A shipwrecked girl, a rose princess, a Shaggy Man's lost brother and a clockwork man go down into the Nome King's country by way of a tube through the centre of the earth. Baum built the eighth Oz book from a stage musical he had written and kept the pace of it. Tik-Tok has to be wound in three places and stops at the worst moments. Nine plates by painters including Edvard Munch and Vincent van Gogh carry the underground travellers past mills, rivers, Venice and evening mountains.