Luckily, Princess Ozma and her Royal Court of Oz (many of whom appeared in the two previous Oz books) just happen to cross over the Deadly Desert on a mission to free the royal family from the Nome King. When Dorothy refuses to let Langwidere take her head and add it to her collection, Langwidere has a tantrum and locks Dorothy in a high tower within the palace.
The three visit the castle of Princess Langwidere, who has many exchangeable, detachable heads. Tik-Tok informs Dorothy and Billina that they are in the Land of Ev, which currently has no competent ruler, its king having committed suicide after selling his family to the Nome King. They also find a clockwork man named Tik-Tok (one of the first intelligent humanoid automatons in literature), who joins them. Exploring the land, Dorothy and Billina are menaced by a tribe of brightly dressed “Wheelers”, who have wheels instead of hands and feet. The hen is able to speak Dorothy gives it the name “Billina”. She takes refuge on a floating chicken-coop, which washes ashore, along with the coop and a hen in it.
On an ocean voyage with her uncle Henry to Australia, Dorothy is blown into the sea by a storm. Dorothy’s desire to return home is not as desperate as in the first book, and it is her uncle’s need for her rather than hers for him that makes her return. This reflects a subtle change in theme: in the first book, Oz is the dangerous land through which Dorothy must win her way back to Kansas in the third, Oz is the end and aim of the book.
Only the final two chapters take place in Oz itself. It is the first Oz book where the majority of the action takes place outside of the Land of Oz. It was the first in which Baum was clearly intending a series of Oz books. Ozma of Oz: A Record of Her Adventures with Dorothy Gale of Kansas, Billina the Yellow Hen, the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, the Cowardly Lion and the Hungry Tiger Besides Other Good People Too Numerous to Mention Faithfully Recorded Herein, published on July 30, 1907, was the official third book of L.
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