A Lion Among Men: Volume Three in the Wicked Years

As I said I give this a 4.5. I really enjoyed this book. Once again, its framing mechanism is different. It begins with Brrr coming to the mauntery where we last saw Liir in search of answers concerning Yackle. In the beginning we get hints of why he is there, but then through linear flashbacks it's revealed. I won't spoil it. The flashbacks were a mixed bag for me. Some of the characters he met were more interesting than others, and while he doesn't stay with any for long (due to one reason or another), they made me want to get to the present with Yackle. That's what makes it 4.5. Now, conversations with her do occur intermittently through the book and really offer some keen insights into unseen events that happened with Trism and Candle. I enjoyed that. That final uninterrupted conversation with Yackle was VERY important and revealing. We get a lot of answers, about her, the Clock of the Time Dragon, and the Grimmerie. I don't believe these are ALL the answers but a lot are answered. What Nor has been doing is discussed as well to a great extent. Is there a lot left to answer? Yea, but there's a whole other book to do that in so I can't complain there. I'd recommend it once again as an extra volume to this epic story.

Great value

L. Frank Baum was absolutely fascinated by (and exemplary of) Yankee ingenuity, and that's part of what made Gregory Maguire such a perfect heir to Baum in WICKED, his 1995 dark revisioning of THE WONDERFUL WIZARD OF OZ. One of the greatest pleasures of Maguire's novel was to see how Baum's fantasy world of Oz might look from a more sober adult perspective, and though Maguire's own fantasy of what Oz might be ultimately superseded Baum's (which is appropriate, given that both books are about repeated regime changes), Maguire's dystopic fantasy was aided mightily by the efficient clockwork of Baum's plot acting as a motor propelling the events along. You knew that Elphaba would have to wind up in the Vinkus (or "Winkie Country") as the Wicked Witch of the West, and that Dorothy would come along eventually with that fateful bucket of water. (That Dorothy should show up to be merely a remorseful pawn in the extended games of manipulation waged among Elphaba, the Lady Glinda, and the Wizard was not only Maguire's grandest irony but one of the most satisfying parts of his book.) Maguire's first sequel, SON OF A WITCH, suffered greatly from the removal of this Baumian framework. The masterplot of this later work seemed based on the George W. Bush administration rather than anything dreamed up by L. Frank Baum (with Tip, Mombi, and the four-horned cow making only the briefest of appearances to remind us of Baum's own sequel to his first oz novel). Maguire's vision of sexual couplings hidden against a background of oppression and political upheaval seemed a bit adrift and unfocused, and few of the mysteries raised in Maguire's first book received any answer. This new sequel, A LION AMONG MEN, finds Maguire on much firmer ground: we're much more firmly rooted in Baum's fantasyland, with the Cowardly Lion (glimpsed only briefly in WICKED) now taking center stage, aided by the Glass Cat, that Baumian character introduced in THE PATCHWORK GIRL OF OZ whose lazy snarkiness made it an absolute natural for inclusion in Maguire's books. Dispatched to interview Yackle, the mysterious old woman who kept appearing at different intervals in Elphaba's life, the Cowardly Lion finds her in the Cloister of St. Glinda not far from the Emerald City, and here we find answers to many of the mysteries from the first book in "The Wicked Years" series: who Yackle is, what happened to Elphaba's Grimmerie, what the inhabitants of the mysterious land of the Glikkus nestled in a far corner of Maguire's Oz are like, and (at last!) what the purpose is of the terrifying Clock of the Time Dragon that haunted the opening sections of WICKED. (We also find out why the Cowardly Lion acquired his adjectival descriptor.) Much is left open, such as the fates of Liir, the true Scarecrow, and (most maddeningly) the missing Ozma, and it's hard to see from how Maguire ends this book as to how the events of THE MAGICAL LAND OF OZ, however distorted, might later come to pass (or even how the Glass Cat will end up eventually at the home of Dr. Pipt). Equally frustrating is the fact that so much of this sequel's action is circumscribed in the Cloister and hemmed in by the Ozian civil wars started since the first book in the series. But even if this work is not quite up to the standards of WICKED, it is certainly quite a great deal stronger and more compelling than SON OF A WITCH.

All three of the Oz books I've read by the author have been PHENOMENAL; this particular book was the only one (so far) which caused me, in some passages, to laugh -- to LAUGH OUT LOUD! I laughed so heartily while reading a few particular passages (or a line) that I dropped my Amazon Fire! This book contains all of the elements which made the first three of the books I've read in this series instant classics; it's the only one, however, which made me guffaw at times! It's beautifully written (although, as with the first two books, it's better to read this on an e-reading device with a built-in dictionary, as -- at least with me -- the book's vocabulary can be challenging), and its prose and storyline is intimate, sweeping, pulse-pounding and lovely.

I really enjoyed Wicked, but the sequels have been not so good. The ongoing story is interesting, but it leaps wildly from character to character, from time to time, from place to place, and fails to tie it all together. We eventually learn something of the Cowardly Lion's history, but he's a miserable character, like many in these books. New characters come in and go out in a chapter and we never see them again. Lir and Candle of Book 2 are mentioned in passing, but we learn almost nothing more about them or Elphaba or much of anything else from the prior books. We are teased with a "guardian angel" that apparently was magically created by a mysterious wizard (not The Wizard) long ago to watch over Elphaba, but even she was mostly a failure, and vanishes in the end. It was interesting enough that I kept reading to the end, but in the end was disappointed. I'm not rushing to buy the next book.

This is my favorite of Maguire's Oz series. Not as gory as "Son of a Witch," and continues the story of young Nor, as well as other characters.

Ich bin zu den Geschichten über das Musical Wicked, welches ich absolut liebe, gekommen. Die Idee ist einfach fantastisch und der Hintergrund zu dem Musical (welches doch sehr vereinfacht und teilweise falsch die Geschichte nachspielt) ist sehr spannend. Ich kann das Buch jedem empfehlen, der Zauberer von Oz kennt :)

El libro llegó bien y bien protegido pero en las fotos se veía que era la edición firmada por el autor, incluso hay un foto solo de la firma y no es así, no es la edición firmada, las fotos no son de la misma edición.

Noioso, ho fatto fatica a finirlo. E' in inglese e ci vuole una buona conoscenza della lingua

Roman littérature anglaise , ouvrage de qualité.

I am currently halfway through this book which I am finding very interesting and entertaining. So much more detail in the books of course.