2018 books

41) "Tik Tok of Oz" - Baum

It seems that he's just reaching for a title, here, as Tik Tok doesn't actually get that huge a role. This is really about Betsy Bobbin, but she can't be "of Oz" because Oz has officially been closed off to allowing any more people from the outside world in. I strongly suspect Betsy Bobbin of being a crossover character from another book which didn't do well.

The Shaggy Man gets a big role in this book, too, as he's out wandering around yet again, and has left Oz to look for his brother. Shaggy (as he is called throughout this book - I don't think we've seen that before) gets to be noble at the end, as he adopts Betsy, accepting exile from Oz as the result of doing so.

His love magnet is working differently, now, as he has to actually show it to people, but when he does they're literally falling-at-his-feet in adoration - one young woman even rushes to him and hugs him, which makes him a little uncomfortable. I almost for a minute thought he was going to have a Romantic Interest. There ARE romantic interests in this book, the first time I've seen that in an Oz book, though discreetly brushed off into the corners. The Rose Princess, Ozga, and a young man named Jo Files are always off by themselves, talking.

reading in progress

I know I'll finish "Tom O'Bedlam" by Robert Silverberg, and I should probably wait until I'm done to comment on it, but often I forget things, later. I get into the next book.

Something I really notice in this book is the ridiculously 70s focus on making sure there's a woman in every scene showing at least somewhat sexy. Wait, no, I lie. There are no women around Tom, he's travelling with an all-male group, and he's so far about the only person who's not much of an asshole. So I guess that women and sex go with assholes?

There's a huge cast of asshole (to one degree or another) characters - a scam artist who's in an asylum and trying to juggle having a wife and a girlfriend come visit him while he also has a thing with a synthetic woman who's also a patient in the asylum and occasionally screws another female patient just to get information out of her. There's a guy who was an anthropologist who's now joined a cult and is writing a book about it at the behest of the cult leader, and he has a young woman who was in one of his classes who hooked onto him because she thought he was brilliant. There's the woman who works at the asylum, who seems to be the only one who's not a doctor and attends staff meetings. She has no special paramour at the moment, so all her sexy moments have to be either inside her head or her stripping because she likes being naked. It all has this pathetic vibe of trying to live up to the 70s ideal that everyone wants an orgy all the time. And then there's Tom, the wandering holy madman from the desert, with no women around him. What will happen when he encounters a woman? Will he fall?