A Lion Among Men
By Gregory Maguire



A Lion Among Men complements the New York Times bestseller Son of a Witch in fleshing out the world of Oz, seen this time through the eyes of the Cowardly Lion-remembered from Wicked as a tiny cub defended by Elphaba. While civil war looms in Oz, an ancient and tetchy oracle named Yackle prepares for death. Before she can return to dust, however, the Cowardly Lion, an enigmatic figure named Brrr, arrives in search of information about Elphaba Thropp, the Wicked Witch of the West. As payment, Yackle, who hovered on the sidelines of Elphaba's life, demands some answers of her own.

Abandoned as a cub, Brrr's earliest memories are only gluey hazes. But his path from infancy in the Great Gillikin Forest is no Yellow Brick Road. Seeking to redress an early mistake, he tumbles though a swamp of ghosts, becomes implicated in a massacre of trolls, and falls in love with a Cat princess. Sidestepping the laws that oppress talking Animals, Brrr cannily avoids a jail sentence by agreeing to serve as a lackey to the warmongering Emperor of Oz.

A Lion Among Men traces a battle of wits between adversaries distracted by the armies approaching on either side of them. What does the Lion know of the whereabouts of the Witch's boy, Liir? What can Yackle reveal about the auguries of the Clock of the Time Dragon? Is destiny ever arbitrary? Can those tarnished by infamy escape their sobriquets-cowardly, wicked, brainless, criminally earnest-to claim their own histories, to live honorably within their own skins before they're skinned alive?


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

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