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Review of Oz Book 8: Tik-Tok of Oz (1914)

Posted in books, pop culture, reviews, Wizard of Oz with tags books, movies, Oz books readthru, pop culture, reviews, Wizard of Oz on September 18, 2012 by Paxton

Baum wrote the 8th Oz book, Tik-Tok of Oz, in 1914, one year after The Patchwork Girl of Oz.

This book is titled after Tik-Tok, the mechanical man. The character of Tik-Tok first appeared in the third book, Ozma of Oz, but has also appeared in each subsequent book. Tik-Tok may be more familiar to people based on his appearance in the 1984 movie, Return to Oz.

A year before this book, in 1913, Baum attempted to stage a play based on a story that was heavily adapted from the third Oz book, Ozma of Oz. He called it The Tik-Tok Man of Oz. It was this play that would serve as the basis of this eighth book in the Oz series. However, despite being named in the title, this book isn’t really about Tik-Tok, it’s more about the Shaggy Man and his quest to find his brother.

The story starts off with Queen Anne of Oogaboo forming an army to conquer the Emerald City. However, Glinda mixes up the roads between Oogaboo and the Emerald City forcing the army to March around Oz aimlessly. The group meets up with Betsy Bobbin and her mule Hank. Queen Anne wants to have them arrested but Shaggy Man comes along and convinces her not to. Shaggy Man explains that he’s out looking for his brother who has become a prisoner of the Nome King (last seen in The Emerald City of Oz). When Queen Anne learns of the Nome King’s riches, she instead decides to conquer him instead of Ozma and the Emerald City. The group then travels to the Nome King’s domain to get Shaggy Man’s brother back and they have several adventures along the way.

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Review of Oz Book 7: The Patchwork Girl of Oz (1913)

Posted in books, movies, Wizard of Oz with tags Book Report, books, movies, Oz books readthru, pop culture, reviews, Wizard of Oz on September 3, 2012 by Paxton

As of this book, I’m halfway through the official original run of Baum Oz books. I’m not including “extra” stories Baum wrote like The Woggle Bug Book or Little Wizard Stories of Oz. I’m talking about the main “canon” Oz books. There were 14 of them and today’s book is number 7, The Patchwork Girl of Oz.

This seventh book begins with two munchkins, Ojo and his Uncle Nunkie living in seclusion in the forests of Munchkinland. They are about to starve so they leave in search of help. They go to Nunkie’s old friend the Crooked Magician. While there, the two witness a demonstration of “The Powder of Life” which was previously used in The Marvelous Land of Oz to animate Jack Pumpkinhead, the Sawhorse and The Gump. However, Nunkie and the Crooked Magician’s wife are accidentally turned into marble statues when the Magician tries to use the Powder to animate a patchwork rag doll for his wife to use as a housekeeper. So Ojo volunteers to search the Land of Oz to find the five rare ingredients the Crooked Magician needs to reverse the marble spell on their loved ones. The five ingredients Ojo needs are 1) Six leafed clover found only around the Emerald City 2) Three hairs from the tail of The Woozy 3) Water from a Dark Well 4) Drop of oil from a live man’s body 5) Left wing of a yellow butterfly found only in Winkie Country. Along the way, Ojo meets many crazy characters and eventually makes it to the Emerald City and meets Ozma, Dorothy, Scarecrow, Nick Chopper (Tin Woodsman) and the whole gang who help Ojo to find the items and free his Uncle.

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Bionic Reviews: Cyborg #2 – Operation Nuke by Martin Caidin (1973)

Posted in Bionic Man, books, Six Million Dollar Man, TV shows with tags Bionic Review, Book Report, books, pop culture, reviews, Six Million Dollar Man, SMDM Book, TV shows on August 27, 2012 by Paxton

This is an ongoing feature where I read, watch and review books, comics and TV shows featuring The Six Million Dollar Man and Bionic Woman. Click the Bionic Review banner to see the Bionic Review archive page. Click the smaller banner to see only those specific reviews.

One year after Cyborg, in 1973, Caidin released his followup Steve Austin novel, Operation Nuke.

Cyborg 2

The original hardcover release is on the left. At this point, the original book was being adapted into the first The Six Million Dollar Man TV movie. As you can see, the paperback cover for this book on the right follows the same design as the later cover for Cyborg with Lee Major’s face and the mention of the TV show at the top. By the time this book hit paperback, The Six Million Dollar Man had three TV movies and was beginning its regular season run.

Cyborg 2 Operation Nuke

This is a good 70s “spy novel” but it’s not a great Bionic Man (or Cyborg) novel. Literally, Steve Austin doesn’t use any of his superhuman bionic abilities until like page 135 (of 175 pages). And he doesn’t use them again after that either. Also, at the beginning of the novel, when he’s getting his assignment, he is asked how much he knows about nuclear devices. Steve says that he had to actually build a nuclear device for one of his instructional classes with the military. This is very convenient considering the plot. And for something he did so long ago, the book makes Steve out to be a nuclear physicist with intimate knowledge of the inner workings of all nuclear bombs. That got old after a while.

Steve Austin spends most of this book infiltrating a criminal military organization in order to find out who is the leader and where they are getting their nuclear weapons. A task that doesn’t require the use of any bionic limbs. He finally uses his bionics at the end of the book when he has to carry a nuclear device from one room to another and he manages to disarm that device despite not ever seeing the insides or how it was built.

So, this was a less than satisfactory story if you are coming in expecting bionic action like the first novel. Even for a regular 70s spy novel it leaves a little something to be desired. Another thing that makes it tough to read is Caidin’s writing style. Caidin tends to describe things a lot. He may start off a chapter or section of a chapter by talking about certain objects or the surrounding environment and it’ll take a page and a half before people start talking or some action pertaining to the story happens. It causes the reader to “skip ahead” a bit to get things moving. So, all in all, this was a very disappointing book. Hopefully the next book will deliver more bionic goodness.

I stand up to Stephen King’s The Stand: Uncut Edition

Posted in books, Stephen King with tags Book Report, books, pop culture, reviews, Stephen King on August 7, 2012 by Paxton

I’m a big Stephen King fan. I’ve read a lot of his work. My favorites are probably his short story collections; Skeleton Crew, Night Shift, Four Past Midnight, etc.

As for his regular novels, I’ve read several, but my favorites would probably be Eyes of the Dragon and Misery. However, I had never conquered what is considered King’s magnum opus. I had never read The Stand. I can’t tell you why I never read it. There is probably a bit of intimidation in there, but nonetheless, it remained a hole in my King reading. I think it was my reading of The Gunslinger that kept me from reading The Stand. I hated The Gunslinger, but that’s a tale for another time.

Then Trish from Love, Laughter and Insanity decided to start up The Standalong. It was a group read-a-long of King’s The Stand. I thought, if I’m ever going to read this book, then it needs to be NOW. So I signed up and started reading the book on June 3. Here are my thoughts.

First the good, because I don’t want to just bitch. The book was well written with well written characters. There are many parts I found fascinating like the spread of Captain Trips, the devolution of society as it realizes everyone is dying. The rebuilding of society in the Boulder Free Zone. Flagg’s Las Vegas community. Those all were interesting and I enjoyed reading about them. However, the main fault of the book is that it’s too damn long.

I read the uncut version. I thought if I’m going to read this book, then I’ll read the original “author’s vision”. The uncut edition paperback I have is 1138 pages long. 1138 pages. I was reading it for the entire month of June. I had to stop around page 700 to read two other books as an intermission because, like I said, this book is just too damn long. It’s exhausting to read, especially considering the type of story.

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Review of Oz Book 6: The Emerald City of Oz (1910)

Posted in books, Wizard of Oz with tags Book Report, books, Oz books readthru, reviews, Wizard of Oz on July 30, 2012 by Paxton

Moving right along in my quest to read all of the original Frank Baum Oz novels. Here we are at Book 6. To see my reviews of the first 5 books in this series, click the banner above. Otherwise, keep on reading…

Like the last book, I picked up the illustrated eBook of this from the B&N Nook Store for .99 from Eltanin Publishing. They have rendered a beautifully edited and formatted text and kept all the original Neill illustrations intact. I have been supremely happy with Eltanin’s work thus far on the Oz eBooks I’ve read (Books 4, 5 and 6). They are well worth purchasing and you can’t beat the price. Eltanin is slowly working their way through this series. I also picked up book 7 from them. Unfortunately they haven’t released anything further than book 7 but my hopes are high that the rest will come soon. Check out Eltanin Publishing for some really nice eBooks.

So, the last Oz book, The Road to Oz, was released in 1909 and this book was released the following summer in 1910. As I mentioned, John Neill would once again contribute wonderfully detailed illustrations for the book’s interiors. As a side note, John Neill would go on to write and illustrate several Oz books after Frank Baum died.

With this book, Baum had every intention of ending the Oz series. While reading the book, you can easily see that Baum was closing the door on Oz. We had seen him, in Book 5, parade around characters from his other non-Oz books to drum up interest in those with the hopes of sending his fans to his other stories.

With this being “the last Oz book” as Baum originally envisioned, Baum pulled out all the storytelling stops. Instead of telling one story where we follow a group of characters through a fairly land all the way until the end of the book, in this book Baum tells two different story threads and shifts between them. The first story thread involves the Nome King who first appeared back in Book 3. He’s extremely pissed at being defeated by a little girl and her pet chicken. Plus, they stole his magic belt. So, he gathers his army, convinces several more evil and sinister characters in Oz to take up his cause and storm the Emerald City to take it by force. While the Nome King builds this army and plans his attack, the second story thread involves Dorothy returning to Oz to ask Ozma to allow her and her Aunt and Uncle to live there permanently. The cyclone from Book 1 has destroyed their Kansas farm and the land is about to be taken over by the bank. Ozma agrees and sends Dorothy and her Aunt and Uncle on a carriage tour throughout the countryside of Oz. Along the way, Dorothy learns of the impending attack on the Emerald City and tries to return in time to warn Ozma.

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