A Lion Among Men (Wicked Years 3) [Paperback]

I'm a big admirer of Gregory Maguire's first Wicked book. It rightly deserves all the literary and popular acclaim it has so far garnered. I was fascinated by the life story and character of Elphaba Thropp aka The Wicked Witch of the West. The second book, Son of a Witch, was disappointing, mediocre but sort of readable. It suffered most because of the need to compare it to its predecessor. This third book, A lion Among Men, is much worse. It hardly seems like a book at all, more like a DVD commentary for a tv series/first two books, where cast and crew tell anecdotes about the filming. Only unable to get either the lead actor, writer or director the commentary features actors who played minor characters and forces them to go through a question and answer session formulated by a group of fans. The Lion and Yackle fit into that role, with a mystery guest contributor on the last episode.
Who else but the most rabid of fan could would put up with two such unlikable characters as The Lion (sorry Brrr) and Yackle for over 400 pages? The cowardly lion sits in one room and interviews Yackle for most of the book. Though being such a poor excuse for an interviewer, the Lion tells more about his own experiences than he receives from Yackle. We hear all about his aimless meandering. Of course he has to meet some lions, oh and some tigers and unfortunately some bears...oh my. There is also an attempt by the author to shoehorn a theme about the morality of war into the mix but this only serves to compound the already rampant cynicism of the the main characters.

After reading Wicked and Son of a Witch in quick succession, I was again pleasantly surprised by the tale spun in A Lion Among Men. Bringing us back to the Cowardly Lion and how he got the name, Maguire uses Mother Yackle as a supernatural but not altogether 'bad' character. More secrets about Liir and Elphaba are realised and it's enough to make you squirm in your seat as you will, undoubtedly, wait impatiently for the next turn of the page.

A must read.

Of course we've all heard of Wicked and it has been reviewed hundreds of times before. I enjoyed the first book in this series although it was much more religious and political than I had expected but also much funnier than I'd hoped. The second book I found disappointing and was at times a bit for a struggle to read but this third book has clawed back my attention, I found it much easier to read than the second book and much more enjoyable (still not as much fun as the first book) but I would recommend it. I look forward to the forth and final book and hope it catches my attention like the first Wicked book.