Review: A page-turning novel that doesn't need Oz to be fascinating
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 05 21, 2012
I enjoyed The Emerald City in part because it was fun to spot J.A. Beard's re-envisioning of Baum's Oz material in all the places that he slipped it in. However, mostly I enjoyed The Emerald City because I liked heroine Gail Dorjee and her friends Lydia, Leandra, and Nick. They have distinct, exciting, and fun voices, and they didn't really need magic powers to hold my interest. Gail is spunky, brave, and cool; Lydia is funny with her malapropisms; Leandra's fearfulness and hidden talents had me rooting for her every moment that she was on-stage; and Nick has a mixture of outward cool and buried intensity that reminds me of the best characters in anime. Gail has suffered the loss of her parents, but mixed in with her anger and guilt there is an admirable inner strength that makes her really heroic. Plus, she's a Tibetan-American from Kansas. What could possibly be more ironically interesting than that?Yes, I'm a man in his forties, but yes, I did read the first Twilight book, and I felt a kind of smugness in that novel that was a turnoff. Where that book was smug and irritating, J.A. Beard's Emerald City is full of sincerity instead:  the innocence and goodness are in the true spirit of Baum but fit nicely in the 21st century too. One would scarcely believe this book was the product of a man closer to my age than Gail's.It's odd how as I get older and keep reading fantasy, I begin to find the plots beside the point, and care only about the characters. I had the same reaction when reading Ransom Riggs' Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, or Trenton Lee Stewart's Mysterious Benedict Society. My feeling is:  okay, this plot is acceptable, but the good moments are the kids talking to each other and dealing with their feelings. Beard's setting and storyline are adequate for the purpose of the book, and his supporting cast has some potential, but the heart of this book is the four characters I named above, and if they were to go into Oz, rather than Osland Academy, and just see wonders rather than be imperiled, I think I'd like it just as much.