What an amazing trilogy. Wicked is the clear masterpiece, but the sequels hold their own as well. Whereas Son of a Witch focused on Elphaba and her legacy, A Lion Among Men concerns the outliers, the fringes of her life -- from oracular Yackle to poor, disenfranchised Brrr. The last fifty or so pages of the book were terrific -- the Clock of the Time Dragon is an astounding literary invention -- and the best part? There's a fourth book in the works. So there's still a hope that, instead of just a mottled green illusion on a sheet of ancient paper, the bloodline of the Wicked Witch will linger just long enough to brush away some of the cobwebs of its tarnished history.

• Reply
• Review

Nearly done with this, and that makes me excited. The story's picking up a bit - I always end up falling asleep when Brrr first starts talking about his servant Flyswatter. I know one of the big reveals already -- that much is obvious. The other one will be interesting. I love Yackle to pieces.

• Reply

I'm further along in this than I am on Readernaut, but I'll have to run by a library and figure out exactly how much I binge-read of this before I had to return it to the library at the end of my fall semester (AKA about two weeks ago).

• Reply
• Remark

It's been a long time since I was last able to read. NaNoWriMo and school had me pretty distracted. But here I am again!

The beginning starts off very strong. I love the maunts. It's a little hard to get back into the politics of the novel if you haven't read the first two recently (it's been a year or so for both, I think). And I know the Lion is supposed to be cowardly, but that hardly seems an excuse for the dumb stuff he does at the beginning of the novel.

Then again, perfect heroes get boring fast.

• Reply