A Lion Among Men (Wicked Years Series #3) by Gregory Maguire

The Barnes & Noble Review

It all began, to some degree, with Tom Stoppard.

In 1966, when Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead premiered, the type of radical literary revisionism that play embodied was just a nascent twinkle in the average postmodernist’s eye. But Stoppard’s recasting of two bit players from Hamlet as the leads in a new “adventure” burst the dam holding back a flood of reimagined biographies of characters from canonical literature. (Curiously enough, 1966 also begat Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea, a spin-off of Jane Eyre. There was certainly something in the air!)

Any such attempt to meddle in the imaginary universe of a classic work has to contend with twinned yet antithetical urges and imperatives. The author, if respectful, wants to honor the canonicity and continuity and tone of the original, while still offering his own unique spin and inventions, hopefully in the true spirit of the template.

Gregory Maguire achieved this masterfully in his justly celebrated novel Wicked (1995). He took a relatively undeveloped character, L. Frank Baum's Wicked Witch of the West from the Oz books, and built a Bildungsroman around her. Given a name, Elphaba Thropp, our Witch became a tragic character of almost Shakespearian dimensions, while the land and society of Baum's imagination was fleshed out with deep sophistication.

Maguire offered an Oz that was both a stage for political allegory and a weird landscape of spiritual questing. He returned to its terrain ten years later with Son of a Witch and now continues his exploration with A Lion Among Men, the third in the newly christened Wicked Years series.

Our focus this go-round is Brrr, the one and only Cowardly Lion. We’ve seen him glancingly in the prior installments, but now we get to plumb his depths. The real-time frame of the story is a mere 24 hours (a day some nine years onward from the close of Son) spent at the “mauntery of Saint Glinda.” Brrr, a reluctant secret agent for the Emerald City under Emperor Shell (Elphaba’s brother), has arrived to interview a mysterious “maunt,” or nun, named Yackle, who might possess information as to the whereabouts of Elphaba's son Liir and his daughter, potential rivals to Shell. Yackle’s price for cooperating is for Brrr to recount his life story, in flashback form.

It’s a tale of high naive ambitions and glorious dreams betrayed by innate vices like sloth and indecision, and a fair amount of sheer bad luck and human malice. (Talking animals are second-class citizens in Oz.) As he did with Wicked's Elphaba, Maguire builds appealingly and daringly on Baum's original conception: Brrr emerges from the novel as a figure whose self-knowledge has only achingly accentuated his status as failure and misfit.

The impulse to continue or revise the literary creations of others had been around, of course, for a long time before Stoppard. No sooner was Dickens cooling in his grave than folks were trying to complete The Mystery of Edwin Drood. And the realm of folktales has always lent itself to anonymous extensions and elaborations by many disparate minds.

Genre fiction in particular seems to encourage, by some element of its very nature, a writer’s desire to create (and an audience’s desire to read) alternate or extended scenarios for beloved fictional personages, adventures that elaborate or revise deep continuity. The Sherlockians led the way early on, by treating Doyle’s stories about Holmes as pieces of a biography, new bits of which could be uncovered by “scholarship.” Ludic masters like Philip Jose Farmer were soon constructing enormous edifices like the Wold Newton Family Tree, which omnivorously amalgamated such diverse heroes as Tarzan, Solomon Kane, Lew Archer, and Philip Marlowe. And what are superhero comics and franchise fiction like the hundreds of Star Trek books if not the ultimate many-handed literary beast?

Of course, somewhere along the line comes fan fiction, that much-derided wart on the body of “real literature.” Yet internet expert Bill Tancer recently estimated that fan fiction constitutes a full third of all fiction-related material available on the Web, testifying to its allure and power.

So what distinguishes a book such as A Lion Among Men from any teen’s Buffy-meets-Naruto maunderings? The same things that distinguish any good book of any stripe from its amateurish counterparts: depth and clarity of vision, excellence of prose, richness of theme, intricacy of characterization, shapeliness of plot. And while A Lion Among Men boasts all these virtues in greater-than-average abundance, I have to opine that it (and its immediate predecessor, Son of a Witch) don’t pack quite the punch of Wicked and indeed offer some frustrations typical of less-creative fantasy series.

While many of the events of Brrr’s past will be new and intriguing to the reader, his backstory acquires an overall Rashomon aura: it’s just another angle on the events of the first two volumes. True, by novel’s end, we’ve discovered the secret identity of Liir’s long-missing half sister Nor, Yackle’s own secrets, and more of the motivations of the mysterious prophecy engine known as The Clock of the Time Dragon. But the book seems stuck in a holding pattern, so far as the whole series’ progress is concerned.

Moreover, when characters are calling dessert “afters” or swanning about in Oscar Wilde fashion, an Anglophile element creeps into Maguire’s Oz. Now, Baum’s Oz was famously an all-American fairy tale, the first real one of its kind, full of demotic vigor and frontier zest. Losing that aspect is Maguire’s sole betrayal of the original books.

Happily, his prose remains an elegant delight, full of striking aphorisms and aperçus and philosophical insights into life. The dialogue is always crisp and pointed and droll. Maguire's depiction of Oz approaches at times the bizarre dimensions and heft of China Miéville’s New Crobuzon, especially in such elements as the prison of Southstairs. And he obviously knows the vast Oz mythos and alludes to many pieces of the14-book original -- watch for old favorite the Glass Cat in Lion -- as well as to the film, although he revises events and characters to his taste. The overall effect of his storytelling is a blend of the best of William Kotzwinkle, Walter Moers, Ray Bradbury, and Christopher Moore.

Maguire’s achievement in the Wicked Years books ranks high, right up there with the similarly inspired milestones by Geoff Ryman in Was (1992) and Alan Moore in Lost Girls (2006). The new superstructure each man has erected on Baum’s foundation shines like the Emerald City seen from the Yellow Brick Road. --Paul DiFilippo

Author of several acclaimed novels and story collections, including Fractal Paisleys, Little Doors, and Neutrino Drag, Paul DiFilippo was nominated for a Sturgeon Award, a Hugo Award, and a World Fantasy Award -- all in a single year. William Gibson has called his work "spooky, haunting, and hilarious." His reviews have appeared in The Washington Post, Science Fiction Weekly, Asimov's Magazine, and The San Francisco Chronicle.

From the Publisher

"Maguire is full of storytelling brio...his OZ is meticulously drawn." —New York Times on Wicked

"In the much anticipated third volume of the Wicked Years, we return to Oz, seen now through the eyes of the Cowardly Lion.

While civil war looms in Oz, a tetchy oracle named Yackle prepares for death. Before her final hour, a figure known as Brrr—the Cowardly Lion—arrives searching for information about Elphaba Thropp, the Wicked Witch of the West. Abandoned as a cub, his path from infancy is no Yellow Brick Road. In the wake of laws that oppress talking Animals, he avoids a jail sentence by agreeing to serve as a lackey to the warmongering Emperor of Oz.

A Lion Among Men chronicles a battle of wits hastened by the Emerald City's approaching armies. Can those tarnished by infamy escape their sobriquets to claim their own histories, to live honorably within their own skins before they're skinned alive?

Gregory Maguire's new novel is written with the sympahty and power that have made his books contemporary classics.

Publishers Weekly

The entertaining third installment of bestseller Maguire's Wicked Years series, a revisionist chronicle of L. Frank Baum's classic The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, examines the tragically misunderstood life of the Cowardly Lion before and after his adventures with Dorothy and company. As all-out war looms between the Munchkinland guerrillas and the emperor of Oz's Emerald City soldiers, Brrr the lion, now working as an imperial spy, must somehow glean invaluable information from a crone named Yackle before she dies. But during his interrogation of the irritable oracle, Brrr, the proverbial loner and outsider, uncovers insights into his own mysterious past-and finally begins to understand what it feels like to belong. As usual, the author mixes some relatively weighty existential themes-the search for self, faith, redemption-into his whimsical story line. Newcomers to Maguire's Oz should probably begin with Wicked, the first entry in this darkly enchanting saga. 11-city author tour. (Oct. 14)

Lisa Anderson - Library Journal

In this third entry in his "Wicked Years" series-following Wicked and Son of a Witch-Maguire (www.gregorymaguire.com) returns to Oz, this time homing in on Brrr, aka the Cowardly Lion. Though at times needlessly complex, the story ultimately both intrigues and entertains. Audie® Award winner John McDonough's (Grace Will Lead Me Home) performance is adequate, though Brrr's low growlings can be difficult to understand. Recommended for most fiction collections. [Audio clip available through www.harperaudio.com; the Morrow hc was recommended "for all fiction collections," LJ10/15/08.-Ed.]

Kirkus Reviews

The further adventures of L. Frank Baum's beloved characters are more fatefully connected with the political history of Oz in this third installment of Maguire's justly praised revisionist series. In Wicked and Son of a Witch, we were treated to engagingly comic melodramas that followed (respectively) Baum's heroine Dorothy and the fugitive son (Liir) of Wicked Witch Elphaba Thropp through an endangered fantasyland blighted by mad power struggles. This time around, the major conflict is engineered by an intellectually challenged puppet emperor addicted to waging multiple wars (hmmm . . . ). And our protagonist is the Cowardly Lion (named Brrr)-bereft of his family, Brrr is traveling through Oz undercover as an imperial spy, in exchange for immunity from draconian Animal Adverse Laws that target talking animals. Brrr's investigations take him to the Mauntery (i.e. cloister) of St. Glinda, where a moribund seeress (Yackle, who's presumably too ornery to die) unfurls information in a narrative neatly juxtaposed with Brrr's unhappy memories and compromised present plans. The cast of characters also includes a clan of forest bears, a beauteous maiden or two, the rebellious citizens of Munchkinland and a surly dwarf who (in quite Wagnerian fashion) guards an ancient book of magic (the Grimmerie) and the Clock of the Time Dragon. Most of this is superbly entertaining, but Maguire has bitten off more complex interactions than he can chew, and his story's seams frequently show. No matter. Brrr and his acquaintances are irresistible company, and issues of legitimate and responsible rule are herein really rather subtly grafted onto the venerable free will vs. predestination conundrum ("With so muchwritten in magic, how can we hope to become agents culpable for our own lives ?"). Maguire's inspired world-building strides from strength to strength.

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A Lion Among Men

Chapter One

The time came for her to die, and she would not die; so perhaps she might waste away, they thought, and she did waste, but not away; and the time came for her to receive final absolution, so they set candles upon her clavicle, but this she would not allow. She blasphemed with gusto and she knocked the scented oils across the shroud they'd readied on a trestle nearby.

"God love her," they said, in bitter, unconvincing voices...or perhaps they meant May the Unnamed God love her, our unrepentant sister Yackle, for we certainly can't.

"Sink me in the crypt," she said, speaking directly to them for the first time in years. "You're too young to know; that's how they used to do it. When the time came for an elder to go and she wouldn't, they settled her down in the ossuary so she could chummy up to the bones. Supplied her with a couple of candles and a bottle of wine. Let her get used to the notion. They came back a year later to sweep up the leavings."

"Mercy," said whoever was nearby to hear.

"I insist," she replied. "Check with Sister Scholastica and she'll bear me out.""She's raving mad," said someone else, chocolately. Yackle approved of chocolate, and indeed, everything edible. Since Yackle's eyesight had gone out for good a decade earlier, she identified individuals by the degree and idiosyncracy of their halitosis.

"She's always been raving mad," said a third observer, Vinegarish Almonds. "Isn't that rather sweet?"

Yackle reached for something to throw, and all she could find was her other hand, which wouldn't detach.

"She's doing sign language." "The poor, deluded dovelette.""Clinging to life so...whatever for?" "Perhaps it isn't her time."

"It is," said Yackle, "it is, I keep telling you. Won't you fiends let me die? I want to go to hell in a handbasket. Put me out of my misery and into the Afterlife where I can do some real damage, damn it."

"She's not herself," said someone.

"She was never reliably herself, to hear tell," said another.

The bedsheets caught fire spontaneously. Yackle found she was rather enjoying this, but it helped neither her reputation nor her rescue that the only liquid nearby with which to douse the flames was cognac.

Still, Yackle was not to be dissuaded. "Isn't there a Superior in the House?" she asked. "Someone who can lay down the law?"

"The Superior Maunt died a decade ago," they replied. "We work by consensus now. We've noted your request to be interred alive. We'll put it on the agenda and take it up next week at Council."

"She'll burn the House down, and us with it," muttered a novice, sometime later. Yackle could tell that the innocent speaker was talking to herself, to stoke her courage.

"Come here, my duckie," said Yackle, grasping. "I smell a little peppermint girl nearby, and no garlicky matron hovering. Are you the sentry? On our own, are we? Come, sit nearer. Surely there is still a Sister Apothecaire in residence? With her cabinets of nostrums and beckums, tonics and tablets? She must possess a sealed jar, it would be dark blue glass, about yea-high, pasted over with a label picturing three sets of crossed tibias. Couldn't you find this and pour me out a fatal little decoction?"

"Not a spoonful of it, I en't the grace to do it," said Peppermint Girl. "Let go a me, you harpy. Let go or...or I'll bite you!"

Out of charity to the young, Yackle let go. It would do the poor girl no good to take a bite of old Yackle. The antidote en't been invented yet, and so on.

Hours and days pass at elastic rhythms for the blind. Whether the pattern of her naps and wakings followed the ordinary interruptions of daylight by nighttime, Yackle couldn't tell. But someone she recognized as Broccoli Breath eventually informed her that the sorority had decided to bow to Yackle's final wish. They would install her in the crypt among the remains of women long dead. She could approach bodily corruption at whatever speed appealed to her. Three candles, and as to nourishment, red or white?

"A beaker of gasoline and a match as a chaser," said Yackle, but she was indulging in a joke; she was that pleased. She nominated a saucy persimmon flaucande and a beeswax candle scented with limeberries...for the aroma, not for the light. She was beyond light now.

"Good voyage, Eldest Soul," they sang to her as they carried her down the stairs. Though she weighed no more than sugarbrittle she was awkward to move; she couldn't govern her own arms or legs. As if motivated by a spite independent of her own, her limbs would keep ratcheting out to jab into doorjambs. The procession lacked a fitting dignity.

"Don't come down for at least a year," she sang out, giddy as a lambkin. "Make that two. I might be old as sin itself, but once I start rotting it won't be pretty. If I hammer at the cellar door don't open it; I'm probably just collecting for some public charity in hell."

"Can we serenade you with an epithalamium, as you go to marry Death?" asked one of the bearers, tucking in the shroud to make it cozy.

"Save your doggy breath. Go, go, on to the rest of your lives, you lot. It's been a swell, mysterious mess of a life. Don't mind me. I'll blow the candles out before I lower my own lights."

A year later when a sister ventured into the crypt to prepare for another burial, she came across the hem of Yackle's shroud. She wept at the notion of death until Yackle sat up and said, "What, morning already? And I having those naughty dreams!" The maunt's tears turned to screams, and she fled upstairs to start immediately upon a long and lively career as an alcoholic.