The Wonderful Wizard of Oz – L. Frank Baum

Rating: 3/5

Lost References:

There are so many references to this work, some of which I didn’t even catch until reading up on fan sites. Where to begin?

A man named Henry Gale crashes on the island in a hot air balloon. (Ben Linus steals his identity.) Later, Sawyer calls Tom Friendly, one of the Others, “Zeke.” Zeke is one of the farmhands that works for Henry Gale, just as Tom works for Ben.

There is an episode titled “The Man Behind the Curtain” in which Locke calls Ben this and then directly mentions the Wizard of Oz. (As it turns out, the actual powerful being behind the curtain is Jacob, though he, unlike the Wizard, has real powers.) There is also a three-part episode called “There’s No Place Like Home” with flash forwards for Jack, Hurley, Sayid, Sun, Kate, & Aaron.

Then there are also some references to the film, like a character getting crushed and having red shoes sticking out. (In the book, they were silver shoes, not ruby slippers.) But such references don’t really count, so I think I’ll let it go here.

Speaking of shoes, Dorothy uses her shoes and a wish to return home to get back to Kansas. To get back to the Island, Jack thinks he needs his father’s shoes.

On a larger, thematic note, both stories are about people being caught in a storm and thrown into a magical land.

Thoughts:

If I’m honest, I didn’t really care for this book. It wasn’t bad, but with all the hype around both the book and the movie, I was expecting a little bit more. It was written very simplistically, which one would expect from a children’s book, but there was far more “telling” than “showing” in the action. I never really felt engaged or like I was part of the story, just observing from the outside. Dorothy’s emotions especially were told very passively, and even when she did say or do things that would support the purported emotions, it just wasn’t enough to make up for the rest.

Lost: Signs of Life – Frank Thompson

Rating: 4/5

Lost References:

Again, this book took place during the first season of Lost, though it didn’t include the crash like the others did. This one includes the motifs of art, dreams/visions, and ghosts.

Thoughts:

I liked that it actually added to the Island mysteries, as opposed to Endangered Species, which was basically about a jungle adventure. I liked that, unlike the other two books, it actually incorporated the show characters into the actual plot instead of using them as props to frame the scene and convince us we were in Lost. However, it does miss out on the use of original secondary characters on the Island, which Hapka’s works at least tried to do. Besides that, it annoyed me that Jeff spent half his flashback time sleeping around, which I consider especially wasted space because he’s otherwise the most developed and realistic of the three books’ main characters. The most obvious flaw in the book, though, is its serious need for editing. There were many technical errors, like referring Jeff as Jack within the book and Nick on the back cover blurb, of all places. There were times when the author did things like suddenly jump between character perspectives or break from the Island-flashback-Island chapter structure. Then there was the ending. Just like the Return of the King movie, this book suffered from several false endings after the climax. All in all, this book had more promise than the other two character-wise and plot-wise, but it comes across as a very unfinished product.

Lost: Secret Identity – Cathy Hapka

Rating: 3/5

Lost References:

Like the first novella in the series, it’s set in the Lost-universe just after the crash.

Thoughts:

This one is pretty on par with Endangered Species, and again, the author tackles a common Lost theme: secret identities, obviously. Out of curiosity, I did some research on the author and found that she’s written a bunch of books – some of them tie-ins for companies like Disney and Lego, essentially professional fan-fiction. That really is what you get when reading Secret Identity and Endangered Species: good fan-fiction, no more and no less. You can tell the author is in love with all the existing characters, but it does mean that in both books, original characters apart from the main one don’t get much development. But no one reads these things for the literary value, right? Just enjoy them for what they are.

Lost: Endangered Species – Cathy Hapka

Rating: 3/5

Lost References:

This semi-canonical novella is set on the Island immediately following the Oceanic crash (except for the flashbacks, of course).

Thoughts:

The writing seemed amateurish, especially in the unnatural dialogue. However, it did move along at a good pace, and it handled some of the themes that readers would expect in Lost, if in a heavy-handed way. (The main character’s name is Faith, she struggles with self-confidence, she has a secretly violent past, etc. It is also formatted so that the 23 chapters alternate between Faith’s present and her flashbacks.) The big upshot for this book was that it did, in fact, focus on someone other than a member of the show’s main cast. It makes sense, considering how many people were on that flight, and I’m glad those responsible for these tie-in books decided to take that route. So, don’t expect anything deep, but your average Lost fan would probably get some enjoyment out of the experience.

What Katy Did – Susan Coolidge

Rating: 2/5

Lost References:

There are two Kate-centric episodes that reference this book. One is called “What Kate Did,” and a later one is called “What Kate Does.”

Thoughts:

Overly moralistic. Kids don’t read to be preached at, but that’s what this does. Granted, they’re good morals for kids to learn, but they should be presented in a more palatable/entertaining format if you’re going to call it fiction. (Take the Berenstain Bears, for instance. They can manage even the most awkward subjects.)

Pippi Longstocking – Astrid Lindgren

Rating: 3/5

Lost References:

Sawyer calls Kate “Pippi Longstocking.”

Thoughts:

My last review was about an overly pessimistic book. This book, on the other hand, is overly optimistic. It’s just about a crazy girl that everyone loves. There’s not too much plot, but there’s imagination and fun for kids. Very young kids.

The Little Prince – Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Rating: 2/5

Lost References:

This is the title of a Kate-centric episode. The little boy referred to in the title is Aaron, who Kate is raising.

In the book, the prince lives on asteroid B-612, and Danielle Rousseau’s research vessel is called the Bésixdouze, which is B-six-twelve in French.

Also, this story is about a pilot who makes an emergency landing in the desert and meets this weird kid, and ironically, the aviator author later took off on a flight and was never heard from again. The wreckage of his plane was finally found in 2003, but without a body. The mystery lives on.

Thoughts:

The prince was just a little too unbelievable for my taste. A little too out there. Not at all relatable to the target audience except for his overabundance of imagination. He’s too perfect but condescending – instantly sorry for all the grown-ups he meets because of their vices (like the “tippler,” who I was surprised to find in a kids’ book… I guess authors had more latitude for that stuff back in the day).

Inevitably, I have to compare his reaction to Sara in Frances Hodgson Burnett’s A Little Princess, which is a story about a girl barely older than the little prince who has a similar outlook on life. Even though Sara is more perfect than your average schoolgirl, she still has a wider range of emotions than the little prince. Sometimes she gets upset or angry even. And when she feels sorry for someone like the prince does, it’s not just an abstract emotion. She does something about it. She cheers up her fellow servant with stories. She shares her food with equally hungry children. Everything may work out for her in the end, but she’s a whole lot more likeable than Saint-Exupery’s prince.

Left Behind – Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins

Rating: 5/5

Lost References:

This is the title of one of the show’s Kate-centric episodes. Also, some of the passengers on the Ajira flight disappear like the passengers in Left Behind.

Thoughts:

I actually read all but the last book in the series. The first bunch were excellent, with an interesting cast that just kept growing (kind of like Lost, or the other way around, because I read Left Behind before seeing Lost). Unfortunately, at some point about halfway through, the authors seemed to lose inspiration and creativity. But they kept pumping them out, milking the concept for all it was worth. (Probably the authors got greedy.) So, I’d say it’s worth sticking around for a while, but you definitely won’t get much out of the last handful unless you just have to find out what happens to your favorite characters. Or the related books, for that matter. I tried the teen spinoff, and I have to say that idea was just not happening.

Lassie Come-Home – Eric Knight

Rating: 3/5

Lost References:

Sawyer tells Kate that “Timmy fell down a well,” the ultimate Lassie cliché.

Thoughts:

Since there are lots of Lassie books, I went with Lassie Come-Home, Eric Knight’s first novel-length Lassie story. It was your average book about a super-loyal dog that is too perfect to exist in real life. I know it was probably innovative back when it was written, like a lot of things that seem overused to us now. Still, some heartstrings were tugged. I can’t help it. And there was a decent side-story with Lassie’s family.

Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad

Rating: 2/5

Lost References:

Jack refers to the Jungle as the “heart of darkness” when he talks with Kate. Charlie calls Hurley Colonel Kurtz, and Sawyer calls Locke the same. There’s a copy of this book in Via Domus.

Thoughts:

Joseph Conrad has the unhappy talent of making absolutely any circumstance sound dull, no matter how exciting they should naturally be. These circumstances can be anything from action scenes, as in the savage attack on Marlow’s steamer, to the horrific, as in the severed heads posted around Kurtz’s house. If these events can be made uninteresting, anything can.

Besides this, the book had a poor effect on history. In its depiction of British colonialsism, it dehumanized Africans and associated them with the jungle’s darkness. This was an unfortunate and inaccurate image of them that lasted for quite some time, so I can’t appreciate Conrad’s work in a human sense any more than I can in a literary one.