Look, a Book!

Son of a Witch

by Gregory Maguire

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I recently finished Gregory Maguire's next installment in The Wicked Years and was rather pleased with the work as a whole. This is the fourth novel I have read of Mister Maguire's and it was one of those books which helped rank the author's status as a favorite on my book shelves. Having, of course, read Wicked: the Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, I was instantly enchanted by Mister Maguire's novel ideas (pun intended), but did not declare him as one of my favorite writers even after having read some of his other books. In fact, Mirror, Mirror was the third novel I read by him and it put me off quite a bit . . . so much so that it took near three years for me to pick up one of his other books again, or rather an audio version of Wicked.

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On my first date with Kayla, I bought her Wicked, assuming of course that she was a fan of literature. She is not. However, she was compelled to acquire an audio version of the book which she listened to all day long at work. Because our company allows personal audio devices (in fact, you'd go crazy if you didn't have one), it only took her a few days to listen to the novel . . . and in the end all she did was talk about it incessantly. Because it had been years since I last read the novel, I couldn't remember much of the story, so I too gave it a listen. My, how much does one forget? I love that story!

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So . . . I ran to the local bookstore and purchased both Son of a Witch and A Lion Among Men (sequels to Wicked). And as I mentioned, I just finished the second novel in the series and was thoroughly impressed with the overall story. It was a little rough in the beginning, having a displaced framing of time, but it didn't take long for the main character, Liir, to suck me into his conquest. And what a conquest it was . . . prisons, brooms, Animals and animals, dragons, a little unconscious raping, as well as homosexuality . . . yeah, it was a good story. Although, I will declare that I wasn't solely convinced on the passion shared between Liir and Trism (not because it was same-sexed, but simply because it just came about during the climax [again, pun intended]). But that's just nit-picking.

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What I liked most about this story were the themes conveyed . . . that sometimes even the most bitter person can be the most heartfelt; that sometimes we have to accept disappointment; and that sometimes the things we seek don't seek us. Those are all pretty standard themes for any number of novels, but throw in some fantastical elements (already based off the classical, familiar realm of Oz) and I'm thoroughly impressed. So, I applaud.

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Good book. Good read.