a typically affecting piece of writing by Thompson.
In the end, it turns out that Tora the Tired Tailor of Oz is the king, not Humpy—they try a number of other people, including the Soldier with the Green Whiskers, before they figure that out, though. The renewed Pastoria is happy to remain a tailor, though, and so abdicates as soon as he is restored. (Thompson never uses Pastoria again.) It's another one of Thompson's endings that misdirects you with someone being enchanted, and though it's pretty obvious to an adult reader, my son was suitably surprised when it turned out to not be Humpy, and then perplexed.
My main issue with this book is the very end. Ozma wonders what to do about Mombi. Dorothy suggests melting her, and Ozma is like, "Good idea!" and then the Scarecrow and Sir Hokus dump her into a fountain, killing her! Baum's Ozma was decisive and pacifist; Thompson's is often indecisive but violent. One may remember (but it doesn't come up here) that Ozma promised to take care of Mombi in her old age in Land. I made a major edit while reading this aloud; I had Dorothy suggest dunking Mombi in the fountain, but this inspiring Ozma to give her the Water of Oblivion from the Forbidden Fountain, so that Mombi forgets not just her magic, but also her wickedness. (Similar to what happened to the old Nome King.) If nothing else, it seems a shame to take such a great character as Mombi off the board! But up until this point, it's another strong Oz adventure from Thompson. We've read five so far, and I've really liked two of them, and found a third pretty creditable.
I'm always tantalized by the hints about what Oz was like in the era of the wicked witches, when the Wizard first arrived, and Lost King provides some interesting hints. That Ozma remembers hiding in her father's hunting lodge from Mombi would seem to indicate a period after Pastoria had been deposed, before he was caught, with the two of them (and Pajuka) on the run. By the time the Wizard arrived, Pastoria had already disappeared according to this book, but eventually Ozma must have come into the Wizard's possession for him to hand her over to Mombi as well. A dark time that I think it would be interesting to see fleshed out more... and I'm sure many fan writers must have done so.
This is the third SeaWolf Press "Illustrated First Edition" of an Oz book that I've read, and it's the worst. The book is filled with bad typos that seem to derive from poorly proofed OCR, like "Queers Highway" for "Queen's Highway," and lots of missing line breaks in conversations, and incorrect deployment of quotation marks. The other two I read were of higher quality.
Next up in sequence: The Master Key
No comments:
Post a Comment