Review: Polychrome, by Ryk E. Spoor

[jeriendhal]

Summary: The magical land of Oz has fallen, destroyed by two evil wizards who escaped their punishments inflicted on them by Princess Ozma, combining forces in an uneasy alliance to conquer all. Only the sky kingdom of King Iris Mirabillis, Lord of Rainbows, remains free. And from there he sends his daughter, Polychrome Glory, to the Mortal World to find the champion they need to free the Land of Oz.

What they get is Erik Medon, an asthmatic, overweight fan of L. Frank Baum's famous series, who just found his dreams have come true. And is willing to fight for those dreams even at the cost of his own life.


Review: Okay, this book is unabashed wish fulfillment by Ryk Spoor. It's a Portal Fantasy with a stereotypical fannish geek who gets to live out an adventure in the Magical Land of Oz (at least the portions that are out of copyright). Nevertheless it's well-written wish fulfillment. Erik is painfully aware of his limitations as a Hero, even though he gets a fair set of Mighty Thews (not to mention 20-20 eyesight) after a year of intense training up in the Rainbow Kingdom. And Oz is not entirely the happy-go-lucky land of adventure from the books. Wisely, Spoor makes the assumption that Baum simplified and softened the retelling of Dorothy and her companion's adventures when he published them. This allows Spoor to attach more complex motivations and characterizations to both the heroes and villains in his tale, and enriches the narrative.

If I have an objection to this story, it's that Ozma had to be very deliberately and specifically Nerfed to allow Erik his moment to shine at the end. But “Ozma wakes up and makes everything instantly better” doesn't work in a modern narrative, so I'll give Spoor a pass on that one, and the active female characters are strong enough to make up for the loss.

The final battle does get marvelously loony though, as Erik uses his knowledge of sci-fi, fantasy and Japanese anime to fight the villians. It reminded me strongly of Jim Hine's Libromancer books, and that's not a bad thing.

Strongly Recommended.

Comments

[seawasp]

Thanks for the review!! :)

In the case of Ozma, I actually just extrapolated from the books. Ozma *REFUSED* to fight in Emerald City, and in Glinda of Oz she was still pretty much completely trying the "talk them to death" approach. As far as I could tell, Ozma either cannot, or will not, use her powers in an offensive manner, pretty much absolutely. Thus, just bringing her back would at best force Ugu to say "Dammit, now you have to be a peachpit again and we're gonna have to duke this out the old fashioned way!"; she wouldn't be able to throw down with the two (especially since they also now had a source of power, the Great Binding, that was in no way dependent on her, and they had their own personal power anyway).

(and note that even in this book, Ozma has to *choose* to place her power into Erik; he may have released her, but she has to make the choice as to whether he's a suitable vessel. She COULD have said, "No, I'll handle this on my own".)

I like to think it's more fair than, say, the deus ex machina approaches he uses in Tik-Tok of Oz or The Patchwork Girl of Oz, where after all the effort and struggles of our heroes, most of the heavy lifting gets done by super-powerful NPCs, so to speak.

Thanks again!

[resonant.livejournal.com]

Does it require reading the original first?

[jeriendhal.livejournal.com]

Well, you should be familiar with the Oz books beyond the first one. "The Marvelous Land of Oz" and "Ozma of Oz" at bare minimum. That said, Spoor explains everything else so you should at least be able to follow along from there.