Shadow Demon of Oz: 2 [Paperback]

After reading Magician of Oz, I thought 'How could this be WORSE than the last book?', but it is worse than the first! The plot starts off ridiculously slow, almost like the author wanted to torture the reader by writing the longest and most boring first chapters to a book ever! Again, the cover looks like crap, and the book is just poorly written all together. I wouldn't recommend this book.

Review of "Shadow Demon of Oz" by James C. Wallace II

by Ron Baxley, Jr., Author of "The Talking City of Oz," "The Talking City of Oz," 2nd Edition (by holidays 2011 with changes), author of traditionally and online published stories, articles, essays, and poems, and co-author of "Of Cabbages, Kings and Even (Odd) Queens" with James Wallace II (available on [...]along with Ron Baxley's sci-fi books and soon to be released in a better Second Edition on CreateSpace and Amazon.com)

(Note: I am a co-author with James Wallace II as aforementioned. I have tried my best to read his books without bias and with the same critical techniques I utilize on other books.)

As J.K. Rowling's "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" will always be a lull in the entire Harry Potter series to me, so is "Shadow Demon of Oz" by James C. Wallace II a lull during its first 100 pages or so and not as good as his "Magician of Oz," and not as extraordinary as his third book "Family of Oz."

Nevertheless, "Shadow Demon of Oz" does improve greatly about a third of the way into the narrative.

At the beginning of the book, Jamie, Donald, and his parents, delights from the first book, seem too involved in the minutia of life too much as they attend auctions and putter through various items there to find a used washer and other antiques as impulse buys. Some of these items, such as a brass box, are needed for later plot devices, and this is good thinking on the author's part, yet the narrative rambles on during these portions. (I sometimes thought what mighty conquest arises out of such trivial things.) To be fair, a comet integral to the plot is mentioned early on in the book, but latter elements that happen in the book needed to be hinted at alongside this comet.

Eventually, Jamie and his friend Donald make it to Oz via Cap'N Bill's balloon and the Cap'N's help. Meanwhile, in Oz, Dorothy is traveling to see the Scarecrow for a visit and encounters Navicula, a skimmer with a name that must be an intentional blending of navigate and Dracula, with shining emerald eyes at its bow, a skimmer once brought to life by Mombi with Powder of Life. The Dracula allusion gives a clever foreshadowing regarding Navicula's fate. Something happens to Navicula when he encounters the Shadow Demon of Oz of the title, and Dorothy seeks the Scarecrow's aid in dealing with the situation. I found Navicula and this subplot to be delightful.

Within the current book, however, the first encounter with the Shadow Demon does not happen until approximately 130 pages of 326 page tome, and the title character should have appeared much sooner, though I think this first encounter is suspenseful and well-written. Shadow Demon eventually finds a home in the darkness of a wooden box wrapped in a yellow cloth he cannot take over. The Shadow Demon is transported to the Land of the Hyups, a hemispherical upper world near a castle on Mount Munch, and there is where the real trouble begins.

Meanwhile, back at the Hoosier ranch/Indiana, a delightful brass butterfly messenger of Ozma is introduced from the brass box when Cap'N Bill opens it, a butterfly messenger to bring Jamie Diggs back to Oz for his wizard coronation, the back-story of which is discussed more in Book I. I enjoyed the detail of the brass butterfly immensely.

Meanwhile, the Shadow Demon still tries to possess that yellow cloth he is traveling with but to no avail. It soon finds the residents of Hyup to terrorize, though, with its black, mist-like tendrils and is soon forced to retreat by the sun into the darkness of a castle. Some of these descriptions are quite horrific and Stephen King-esque, making the Shadow Demon an ominous presence.

Jamie is sent to save the Hyups from the Shadow Demon as his first test of wizardry rule in Oz. Jamie bewitches the water from the Fountain of Oblivion to reveal the Shadow Demon's secret origins. There is one earlier red herring about these origins, which I think is great, and these pages and the earlier ones with the Shadow Demon's introduction are some of the best parts of the entire book. Toward the end of the book, Wallace II manages to tie in the origins on the Shadow Demon quite nicely with the aforementioned comet at the start of the book. These final chapters and scenes with the Shadow Demon are terrific as are the earlier chapters where it is introduced.

Nevertheless, I think the first 100 pages perhaps needed to be condensed with the scene where the Shadow Demon was first introduced brought in earlier. This book has many great chapters and scenes with the Shadow Demon and the other characters trying to thwart it. The origins of the Shadow Demon are intriguing and well-written. Unlike "Magician of Oz" though and the well-balanced "Family of Oz," the author gets bogged down in minutia at the novel's start. I would recommend reading this one for continuity and great scenes with the Shadow Demon after the wonderful "Magician of Oz" but being patient with the book's start.

3 out of 5 stars -- Ron Baxley, Jr. *** as placed on Amazon.com

After Magician Of Oz, James Wallace II continues his trilogy of self-published Oz novels with Shadow Demon Of Oz. This once again deals with Jamie Diggs, Oscar Diggs' great-grandson, as he returns to Oz for a brand new adventure.

The story splits at first between Jamie's life in America, while at the same time in Oz as Dorothy encounters a strange new menace which has taken the soul away from a living boat she rides on to visit Scarecrow. The creature is called the Shadow Demon which just dropped in from a passing comet. It's really the disembodied spirit of the Wicked Witch of the East which had attached itself to this comet right after Dorothy's house smooshed her over a century ago. Jamie ends up coming to Oz via a transdimensional balloon ship piloted by Cap'n Bill, along with his friend Buddy who is in his magicians' club back in Indiana. Once in Oz, Jamie is made the official Royal Magician for Ozma, and proclaimed as Oz the Magnificent. He in turn presents Buddy to Ozma as a "gift of friendship", as Buddy has taken a serious shine to the Princess. Jamie is given control of the balloon as it used to belong to his predecessor, and head out on a trip to the Winkie River to investigate what happened to Dorothy's boat friend. After figuring out that some evil entity is loose in Oz, they head back to the Emerald City. The Shadow Demon reaches Mt. Munch, and begins to terrorize the Hyups who live there. James gets wind of this, and flies there with Buddy to confront it. After recieving a little help by Ozma teleporting Toto and Bungle to assist them, Jamie is able to defeat the Shadow Demon, mainly due to Bungle giving up one of his disposable nine lives. The spirits that the demon had consumed are set free, and the boat gets its life back. Jamie and Buddy are then sent from Mt. Munch back to Indiana by the magic balloon instead of to the Emerald City, but Jamie knows he'll return someday.

This book was in my opinion a better story than the original. The first one seemed to lack a some direction as far as what to do with the characters, as here they're given more motivation. Jamie wants to live up to his title, Buddy is glad to be along for the adventure but is trying to be worthy of being Ozma's friend, and Dorothy is given a lot more depth than normal with her concern for people(or boats)that she's just met. The story does take a little time to actually get the main characters all together, and it maybe puts more emphasis on Jamie's life in Indiana than was needed. But's a good follow-up, and the story continues in Family Of Oz.