A Lion Among Men: Volume Three in the Wicked Years
November 6th, 2009
In celebration of Halloween, on Saturday evening I did the following: I settled into my lawn chair in front of my apartment building; flipped on the porch light; played Harry and the Potters through my iPod speakers; put a basket of Butterfingers by my feet; drank several glasses of apple cider; passed out candy to adorable toddlers in Batman, chicken, and monkey costumes while ignoring the teenagers who didn’t bother dressing up; and read Gregory Maguire’s A Lion Among Men in between cries of “Trick or treat!”
The third book in Maguire’s interpretation of L. Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz, A Lion Among Men follows Maquire’s Cowardly Lion, an Animal named Brr. The book, as a work of revisionist fiction, explores the psychological and political aspects of fantastic worlds the way all but the most ambitious epic fantasies cannot. A Lion Among Men functions as a character study of Brr, a talking and thinking lion (Lion, in Oz-speak and a nod to C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia) who has a propensity for being publically declared a hero and a villain without ever doing much.
Because Maguire accomplished much of his world-building in Wicked and in Son of a Witch, most parts of A Lion Among Men seemed like a literary punt. Maguire has a habit of deliberate imprecision and vague references. While I think that this tool is intended to build tension, his tendency to attempt to build tension within a flashback can make the overall effect confusing and frustrating. Maguire’s voice and tone are so strong in the Wicked Years books that it tends to overpower and pervade every scene. Where other writers might change the voice and tone for flashbacks in order to help the reader quickly orient herself to the new scene, Maguire is simply Maguire no matter where his characters are, and I think this is a detriment to his readers.
While I enjoyed A Lion Among Men, it was not as ambitious as it could have been. It is mostly a disorganized mish-mash of the characters’ efforts to build a Wicked Years timeline and to showcase Brr. I think the story would have been more moving and memorable if Brr’s life had been more central, and the pursuit of Elphaba Thropp was less of a focal point.
If you are already a fan of Maguire and the Wicked books, it’s by no means a waste of time to read this. I think it’s actually a great book for November, because there’s an element of charity that runs through the novel, which is, of course, a great theme for Ask Miss A readers, especially with Thanksgiving coming. But I do hope that the fourth book, rumored to be about Glinda, will be a bit more focused.
November 6th, 2009 at 11:02 am
What timing for this review! I just finished reading this book on audiotape this week. I agree with most of your review – I felt Brr’s life story was a chance for Maguire to explore philosophical questions about the causes of perceived good vs evil, which was the original purpose of Wicked and his other books, rather than develop a plot and move the world of Oz forward. I did appreciate that Mother Yackle’s role and influence in the previous two books were explained. And while I look forward to a book devoted to Glinda, I too hope that it provides more focus than A Lion Among Men.
November 8th, 2009 at 8:30 pm
Good point. I guess I just don’t see cowardice as an evil, really. I did enjoy Yackle and I think she could have carried the book all on her own, but it’s probably bad marketing. It needed to be a character that also appears in Oz canon. Lir/the green baby are probably as far as most people are willing to diverge.