Queen Zixi of Ix; or, the Story of the Magic Cloak
by L. Frank Baum, illustrated by Frederick Richardson
My son and I tend to read "borderlands of Oz" books when we're stuck waiting for Oz books. Unfortunately, it took much longer than I expected to get The Hungry Tiger of Oz, and The Master Key alone was not enough to cover the gap. After not particularly enjoying Master Key or The Enchanted Island of Yew (which we had read to cover the gap between Grampa and Lost King), I wasn't looking forward to reading a third borderlands book in quick succession.
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| Originally published: 1904-05 Read aloud: July 2022 |
I only had two more borderlands book: Dot and Tot of Merryland (1901) and Queen Zixi of Ix (1904-05). I don't really remember either from my own childhood, but I knew Dot and Tot is short, but not considered to be very good, while Queen Zixi was longer, but many consider it one of Baum's best. Did I want to read a bad book and get back to Oz quickly? Or take longer to get back to Oz, but potentially enjoy the experience more? Eventually I decided I was tired of reading books I didn't enjoy very much, and picked Queen Zixi.
Queen Zixi was one of Baum's last attempts at a non-Oz fantasy, but you can tell by the title how he was attempting to cash in on Oz's success, with a country name not too far off Oz in form. Like some of Baum's other early work (e.g., Magical Monarch of Mo) it feels less American and less modern. It opens in the Forest of Burzee (previously established in Life and Adventures of Santa Claus), where a group of fairies under Queen Lulea weave a magic cloak that can grant a mortal bearer one wish; one fairy is then sent into the country of Noland to give it to someone sad.
Meanwhile, a pair of children named Timothy and Margaret (but usually called "Bud" and "Fluff") are orphaned, and travel with their Aunt Rivette to the capital city, Nole. There, the king of Noland has recently died without heir, meaning the forty-seventh person to come through the city's east gate will become the new monarch. On the way, Fluff is given the magic cloak and she wishes to be happy; Bud ends up being the forty-seventh person, making him king and Fluff princess. The book has three distinct parts: 1) Bud and Fluff becoming and settling into the roles in the palace, 2) Queen Zixi's attempts to steal the magic cloak from Princess Fluff, including war, and 3) the invasion of Noland by the strange Roly-Rogues.
I don't think Noland and Ix quite have the sparkle of Oz, they are pretty generic vaguely medieval magic kingdoms, but overall this book might be Baum's most successful non-Oz fantasy. Two ordinary children (I used country accents for both) becoming rulers of a country is fun idea. There's some good fantasy humor when the magic cloak is passed through the various denizens of the palace who, ignorant of its power, keep wishing for different things, meaning that Bud and Fluff's aunt gets wings, and the lord high general (who has a short man complex) ends up ten feet tall, and the lord high executioner obtains an extendable arm, and so on. This is pretty fun stuff, and it's nice to have protagonists for whom something is actually at stake—arguably the biggest difference between Baum's good fantasies (e.g., this, Oz, Sky Island) and his ones I have not enjoyed (e.g., Master Key, Yew, Sea Fairies).
Similar things go for Queen Zixi's attempts to capture the magic cloak and the invasion of the Roly-Rogues. The latter are nicely imaginative creatures, and they pose a real threat to Noland. Zixi is one of Baum's more interesting witch characters: she's given herself a long life and ruled wisely, but in a mirror, she looks her real 683 years, and thus when she hears of a magic cloak, wants to wish for being able to deceive mirrors, too. So the normally kind ruler becomes a harsher one, but by the end of the novel she learns her lesson.
(That said, like in a lot of Baum novels, there are a lot of hinted-at geopolitics. Zixi has lead her people in hundred of battles, and there is some kind of preexisting enmity between Noland and Ix that means Zixi can't just ask for the cloak. On the other hand, Zixi has never lost a battle, so surely all those hundred battles can't be against Noland. Later maps would place Ix between Noland and Ev, the country where Ozma takes place, so has Ix fought a number of wars with Ev? Or maybe Ix has faced sea raids from places like Regos and Coregos; this novel does establish that Ix has a merchant fleet of some kind. In my reading, I turned Queen Lulea into Queen Lurline, the fairy queen from Burzee mentioned in many Oz novels. It's interesting to note that this novel establishes that fairies have a dislike for witch magic, given how much in the Oz novels the fairy Ozma depends on the magic of Glinda, a witch.)
I think my son liked it; he was particularly into the comedy about what the people did with the cloak, while he as usual didn't like hearing about bad things like Zixi stealing the cloak. Overall, I enjoyed it. It doesn't quite have the sparkle of weirdness than an Oz novel does, but it's fun, it has good jokes, and if it doesn't have a unified plot, it does have three individual ones. Baum never returned to any of the lands he established in his non-Oz fantasies, and this is one of the rare times I wish he did. I'd like to see King Bud grow up a bit, and for him, Fluff, Aunt Rivette, Zixi, and their various advisors face down some other kind of threat—and this time with no magic cloak to help!
Next up in sequence: The Hungry Tiger of Oz
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