A Lion Among Men by Gregory Maguire

I was rather taken aback when I first saw that Gregory Maguire had written a third book in the Wicked series.  Huge fan of the first book.  It didn’t really need a sequel, but Son of a Witch was decently entertaining.  Maguire could have stopped there.  Or, if he had to continue, why write about the Cowardly Lion?  What could that possibly add to the story?  After a while, I did warm up to the idea of reading it, though I waited until it was released in paperback.

I was optimistic when I first started reading, despite my initial reservations.  Maguire effectively revives his rich, cultured version of Oz, and in the beginning alludes to previous events with the tantalizing promise of new information to come.  Perhaps A Lion Among Men would advance the plot of the first two books, tying up loose ends and closing out the series in a satisfying manner…

A Lion Among Men follows the life and travels of the Cowardly Lion, also known as Brrr, the Lion cub who was saved by Elphaba in Wicked.  Brrr has been commissioned by the Ozian government to collect information about people connected with The Wicked Witch of the West, and to discover the whereabouts of her alleged son, Liir.  His investigation leads him to a convent, and an ancient old woman named Yackle, who will only answer his questions in exchange for the story of Brrr’s life.

Turns out, my first impression of this novel was correct.  In the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t go anywhere.  You learn a lot about the life of the Lion, but he’s not a very interesting character.  His life is nothing but disappointments, and the book depressed me more than anything else.  The only reason I kept reading was because of the allusions to Liir, Candle, and their child, in hopes that they would come in to play later in the story, because clearly they were where the action was.  Maguire let me down.  Oh sure, you do find out a couple interesting bits of information that tie in to the two previous books—the whereabouts of Nor, and the identity of the individual who betrayed Elphaba and Fiyero—but it doesn’t make up for the time I wasted in reading the rest of the book.  I could have been doing something useful, like prying my eyes out with a butter knife.

Perhaps I’m not being fair to Gregory Maguire.  He is a great author, and even in this book, I cherished the opportunity to immerse myself in his Oz.  It’s the lead character in all three novels, and it’s always a pleasure to visit.  I wish, though, that he had stuck to the plot he was spinning with the first two books instead of attempting to get his readers interested in a character who—let’s face it—no one has ever been that interested in.

I hear that he’s in the process of writing a fourth book in the series, and that it will be about Glinda.  That has some potential, I think, seeing as she was a pivotal character in the first two books.  I’d certainly be more interested in reading about her than the Lion.  However, as bad as I feel saying this, I’ll be relieved when Maguire stops beating his dead Ozian horse and brings this series to an end.