Even though Yackle isn’t impressed with the arrival of the dwarf and his troupe, a part of her is irrevocably excited about the presence of the Time Clock.  She knows that this strange machine has the ability to tell her what she needs to know; it and only it is her salvation.  The dwarf isn’t super keen about giving Yackle what she wants, but the Dragon insists otherwise.  Through a series of puppet shows it reveals the origins of both Brr and Yackle, the spy who had a hand in Fiyero’s death, and lastly, perhaps most shockingly, the location and brief history of the Grimmerie.

As far as the history goes, a wizard (not the fake Ozian kind, but a real wizard) brought the book into Oz and specifically to Kiamo Ko for safekeeping.  This begs the question of who exactly this wizard is and why he believed that Oz would be a good place to keep such a powerful book in safekeeping.  Is it because it takes very special and specific talent to read the book?  In the play Elphaba seemed to be the only one who could translate a good portion of the book easily; although someone (was it Madame Morrible?) was intelligent enough to translate the winged monkeys spell; if I remember correctly in the book version, Elphaba was just starting to understand the book and its contents.  Interesting things to consider.

Before I give away too much more, I’ll just wrap up saying that I really enjoyed this third installment.  I breezed through the book in a few days and was enraptured the entire time.  It’s inspired me to reread “Son of a Witch” and I’m hoping that having read the first and third book I’ll gain something new from it.  I’m also hoping that a second read through will make me like it more than originally.

Not only that but tomorrow I start reading “Choke” by Chuck Palahniuk for my book club.  I’ve been interested in reading it for some time but other things have always come up.    Someone said that it isn’t his best book, but we’ll see.