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This collection of Oz remixes went from hard-boiled noir to cyberpunk to lyrical meditations on death, and the quality ended up being a mixed bag (my problem with most collections) but a lovely last story, “The Cobbler of Oz”, was enough to tip it over into Pick.

The Oz + Hunger Games story was a great idea poorly executed.

“A Meeting in Oz” was awful and needlessly mean.

My faves were “Lost Girls of Oz” and “The Boy Detective of Oz”.

This short story (“Beyond the Naked Eye”) tried to do 2 different interesting things and suffered because they didn‘t mesh well.

The Wizard of Oz + Hunger Games where the journey to the Emerald City is a reality show (complete with 1-on-1 interviews with host Glinda) that the Wizard uses to take the focus off his fraud is a GREAT idea.

But add in a thoughtful jeweler drawn into a plot to kill the Wizard and it threw everything off balance.

This ended up being a beat-for-beat retelling of the Wizard of Oz set in Shanghai with the events of the story melded with the May 4th Movement of 1919.

Author Ken Liu has been on my radar for awhile, and this really showed off his skills.

This story of asylum inmates Crow, Tin, and Roar could have gotten away with being mediocre due to that stellar title, but it was excellent (although, fair warning, it is also super super dark).

This 6 page vignette barely counts as a short story. It‘s a quick glimpse at a cyberpunk Oz, so cyberpunk in fact that it includes an homage to the famous first line of Gibson‘s Neuromancer:

“Dorothy‘s eyes were flat blue, the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.”

I‘ve read some Simon R. Green before and enjoyed it, and I understand what he was trying to do and the writing was fine, but I think the premise of this short story was inherently flawed.

Not to get too specific, but Green tries to take Oz in a spiritual Narnia-esque direction and that just doesn‘t jive with the goofy low-stakes fun of the fairyland Baum created.

It was a pleasant surprise to find that the 4th story in this book of Oz remixes was a sequel to Tad Williams‘ awesome Otherland series.

Orlando Gardiner now polices the virtual worlds of the Otherland network, so when a headless body shows up in the Oz program he is on the case.

Williams gets Oz just right. He points out that conducting a murder investigation in Oz is like asking questions about embezzlement to kids in a daycare.

The 3rd story in this book of Oz remixes was GREAT. An investigative reporter looks into a series of missing girls, only to find that they were all suffering various forms of abuse and Oz has been taking in abused women as refugees... and arming and training them to lead armies of Pumpkinheads, Wogglebugs, and Tik-Tok Men to conquer the United States!

TONS of deep cut references including an appearance by my favorite Ozite, Button Bright.

The first story in this collection was meh, but this one from Seanan McGuire was pretty great.

It‘s a quick dirty little detective story set in the Emerald City, and all of the deep-cut Oz references were 100% on point.

Ozma‘s snotty omnipotence is addressed and I loved it

Dig that opening.

I tend to avoid short story collections, especially if they‘re not all by the same author, because I always feel like you end up getting a mixed bag.

The first story in this collection was just okay despite the awesome title.

Also gonna go full Oz-pedant and point out that Scraps wasn‘t created until well after the Wizard‘s arrival. *pushes glasses up*

Reports of the demise of my #OzReread have been greatly exaggerated! I‘ve got this book of some Oz-based short stories and I‘m going to be reading them between novels.

I've been away for a couple of weeks. I'm so happy to return to my stacks of books, my bed, and fall foliage! #TheresNoPlaceLikeHome