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Oz Continued #37
The Magical Mimics In Oz
Princess Ozma and Glinda are preparing to leave Oz for the Forest of Burzee, to attend the Grand Council of the fairy queen Lurline, held once every 200 years. Dorothy is surprised when Ozma appoints her to rule Oz in her place; Ozma reminds Dorothy that she is a princess of Oz, and will have the support of the Wizard.
The scene shifts to the inside of hollow Mount Illuso, next to Mount Phantastico across the Deadly Desert from Oz. Illuso is the home of the Magical Mimics; they are evil beings like their neighbors the Phanfasms. The Mimics habitually shift among strange and ugly physical forms. The Mimics have one special trick: they can copy the shape of humans simply by stepping into their shadows.
The scene shifts to the inside of hollow Mount Illuso, next to Mount Phantastico across the Deadly Desert from Oz. Illuso is the home of the Magical Mimics; they are evil beings like their neighbors the Phanfasms. The Mimics habitually shift among strange and ugly physical forms. The Mimics have one special trick: they can copy the shape of humans simply by stepping into their shadows.
240 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1946
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
November 1, 2013
The best of the post Baum books. Snow was able to write a simple, entertaining book that fits well within the Oz cannon. I liked having Dorthy as one of the main protagonists again. It's been a while since she played a major role in an Oz book.
March 29, 2020
An interesting but rather uneven book; Snow has some intriguing ideas and his darker sensibilities would’ve been a good fit in the postwar era, but he tries to ape Baum’s style and too much of the book reads like fan-fiction, with repeated lists of beloved characters thrown in to reassure the reader that they are indeed back after a four-year hiatus. The story is likewise thin and the villains too quickly dealt with. But there are flashes of promise than sadly were never fulfilled, as Snow only wrote one more Oz novel (and the non-fiction overview Who’s Who in Oz) before his early death.
March 11, 2022
Significantly better than Snow's second try, The Shaggy Man of Oz.
This one actually feels a lot like Baum's style, but without fully copying existing plot points. Snow was smart to return to Oz's roots, whisking the too-powerful Ozma and Glinda out of the action (just as in the sequel) but keeping Dorothy, the Wizard, the Scarecrow, and Toto as central characters. For his villains, the Magical Mimics, he drew inspiration from one of Baum's throwaway lines about a race of evil spirits called Erbs - beings who'd existed before Oz had been turned into a fairy land by the Fairy Queen Lurline.
What's interesting is that while the Mimics are, of course, fully evil because Oz is fully good and never in the wrong, they are given some actual motivation:
At the end of the day, the Mimics simply want to destroy anything that is good and wholesome and pure, so that complexity doesn't get explored at all. But there are a few gaps in the fairies' goodness...the Mimics are free to harm any lands other than Oz, and Oz's special guardian, Ozana, does nothing to stop any of their evil deeds until Oz's barriers are finally penetrated.
Ozana is an interesting and likable character, mostly because her pine friends and storybook garden are so wonderfully creative - but there's an (unintentionally?) odd cruelty to her, too. When she gets invited to move from her lonely mountain to Oz, she says she must first destroy her immortal story-telling flowers and the entire village of Pineville. Supposedly this is so no one else can come along and harm them in her absence but uh...how is wiping their 200+ year old civilization out of existence better, exactly?
Fortunately, Ozma has already come up with a solution, transporting the village and the garden to a mountain in Oz, but my goodness, Ozana. Not only was she bad at her job, but she really didn't care about anyone beyond herself, did she?
The defeat of the Mimics was a little too (literally) hand-wavy, too; for some reason, Ozma and Glinda were "completely helpless" against the Mimics, whose only power was taking over others' forms by stepping into their shadows. So why didn't Ozma and Glinda just...keep them from stepping into their shadows? Do anything other than give up without the slightest bit of a fight? Ozana had to soar in for the rescue, sending the Mimics back to their mountain and reweaving the spell that the Mimics' Queen had learned how to break (and could therefore presumably just...break again?).
A few plot holes, but not too bad for a fairy story, really. And Snow had a nice balance of accurately depicting Baum's characters and world while adding a few inventions of his own that slotted in nicely.
This is a pretty decent continuation of Baum's works for anyone who's finished the original books and is still longing for more. I'd skip Snow's second book, though...I wonder if he tried to be More Creative to drive the sales that just didn't come with his first attempt. Maybe this one was a little too like Baum's Oz to sell, since it felt too much like retreading familiar territory?
I really liked his use of Toto, though, and I laughed at the excellent final line, where Toto was annoyed at how witches and fairies and little girls always seem to like those dratted cats - while a kitten is busily drinking up the last of his milk. Snow got Toto's sharp, smart, slightly abrasive personality just right, and I liked that he was kind of the biggest hero of this story.
This one actually feels a lot like Baum's style, but without fully copying existing plot points. Snow was smart to return to Oz's roots, whisking the too-powerful Ozma and Glinda out of the action (just as in the sequel) but keeping Dorothy, the Wizard, the Scarecrow, and Toto as central characters. For his villains, the Magical Mimics, he drew inspiration from one of Baum's throwaway lines about a race of evil spirits called Erbs - beings who'd existed before Oz had been turned into a fairy land by the Fairy Queen Lurline.
What's interesting is that while the Mimics are, of course, fully evil because Oz is fully good and never in the wrong, they are given some actual motivation:
Like the Phanfasms, to whom they are closely related, they belong to the ancient race of Erbs—creatures who inhabited the Earth long before the coming of mankind. Both the Mimics and the Phanfasms hate all humans and immortals, for they feel that mankind, aided by the immortals, has stolen the world from them."
At the end of the day, the Mimics simply want to destroy anything that is good and wholesome and pure, so that complexity doesn't get explored at all. But there are a few gaps in the fairies' goodness...the Mimics are free to harm any lands other than Oz, and Oz's special guardian, Ozana, does nothing to stop any of their evil deeds until Oz's barriers are finally penetrated.
Ozana is an interesting and likable character, mostly because her pine friends and storybook garden are so wonderfully creative - but there's an (unintentionally?) odd cruelty to her, too. When she gets invited to move from her lonely mountain to Oz, she says she must first destroy her immortal story-telling flowers and the entire village of Pineville. Supposedly this is so no one else can come along and harm them in her absence but uh...how is wiping their 200+ year old civilization out of existence better, exactly?
Fortunately, Ozma has already come up with a solution, transporting the village and the garden to a mountain in Oz, but my goodness, Ozana. Not only was she bad at her job, but she really didn't care about anyone beyond herself, did she?
The defeat of the Mimics was a little too (literally) hand-wavy, too; for some reason, Ozma and Glinda were "completely helpless" against the Mimics, whose only power was taking over others' forms by stepping into their shadows. So why didn't Ozma and Glinda just...keep them from stepping into their shadows? Do anything other than give up without the slightest bit of a fight? Ozana had to soar in for the rescue, sending the Mimics back to their mountain and reweaving the spell that the Mimics' Queen had learned how to break (and could therefore presumably just...break again?).
A few plot holes, but not too bad for a fairy story, really. And Snow had a nice balance of accurately depicting Baum's characters and world while adding a few inventions of his own that slotted in nicely.
This is a pretty decent continuation of Baum's works for anyone who's finished the original books and is still longing for more. I'd skip Snow's second book, though...I wonder if he tried to be More Creative to drive the sales that just didn't come with his first attempt. Maybe this one was a little too like Baum's Oz to sell, since it felt too much like retreading familiar territory?
I really liked his use of Toto, though, and I laughed at the excellent final line, where Toto was annoyed at how witches and fairies and little girls always seem to like those dratted cats - while a kitten is busily drinking up the last of his milk. Snow got Toto's sharp, smart, slightly abrasive personality just right, and I liked that he was kind of the biggest hero of this story.
December 19, 2023
The introduction to this one says that it’s one of the darker books in the Oz canon, but I’m not sure I’d necessarily agree with that. Even in the first one, there was a field of opium poppies and our main characters were basically overwhelmed by heroin.
Still, the plot here is certainly dark enough, with the titular magical mimics taking over Oz by essentially acting as doppelgangers or polymorphs. They can take on people’s appearance by standing in their shadows, and when that happens, their victims are also frozen into place.
It could almost be the plot of a horror novel, but in this case, the story takes place with a healthy doze of Oz whimsy. It’s actually one of the better stories in the series, and that’s saying a lot given that by this point, we’ve got through nearly forty of them.
My edition was a retrofit edition by an independent publisher that had taken the public domain text of the story and republished it. They’d added a little story of their own too, and while the story in the last edition of theirs that I read, I quite liked this one. It read as true to the original canon and felt like it belonged there.
Still, the plot here is certainly dark enough, with the titular magical mimics taking over Oz by essentially acting as doppelgangers or polymorphs. They can take on people’s appearance by standing in their shadows, and when that happens, their victims are also frozen into place.
It could almost be the plot of a horror novel, but in this case, the story takes place with a healthy doze of Oz whimsy. It’s actually one of the better stories in the series, and that’s saying a lot given that by this point, we’ve got through nearly forty of them.
My edition was a retrofit edition by an independent publisher that had taken the public domain text of the story and republished it. They’d added a little story of their own too, and while the story in the last edition of theirs that I read, I quite liked this one. It read as true to the original canon and felt like it belonged there.
May 24, 2021
This has a good story, in keeping with the Oz world, except for one important thing. It changes the history of how Oz and the royal Oz fairy monarchy was created. Mr Baum, and continued by Ms Plumly Thompson, wrote about how the monarchy came to be and unfortunately, Mr Snow chose to change that. I found it disappointing.
August 22, 2024
Snow tries hard to emulate Baum's writing style, but just doesn't quite capture Baum's whimsy. Nevertheless, this is a fun adventure full of fantastic ideas and quite a bit of humor, even if it's somewhat unmemorable.
February 26, 2019
My first Jack Snow Oz book. It was a breath of fresh air after the Ruth Plumly Thompson books.
October 25, 2022
My first Snow Oz book--novella, really. But compelling and avoided the missing prince/king rut that Ruth Plumly Thompson got into.
October 22, 2018
The best of the post-Baum Oz books, this one is very exciting and the Mimics make for great villains.
ETA 2018: It’s a real shame Jack Snow didn’t write more Oz books, because this one is one of the best post-Baum entries in the fantasy franchise. Snow creates some formidable new villains in the Mimics that pose a real threat to the Oz characters.
Better yet, Snow builds on the overarching mythology of Oz – Queen Lurline, the fairies, the other lands and peoples outside the Deadly Desert. He comes up with new characters and fantasy elements that fit right in with Baum’s Oz.
This is perhaps the first book in the entire Oz mythos where the fairies are portrayed as being ever-so-slightly in the wrong; as Lurline’s sentencing of Ozana to be the Mimics’ warden is portrayed as cruel, since it is indeed. This is such a refreshing change of pace, it immediately skyrocketed the book to the top of my list. For those who finish Baum’s books and can’t be bothered with Thompson’s repetitiveness or Neill’s weirdness, they’d be well-served by picking up this book.
ETA 2018: It’s a real shame Jack Snow didn’t write more Oz books, because this one is one of the best post-Baum entries in the fantasy franchise. Snow creates some formidable new villains in the Mimics that pose a real threat to the Oz characters.
Better yet, Snow builds on the overarching mythology of Oz – Queen Lurline, the fairies, the other lands and peoples outside the Deadly Desert. He comes up with new characters and fantasy elements that fit right in with Baum’s Oz.
This is perhaps the first book in the entire Oz mythos where the fairies are portrayed as being ever-so-slightly in the wrong; as Lurline’s sentencing of Ozana to be the Mimics’ warden is portrayed as cruel, since it is indeed. This is such a refreshing change of pace, it immediately skyrocketed the book to the top of my list. For those who finish Baum’s books and can’t be bothered with Thompson’s repetitiveness or Neill’s weirdness, they’d be well-served by picking up this book.
July 29, 2012
I have read 50+ Oz books, not all of which I will add to this site. This is one of my favorites.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews