Book Review: Jellia Jamb, Maid Of Oz

David "Dave" Hardenbrook also recently came with a sequal to The Unknown Witches Of Oz titled Jellia Jamb, Maid Of Oz from Lulu.com. This is the second of his Dan In Oz series taking place a few years after Unknown Witches which focuses the secondary character of Jellia Jamb, who is usually just someone in the background of the regular Oz books. She was featured prominently in Ozoplaning With The Wizard Of Oz, but usually isn't one of the main cast. Jellia is the head maid at Ozma's palace, and in this story has to deal with a crotchedy new head cook, Deb Horrid, who is really a wicked witch working for the evil Lord Reggie, a magic industialist from another universe that gets a stern parallel version of Ozma to take over Oz. Jellia gets sent out of the Emerald City by Horrid, but suddenly realizes that she herself can use magic because she bathes in liquid candy. Meanwhile, Ozma's boyfriend Dan from Earth is helping to set up a magic school in the land of Op run by Ozma's cousin Gyma. They have to overcome the spiteful Queen Zurline who is in league with Reggie because she believes fairies shouldn't have relations with mortals. After winning Zurline over, Jellia heads to the universe Reggie comes from and gets help from a trio of space mermaids who are its versions of Jellia, Gyma, and Zurline. With their combine efforts, they manage to restore the true Ozma back to the throne, and she and Dan get engaged. The book was a pretty good upgrade from Unknown Witches which came out about seven years prior to this. This is supposedly going to lead to a spinoff with the space mermaids from this in a new title called The Shining Chalice Universe. Hardenbrook also created this original animated trailer for the book too: