Last night I finished a new Oz book that I got for my Kindle. Shadow of Oz, by Nick Damon, was a great book with so many descriptive details.Dorothy is a twenty-something ad executive in New York. She feels like her life is on hold and that she, and many of her colleagues, are living a "zombie" life. Dorothy walks through life not really engaged but just going through the motions. Then, she starts to have strange dreams/hallucinations. Her boss sends her home "sick" to get her act together. However, on her way home one of the hallucinations turns out to be really happening.
Dorothy goes back to Oz with a young knight named Jasper Clayfellow. He informs Dorothy that she must return to Oz to defeat the Nome King and save Oz from his destructive powers. The problem is that Dorothy doesn't remember that she went to Oz as a kid. In fact, she doesn't remember anything about Oz.
Dorothy, Jasper, Tik Tok, the Lion, the Tin Man and a group of Munchkins - known as the "Knights of Oz" go on a epic journey to locate the Ozma before the Nome King does, defeat the Nome King, save Oz and set things right. They meet more friends that are familiar to us from the Oz-world of L. Frank Baum and many others.
This is a great book with an enthralling story. The author is so descriptive that the world of Oz is very vivid in my mind. Visual descriptions painted a picture in my head. The descriptions of sounds made me wonder if I had heard that too. I finally got to a point where I highlighted/marked really descriptive passages. Here are a few of my favorites.
"Oz is Oz," he said simply. "There are wonders everywhere you look." He guestured around them. "This world is so grey in comparison." ~ Jasper describing Oz to Dorothy
The air vibrated with a sound so intense, that in Dorothy's mind, she pictured a million waterfalls converging during an earthquake. ~ describing a battle with the Nome King under a mountain.
It was a literal rainbow of colors with vibrant stripes of red, orange, yellow, green, blue and violet, all surging forward in a frothing race toward a waterfall which spat the water out into a deep canyon. It did this with such tremendous force that they could feel the vibrations under their feet. ~ Dorothy encountering the Rainbow River
