The Emerald City of Oz

The Emerald City of Oz was published in 1910, and Baum originally intended it to be the final Oz book. He had grown tired of the series and wanted to focus on other fantasy projects. The novel has a more melancholy tone than the earlier books, with several plot threads that read as a deliberate goodbye to the world he had built.

The main plot has Dorothy bringing her Uncle Henry and Aunt Em permanently to Oz, since the Kansas farm has been mortgaged and they have lost everything. Princess Ozma offers them a home in the Emerald City. The secondary plot follows the Nome King and his coalition of evil races, including the Whimsies and the Phanfasms, plotting an invasion of Oz that is foiled at the last moment by Ozma’s command of the Fountain of Oblivion. The book closes with Glinda the Good casting a spell to make Oz invisible to the outside world, so no further visitors can find their way in. Baum publicly framed the book as a permanent ending. He could not stay away. The next book came out three years later.