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A Lion Among Men: Volume Three in The Wicked Years
A Lion Among Men: Volume Three in The Wicked Years
A Lion Among Men: Volume Three in The Wicked Years
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A Lion Among Men: Volume Three in The Wicked Years

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

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Return to a darker Oz with Gregory Maguire. In A Lion Among Men, the third volume in Maguire’s acclaimed, New York Times bestselling series The Wicked Years, a fuller, more complex Cowardly Lion is brought to life and gets to tell his remarkable tale. It is a story of oppression and fear in a world gone mad with war fever—of Munchkins, Wizards, and Wicked Witches—and especially of a gentle soul and determined survivor who is truly A Lion Among Men.

LanguageEnglish
PublisherHarperCollins
Release dateOct 6, 2009
ISBN9780061981746
Author

Gregory Maguire

Gregory Maguire is the New York Times bestselling author of the Wicked Years, a series that includes Wicked—the beloved classic that is the basis for the blockbuster Tony Award–winning Broadway musical of the same name and the major motion picture—Son of a Witch, A Lion Among Men, and Out of Oz. His series Another Day continues the story of Oz with The Brides of Maracoor, The Oracle of Maracoor, and The Witch of Maracoor, and his other novels include A Wild Winter Swan, Hiddensee, After Alice, Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, Lost, and Mirror Mirror. He lives in New England and France.

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Rating: 3.3227553349845205 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

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  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Review from BadelyngeI'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.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Brr, the Cowardly Lion, finds himself trading stories and reminiscences with an old maunt who may hold the key to the Thropp family's destiny.This is, in many ways, a story about stories; a story about memory and its impact on the present; a story about the connections between people and the need to view each person as an individual, above all else. Brrr, like Elphaba before him, is more than his public persona. Maguire takes us inside his story and lets us see what really went down.It's beautifully done. My favourite thing about all Maguire's books is the way he takes these flat, stock characters and situations and gives them substance. Brrr isn't perfect. He is rather a coward. But Maguire takes us inside his cowardice and shows us what makes him tick. We come to see that it's not a clear-cut case; Brr is a person, (er, Lion), with the same complex motivations and fears that drive us all. He's a product of his past: his forcible removal from his mother, his awkward socialization, his life under the Wizard's anti-Animal regime. Maguire does a brilliant job of showing us why Brrr is the way he is. Like Elphaba and Liir, he's not an entirely likeable character; he messes up, often with disastrous results. But at the end of the day, it's hard not to feel for him.Oz itself continues to expand beneath Maguire's pen. (Or keyboard, as the case may be). Brrr finally gives us a first-hand look at what Animals go through. We see how they integrate - or fail to integrate - into society, how they were pushed out, what options were open to them in the wake of the Wizard's departure. It's fascinating stuff.And we get some answers, at long last! Maguire excels at finding and illuminating the connections between his characters, their situations, and the state of the nation, and he uses these connections to drive the story forward. He shows us everything we might need to know and lets us piece it all together for ourselves. The answers found here are more in the line of confirmations, really; many readers will already have guessed portions of the outcome, but it can be nice to hear someone actually come out and say what you already know. And like all the best confirmations, these ones raise a whole host of new questions.I highly recommend this to anyone who enjoyed the first two books. I wish I'd bought it instead of borrowing it from the library. I realized, midway through, that I've never purchased a new copy of any of Maguire's books. He's given me so many hours of reading enjoyment over the past five years that he most definitely deserves some of my royalties. You can bet I'll be buying the next book, which can't come out quickly enough. (A slightly different version of this review originally appeared on my blog, Stella Matutina).
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Third book of the series and there were some lags, but I felt this was more interesting that Son of a Witch.
    Brrr, aka the Cowardly Lion, has an interesting link to Elphaba, aka Wicked Witch of the West, that most wouldn't expect. Brrr isn't so much cowardly as maybe a little dim or too trusting? The political tangle and names were clever.
    The book ends on a cliff hanger of sorts, so I'm glad I didn't read this before Out of Oz was released.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Plot: 3 stars
    Characters: 3 stars
    Style: 3 stars
    Pace: 2 stars

    There comes a point in every series where it feels like the author's just putting out a book to link other books in the series together and doesn't really care. Often, this is because what was planned as a singular book (or trilogy, but less commonly) turns into an unexpected monster hit, and they're pressured (by agents/editors/readers/money) to do more of it, because there's clearly an audience. Entire careers are built on this method- See Laura K Hamilton, Robin Cook, Dan Brown, etc.

    It might be commercially successful, but it shows in the prose. It's dumbed down vs Wicked, the plot meanders and the whole thing could have fit, plot wise, into a picture book. There was character development, sure, but I never really cared enough about either of them for that to be a driving force in reading it. Really, I was reading it because it was on my desk, I was too tired to write, and my other reading choices were worse. Given some of the other books I've read at work, that's saying something.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    I get lost reading the Wicked books. There are usually disturbing issues in the background and I have never read any of the Baum books. I think I miss a lot of references but I have very little interest in spending time with Baum.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    The final book of Gregory Maguire's trilogy loses none of the magic and bite of Wicked and flows more easily than Son of a Witch, perhaps because it doesn't get lost in the dungeons of Emerald City as that one did. Maguire's prose is itself often magical. We see starry nights as amazing as Van Gogh's, hear music from oak string trees, and see characters morfing as in an Anime film or even a cartoon. The amazing assortment of characters continue: dwarfs, Munchkins, Animals, animals, winged women, but, with no Elphaba, no green ones.The satires on society and politics continue, and, to them, is added religion. He makes an interesting--and clever case for the impossibility of their being music in heaven, centered on the fact that music is time-based and heaven is not. (If I understood him, or rather the character who said it, correctly.)There is one brilliantly erotic scene between Animals of different species. The paragraphs on food are mouthwatering, although one can hardly reproduce the meals this side of Oz.It's strange that I loved these books as, even as a child, I never read fairy tales, or the Oz books. I did read reality based kids' series like The Bobbsey Twins, Heidi, and all of Louisa May Alcott. I also read all the adult novels in my parents' library since I was blessedly unattended most of the time.The only book I did read that treated animals as people was a curiosity in my parents' library called, Lightfoot the Leaping Goat, which, along with Heidi and the Alcott books, I read and reread at least fifty times each. I can't explain that aberration. Nor can I explain the aberration of The Wicked Years. I don't like fantasy. Nor do I like science fiction. Do you ever wonder why you like the books you do? It's not only their artistic worth, although Maguire's prose is very fine, very vivid, wickedly satiric, but never with a bludgeon.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    The third of 'The Wicked Years' books which began with 'Wicked',and continues with 'Son of a Witch' and 'A Lion Among Men'. In the present volume we follow the fortunes (and misfortunes) of the Cowardly Lion (otherwise known as Brrr). He appears early in the story searching for news about the Wicked Witch of the West and her son Liir. This tale mainly concerns the Lion's own odyssey however and charts his remarkable journey and adventures before the Wicked Years (presumably) continue.A fascinating and complicated journey for both the Lion and the reader. Well worth making however.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This story had great promise in the beginning. It kept me turning the pages to ultimately get to the climax at the end. Unfortunately, it left me with no resolutions except for Yackle. I wish the author had thrown a couple of bones in regards to the stories on Liir and Candle but he was definitely setting the reader up for the 4th book in this series. I will not be reading it. I was so disappointed with this ending and didn't care for the 2nd book "Son of a Witch" that I am done with this Maguire's series.On the other hand, it was very well written and I enjoyed the background on the Cowardly Lion. It also increased my vocabulary as I needed to look up quite a few words!
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Although Gregory Maguire has written interesting stories around Oz, this isn't one of them. The cowardly lion seems to have some potential, but it just isn't met. He wanders through the story passively reacting to everything around him and not learning from his experiences. The author seems to recognize this shortcoming and suggests some growth in the last chapter, but it was too little and too late to save the story. Much of the story is spent exchanging stories with Mother Yackle, who is a much more interesting character than Sir Brrr, the Cowardly Lion. He was doing some investigation for the wizard, and spends much of the book with her, recanting his stories in exchange for information. The first two books in the series are worth reading, but stop there.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is the third in the Wicked Years series and follows the lives of Brrr, the Cowardly Lion, and Yackle, a mysterious crone lurking in the shadows, emerging only to nudge events into the line of fate in the previous books. I liked this one much more than Son of a Witch. The Lion offers Maguire more of an opportunity to explore the socio-political world he has created; the Animal rights stuff was some of the most interesting in Wicked, and is explored in more detail here. I especially liked, however, (and was completely surprised by) getting to know Yackle more. If asked ahead of time, I would have thought knowing more about her would kind of ruin her effect, based as it is on her mysteriousness. That Maguire can give us her entire story and just make her more of a mystery is impressive and demonstrates his excellent story-telling. It's not the best book I've every read, but any faith I lost in Maguire based on Son of a Witch has been definitely regained, and then some.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Here we have Gregory Maguire taking us on another walk on the yellow brick road giving us his take on the life of the Cowardly Lion, who is nothing like Bert Lahr. The story begins with his trying to get information from an old woman who knew Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West. She won't answer him until she learns more about him and so his story goes with more to come? We'll have to wait and see.The story moved well enough and gave an insight to the character that the movie seemed to spoof. It's a good third part to this story.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    Wicked was wonderful, Son of a Witch was good, A Lion Amoung Men was a sad waste of money. I like the way Maguire plays with words. I enjoy his references to other writers, but this book just seemed like a rehash of the first two with very little added to the story. Nothing much to be learned about Brr or Yackle that wasn't inferred from the earlier books. I wish I could get a refund of funds and time spent.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A am not usually a fantasy reader, but Gregory Maguire is amazing. His Wicked series is a must read for all who love to read. I can't wait to read his latest, Out of Oz.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    Couldn't finish it. Actually, I could barely start it. I cared nothing for the chcaracters and couldn't remember much of anything I was apparently supposed to make sense of this one. Not worth my time.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    My least favorite of the three Oz books I've read so far. The lion's history was pretty depressing, and this book was a little weirder than the previous books in the Wicked series. A little bit too much politics for me, also. But I'm still looking forward to reading Out of Oz.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The third trip back to Gregory Maguire's reinterpretation of Oz. The cowardly lion named Brrarrives at the Mauntary where Sister Yackle has been interred. He has been charged with finding out more about Elphaba, the Wicked Witch, and Yackle's name has come up in her story a number if times as an Oracle. Civil war is fast approaching and Brr is working for the city, trying to get Yackle's tale before the soldiers arrive. He is also trying to find out the wereabouts of Liir, Elphaba's possible son.While learning more about Yackle, we also find out Brr's story. Yackle will only give him information in exchange for some back from him. We travel back to when Brr was a young lion growing up in the jungle. He learns to talk and tries to join the human world with mixed success. As described in Wicked there were anti Animal laws passed so the Lion in the city becomes someone of an oddity. Cast adrift, he doesn't really fit in with Animals or humans and lands himself in a whole heap of trouble.I know many people aren't too keen on this series past the first book, but I think they are excellent. There were some great insights into some of the main characters as well as an unexpected one. I am also really interested in the time dragon clock and I really liked the parts were it was involved. The final moments with Yackle were worth it all.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    My affection for this series dims with each volume. In this third book in The Wicked Years, we learn about the lives of the Cowardly Lion and Yackle, and the fate of Nor. Yes, some questions are answered, but I do not see a satisfying ending to this series in sight. If you continue to love this twisted version of Oz and the political and religious power struggles therein, this should appeal. Without characters I care for at all, such as Elphaba, or even Liir, I was left flat by this one.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    Wicked was interesting in that it fleshed out a story known to most Western readers: The Wizard of Oz. Son of a Witch was only interesting i its connections to the Wizard of Oz and Wicked. This book is even further removed from The Wizard of Oz and Wicked and suffers from a severe lack of interesting and engaging content. Yackle and the Lion, as portrayed in this book, are characters worth only a footnote, not an entire book. The book half explains things in the series and then goes on about other things in very choppy fashion. A disappointing and confusing conclusion to the Oz series.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    “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…”—A Lion Among Men”Some stories tell of great adventures with heroes that sweep in and save the damsel in distress. Some stories tell of frightening mysteries that keep you guessing until the very end. And some stories tell of great romances that transcend time and space. “A Lion Among Men” by Gregory Maguire is none of these.Instead, “A Lion Among Men” is essentially the memoirs of Brrr the Cowardly Lion. Dispatched by the Emerald City, he is set a task: to find the Grimmerie, the famed source of Elphaba’s powers, which was last seen in her possession. This assignment soon leads him to a crazy old woman who’s dubbed herself Yackle. It’s said that she had once been an Oracle and that she also may have had a connection at one time to Elphaba. But what Brr does find when he finally tracks Yackle down is not some high and mighty Oracle, but an old, decrepit, blind, cranky rotting corpse of a woman. Even though Yackle is barely clinging to life like bad Saran-Wrap, she just can’t seem to die. In fact, she’s been trying to walk through death’s door for over a year, but to no avail. Finally locating her, Brr becomes one step closer to completing his assignment for the Emerald City. That said, I have now just summed up more or less the entire plot of this “A Lion Among Men,” which as you can see only took 132 words, 9 lines and one paragraph. The other three hundred and eight pages of the book, less one paragraph, were unfortunately about as exciting as what the quote above described. The book would just not die, even though it was way past its time. So maybe it would waste away leaving behind a good story. Ultimately, it did waste away, just not into a good story. The rest of “A Lion Among Men”, a supposed accounting of the Cowardly Lion’s life, consisted of Brrr (not the most creative of names and Maguire doesn’t even give a great explanation for it) wandering through the woods trying to find Yackle, or some goal along those lines. Now for anyone who has ever read a book that was comprised of the main characters walking endlessly through the woods, you know it can be a potential disaster, or even worse, an exercise in extreme boredom. Well, “A Lion Among Men” was no different than every other novel that has crashed and burned at the roots of the boredom tree. A tree that the characters, I wish, had tripped over, for it would have been more exciting than what was going on in the plot line. (Note to authors: characters walking through the woods for the entirety of the story is fictional suicide. So spare all your devoted readers and think of something with a pulse!) Aside from the wandering-in-the-woods syndrome “A Lion Among Men” seems to suffer from, it’s also plagued with a myriad of other issues. What little plot line there is in the novel is entwined with a sickening amount of flourish, producing garish prose that says nothing at all. Any part of the story that could be deciphered was often buried in painful dialogue that accomplished absolutely nothing and was incomprehensible to those of us who live in the real world and not Munchkinland. “A Lion Among Men” can’t even claim to have the same vulgar and appalling nature that ran rampant through Maguire’s other two books in the series, “Wicked” and “Son of a Witch.” It was immensely disappointing that the novel didn’t even have these less than kosher aspects to possibly enliven it. At least the inclusion of these adult qualities may have provided a reprieve to a storyline that ended up being less exciting than even watching paint dry. Last word:“A Lion Among Men” is reputed to be the story of Brrr the Cowardly Lion’s life. So based on the novel then, Brr must have lived an incredibly mind-numbing and dull life. By the time I finished trudging my way through this snooze-fest, I could not find any redeeming qualities to the novel. If only I could get those hours of my life back…
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    The weakest of the three "Wicked" sequels, "A Lion Among Men" is still an enjoyable book and Brr's backstory is interesting. This book helps flesh out what was only hinted at in "Wicked" and also answers many questions about Mother Yackle, though it largely feels like an intemediary story that's meant to bridge the narrative begun in "Son of a Witch" to the conclusion of "Out of Oz." The best comparison I can make is to compare this book to "The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers" in that its narrative lacks a firm beginning and concrete resolution since it's not the final book in the larger narrative of "Son of a Witch," "A Lion Among Men," and "Out of Oz." That said, it's still enjoyable if you liked the other books and want to read the whole series.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    After reading Wicked and Son of a Witch.......Lion Among Men was pathetic. I could not make myself finish it. Very disappointing.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    I don't know what the problem is with me and Mr. Maguire. His works are full of elements that would usually suck me in. They're always twisty retellings of classic children's stories, often dark and even cynical. I LOVE that sort of stuff, usually. But for some reason, I couldn't manage to feel invested in this one, let alone its two predecessors. It's like banging my head against a wall - "But... but... I should be loving this!" Sorry, but no.

    To be honest, I didn't actually hate it either, which only adds to the general feeling of perplexity. There's no obvious reason why it should be bad. Well, maybe the aimlessness of the plot - most of the time, you have to look really hard to find any notion that the story is moving forward, or backward, or anywhere else. But outside of that, it's a mystery to me.

    Anyway, I liked this one better than Son of a Witch, so I'm going to give it 3 stars, then promptly avoid eye contact with it for the rest of my life. Awkward.

    edit: okay, 2 stars it is.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    This was the weakest book in the series by far. There was very little development or excitement. Much of the book felt as if it was a real strain for Maguire. It seems like he is trying to draw the series out but has a lack of material or things to say. This didn't advance the story line very much at all, or add alot of depth. It's not horrible by any means it just lacks the excitement of the first books. I'm hoping the series hasn't fizzled out and am going to assume this is just a transition type of book. In the end the book had very little to say, but the incorporation of the lion is a good idea.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I have this tendency, if I like the first book I read from an author, to keep trying his or her work over and over again, even if I don’t like ANY of the subsequent books I read by said author. I may need to stop doing that.In this case, I really, really liked “Wicked” when I read it. I know that some people find it slow, but it really clicked for me, I loved the politics of it. I then tried some of Maguire’s other fairy tale books, “Mirror, Mirror” and “Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister.” I found both of them pretty ‘bleh’. They weren’t bad per se, but I didn’t enjoy them in the least. Even so, I decided to read “Son of a Witch” sometime back because, even if I didn’t like his other work, I wanted to continue in Maguire’s version of Oz. I did enjoy “Son of a Witch” more than the non-Oz books, but really didn’t love it. Regardless, when I heard about “A Lion Among Men,” I knew I wanted to read it.It took me awhile, but I finally got around to “A Lion Among Men,” borrowing the audiobook from the library. It tells the story both of Brrr, the Cowardly Lion, and Yackle, the witch who figured prominently in Elphaba’s life in “Wicked.” On one hand, I did want to know more about both figures and how Maguire saw them fitting into Elphaba’s story. On the other hand, I was about as interested in this book as I was in Maguire’s non-Oz books, even with my desire to piece together the story, which means that I probably actually liked the book itself LESS than his others.No more Maguire for me, I think, other than possible re-reads of “Wicked.”If you have liked Maguire’s other work and want to continue his Oz story, read this by all means. The problem isn’t poor writing, it is just that, other than “Wicked,” something about these books rubs me the wrong way. If you’re not crazy about Maguire, learn my lesson and don’t bother.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Much to my dissapointment, I had mixed feelings about the third installment in Gregory Maguire's "Wicked Years" saga. A Lion Among Men, as the title hits you over the head with, mostly surrounds the "Cowardly" Lion introduced in Wicked as the cub subjected to experimentation at Shiz University, and set free by Elphaba. I am a huge fan of the first novel, and was saddened at the direction that they took it for the stage, trying to neatly tie up ends between the Wizard of Oz movie and the Wicked novel, instead of staying true to the book. This almost seems to be another afterthought to tie up a few more ends, and not a continuation of the excellent work in Wicked and Son of a Witch. Most of A Lion Among Men is told in flashback which becomes repetitious and annoying, and the language used seems to draw on, rather than bring you into this "enchanted" world as the prose of the first two books do. The revelation near the end of a wayward character from a previous novel was predictable, I won't spoil it with any names, but you can see it coming 100 miles away. I thought the most interesting piece of this work was the more in depth look at the Time Clock, and the mystery surrounding its presence and the secrets it holds. As a character, the Lion is very unlikable, but it was difficult for me to tell if this was on purpose, or if you were supposed to feel bad over his continued sob story. This is a novel which could have been told as a short story and been more satisfying. I thought that this was supposed to be the final book, but Maguire left it wide open for a new novel, searching out Liir to join up with his story. The one moral that I think anyone should take away from this is not to do, wear, say things because they're what you think other people will like, or like you for. As corny as it sounds, the most important thing, that the Lion doesn't learn till the very last paragraph, is do what you want, for yourself. If you want to help someone out and will feel good to do it, then go for it. If you want to help someone so that others can see you helping them, don't bother. We have too many conspicuous consumers in our world today, so be true to yourself.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I just keep waiting for a happy ending and not getting one. This story was full of disappointments. I want a main character who I like and empathize with, and I want a story that turns out well. What I wanted most when I started reading this book was to know that Liir was happy. I wanted him back with Shell, raising their daughter together. I didn't want to hear about a lion who fails to do more than find transitory happiness. Maybe he'll find meaning eventually- the book seemed to go that way, but not yet, and I want to see it. I want to know that the characters are okay.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    This is the third book in the "Wicked Years" series from Gregory Maguire. I'm still trying to figure out what I really think about this book and why. As with the previous books, this novel gives us an alternate look at the world of Oz that many of us only know from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (most likely the Judy Garland movie, but also perhaps the book). I, for one, keep intending to go and read the many Oz books written by L. F. Baum, but sadly I've never done so.That said, I'm fairly certain that (apart from the high level similarities such as local, character types, etc) Maguire's envisioning of Oz is quite different from Baum's. And that's not necessarily a bad thing…it's just different.I enjoyed Wicked (book 1), although I preferred the hit Broadway play based on the novel. I liked Son of a Witch as a continuation of the story from book 1. It presented an intriguing follow-up to the intrigue and difficulties that were unraveling at the end of the first book.With book 3, we catch up with the story a few years after book 2 and so in some ways it is a continuation of the saga. However, this book is largely an introspective presented to us by the Cowardly Lion and set alongside a bit of thoughtful backstory from Yackle as well as the slow moving action of the Time Dragon.As for an overall storyline with rising and falling action, this story strays from the normal mode. The meta story involves a war being waged across the land and presents us with the Lion (Brrrr) interviewing Yackle on a site which will soon be right in the middle of an ensuing battle. The approaching armies add some urgency to the timeliness of their discussion but the war and the battle exist on the periphery so it's difficult to fully gage any rising or falling action or suspense based on the war in Oz.Instead, we spend most of the time learning the backstory of the Cowardly Lion, beginning from his life in Oz around the same time Elphaba was making her mark and then following his actions up until the present day. Part of the narrative seems to be his search for family or at least for his own "origin story" to try and figure out where he came from and who he was.The idea of identity figures strongly in the book. Over the years, Brrr has done what he can to stay comfortable and safe but often at the expense of any real definitive action on his part. He constantly finds himself in the middle of predicaments and sometimes he even feels strongly one way or another, but he quite often takes the path of least resistance attempting to avoid confrontation and commitment. His inaction (or sometimes, poorly planned/executed actions) lead to him being constantly slandered and associated with the bad forces around the land. He finds himself accused both of being an ally to Elphaba and and ally to the Wizard in her destruction. Similar paradoxical attributions happen throughout his life.Brrr introspectively considers what it is that really matters in his life. He contemplates the repercussions of his actions (and inactions) and generally feels like he's let himself down, although he never seemed to have a clear set of expectations for himself.His mission to interview Yackle is a sort of last-ditch effort to make something of himself…though at the same time, the main motivating factor for endeavoring on the mission is actually one of self-preservation so once again he is very much compelled into action rather than freely and consciously choosing to undertake this action.By the end of the book, Brrr has a better sense of himself. He's still a bit confused. He's still not fully sure of where he fits in. But at least he's made up his mind to actually DO something….he's thought through some of the consequences of his potential action and decided that whatever the cost, he must do what he believes. And that's key…he finally has a cause he believes in, even if it's just a glimmer of belief.Often I found the narrative to be an ambling mis-mash of ideas and stories. I kept trying to fit in some sort of larger meta-story or gather a better overall sense of how things were going in the larger world of Oz. But then I realized/decided that this book was more about individuals…personalities….Character….of taking control of our life by deciding WHAT we each want to do and WHY we want to do it…and then having the integrity to DO and LIVE the life we believe in.So in the end, I felt like this story was more an exploration of the psychology of the individual than about some larger than life war in a fantasy land. That's not the sort of book I was expecting, but it was still an interesting read. I understand there's a 4th book being written in the same world and I'm interested to see where it goes. Maguire's stories (even those with a more "natural" progression/plot) seem intent on exploring human (or Lion) nature. I think if I approach his books with that in mind rather than expecting an adventure story, I'll have a better time. As it was, I didn't hate the book, I just found it more "work" than "entertainment" to read. If you've read it, I'd be interested to hear your thoughts.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    "A Lion Among Men" is the third book in his series "The Wicked Years" that started with prize winning book, "Wicked." The first book, Wicked, told the story of Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West. The second book, "Son of a Witch," told the story of Liir, Elphaba's son (we think). In this book we learn the story of the Cowardly Lion and the oracle Yackle. I actually didn't like the story of the Cowardly Lion that much. I'm not sure if that's just because Maguire did a good job of portraying him as cowardly, or if it was something else, but I didn't enjoy this book as much as the last two. I did enjoy learning more about Yackle and her origins though!Throughout the first two books Yackle is a mysterious character who hovers on the edges of the story. She shows up in some of the oddest places, and you always wonder why she's involved with the story. In this book we finally learn why!From looking on-line, there are no more books written yet in this series. I'm curious to see where he's going to take the Oz story next, and I'm hoping I like book 4 better than I did book 3!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is the highly entertaining third installment in Maguire's "Wicked Years" series, and it is concentrated on the Cowardly Lion named Brrr. This is his story, from his murky beginnings as a cub alone in the great woods, through his life, making his way as an Animal with sentience and a conscience. Brrr's life brushes that of Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West of Oz, twice -- once as a tiny cub and again at her spectacular end. But his is a story of shame and ridicule, a life spent on the edge of humanity and civilization, always misunderstood, always persecuted, almost always alone. It is only as a middle aged washed up has-been that he is sent off by the Emperor of Oz to search for traces of Liir, the reputed son of Elphaba, and he finds himself in the tower of a mauntery interviewing an anceient crone who cannot seem to die named Yackle, and square in the cross-hairs of two opposing armies as Oz is about to explode into civil war all around him.This novel was a very good revisit to the Oz created in Maguire's imagination, a place where evil isn't necessarily what it first appears to be and trustworthiness is truly in the eye of the beholder. Unlike the first two volumes in this series, this story really cannot stand on its own, and I thought the story dragged a bit in several places, including a couple of threads in Brrr's life that seemed to serve no purpose at all in furthering the saga of Oz and weren't really that interesting. I still think it's worth reading, though, and that this is one of the best fiction series in the fantasy realm today. I wish Maguire would concentrate a bit more on it and come out with further volumes without waiting years and years between them!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Beautifully styled prose, though the title character -- being cowardly, naive and oblivious for most of the book -- is not the best company, and it becomes frustrating wading through one failure after another.

Book preview

A Lion Among Men - Gregory Maguire

SIGNIFICANT FAMILIES OF OZ

The House of Ozma

The Thropps of Munchkinland

The Uplands of Gillikin

The Tigelaars, Arjiki chieftains of the Vinkus

A BRIEF OUTLINE OF THE THRONE MINISTERS OF OZ

Augmented with notes about selected incidents of interest to students of modern history

THE OZMA YEARS

The matrilineal House of Ozma established.

The Ozma line descends from a Gillikinese clan. It originally claimed legitimacy through a purported divine relationship with Lurlina, fabled creatrix of Oz. Depending on the claim, history records between forty to fifty Ozmas and their regents.

The last Ozma, Ozma Tippetarius, is born of Ozma the Bilious.

Ozma the Bilious expires through an accident involving rat poisoning in the risotto. Her consort, Pastorius, becomes Ozma Regent during the minority of Ozma Tippetarius.

Pastorius rules over central Oz.

He renames the hamlet known as Nubbly Meadows, near the ancient burial ground of Open Tombs, as the Emerald City (EC). Declares the EC as the capital of united Oz.

The Great Drought begins.

By air balloon, Oscar Zoroaster Diggs arrives in the Emerald City.

Diggs successfully mounts a palace coup d’état. Pastorius is murdered, and the infant Ozma Tippetarius disappears. She is presumed slain, perhaps in Southstairs Prison (built over the Open Tombs), though an evergreen rumor claims she lies enchanted in a cave, to return only in Oz’s darkest hour. Diggs becomes known as the Wizard of Oz.

THE WIZARDIC YEARS

The Emerald City renovation is completed.

The Wizard of Oz orders expansion of the Yellow Brick Road.

This serves as a highway for the armies of the EC and aids in the collection of local taxes from previously independent populations, especially in Quadling Country and on the eastern flanks of the Great Kells of the Vinkus.

Animal Courtesy legislation enacted (known also as the Animal Adverse laws).

Munchkinland secedes from Loyal Oz.

Under the rule of Nessarose Thropp, Eminence of Munchkinland, the secession is conducted with a minimum of bloodshed. The breadbasket of Oz maintains an uneasy commercial relationship with Loyal Oz.

Nessarose Thropp dies.

The arrival in Oz of a visitor, a Dorothy Gale of Canzizz (sometimes transcribed as Canzuss or Kanziz), results in the death of the Eminence. Speculation suggests her sister, Elphaba Thropp, will return to Munchkinland to mount a more aggressive campaign against the EC than Nessarose ever did.

Elphaba Thropp is vanquished.

The so-called Wicked Witch of the West, onetime agitator, now recluse, is subdued by the powerful Dorothy Gale.

The Wizard of Oz abdicates the throne.

The Wizard had held power for almost forty years. The reasons for his departure remain a matter of speculation.

THE TWIN INTERREGNUMS

Lady Glinda Chuffrey, née Upland, is briefly installed as Throne Minister.

The Animal Adverse laws are revoked, to little effect; Animals remain skeptical of their chances of being reintegrated into human society in Oz.

The Scarecrow replaces Glinda as Throne Minister.

The Scarecrow, a figure of uncertain provenance, is often assumed to have been installed as Throne Minister by palace apparatchiks sympathetic to Shell Thropp, an ambitious upstart engaged in mercenary espionage. The Scarecrow proves to be a weak figurehead—a straw man, figuratively as well as literally—but his tenure allows Shell Thropp to avoid having had to challenge the popular Lady Glinda for the leadership. The Scarecrow’s whereabouts following the end of his abbreviated realm are never revealed.

Some historians hold that the Scarecrow serving as Throne Minister was not the same Scarecrow who befriended Dorothy, though this assertion is unverifiable.

THE EMPEROR APOSTLE

Shell Thropp installs himself as Emperor of Oz.

The youngest of the three Thropp siblings, Shell claims rights of ascendancy through an adroit manipulation of Palace power brokers.


from Wicked

IN CAME A BOY from Three Queens rolling a table like a tea tray. On it, crouched as if to make itself as small as possible, was a lion cub. Even from the balcony they could sense the terror of the beast. Its tail, a little whip the color of mashed peanuts, lashed back and forth, and its shoulders hunched. It had no mane to speak of yet, it was too tiny. But the tawny head twisted this way and that, as if counting the threats. It opened its mouth in a little terrified yawp, the infant form of an adult roar. All over the room hearts melted and people said, Awwwwww.

Hardly more than a kitten, said Doctor Nikidik. I had thought to call it Prrr, but it shivers more often than it purrs, so I call it Brrr instead.

The creature looked at Doctor Nikidik, and removed itself to the far edge of the trolley.

Now the question of the morning is this, said Doctor Nikidik. Picking up from the somewhat skewed interests of Doctor Dillamond…who can tell me if this is an Animal or an animal?

Elphaba didn’t wait to be called on. She stood up in the balcony and launched her answer out in a clear, strong voice. Doctor Nikidik…. It seems to me the answer is that its mother can. Where is its mother?…Why is it taken from its mother at such an early age? How can it even feed?

Those are impertinent questions to the academic issue at hand, said the Doctor. Still, the youthful heart bleeds easily. The mother, shall we say, died in a sadly timed explosion…


Deposition of an Oracle

• 1 •

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.

• 2 •

THE OTHER maunts gave no credit to the drunken gibberish of their cowardly novice. They assumed she had succumbed to panic at the threat of war. Immediate war, local war. You could smell it in the air, like laundry soap, or an ailment in the sewers.

From the occasional evacuee who stopped to water his horses, Sister Hospitality gleaned what news she could. She broke her vows of circumspection to share with her fellow maunts what she learned.

By late spring, the four divisions of Emerald City foot soldiers massed on the north bank of the Gillikin River had been joined by a fifth and a sixth. Conscription having thinned the countryside of its farmhands, General Cherrystone released teams of men to assist in harvesting first-growth olives and early kindle-oat. The army then requisitioned most of what it had gathered as its fee for helping out.

Indeed, whispered Sister Hospitality, tavern owners are said to be bricking up the better ale behind false walls. Their wives eavesdrop on tipsy officers and gossip over conflicting rumors. No one is sure of anything. Is the army constructing an underground canal into Munchkinland, to leach the great lake of its water? Is a new weapon being perfected upriver that will make an invading army invincible? Or are these maneuvers merely war games to intimidate the Munchkinlanders into making concessions?

Her confidantes shook their heads, dizzy with the intrigue of it, which seemed oddly like life in a mauntery except more so.

The mood of the season, hissed Sister Hospitality. Pray for peace but hide your wallets and your wives, and send your children away if you can.

The maunts were infected with this impulse even though they had no wallets, wives, or offspring to bother about.

Sister Hospitality, peering with relish through the peekhole in the porter’s lodge, allowed her mind to roam beyond what she could actually see, elaborating on the square of visible landscape with fond remembered notions of the wider world.

Despite armed conflict, fields of wheat will grow taller, she thought, the color of bleached linen. They will pull this way and that in the breezes. Sparrows will wheel at the sound of gunfire, horses rear and dig at the air, pigs dive under their troughs.

In households? Pots go without blacking, sheets without blueing, and water drops on goblets dry into the housemaid’s nightmare: poxy glass. Aprons go unironed. Upstairs grannies go unvisited. Shiny knives and spoons cloud with a mat of tarnish, as if hoping to hide in the coming gloom.

The unvisited grannies, in stone houses by the wheat field, can’t remember their husbands or children. They worry their hands, though, hands that could do with a rinsing. The grannies think:

We start out in identical perfection: bright, reflective, full of sun. The accident of our lives bruises us into dirty individuality. We meet with grief. Our character dulls and tarnishes. We meet with guilt. We know, we know: the price of living is corruption. There isn’t as much light as there once was. In the grave we lapse back into undifferentiated sameness.

Sister Hospitality paused in her reveries, not knowing if she was thinking her own thoughts or imagining some unknown crone’s. She slammed shut the small panel and returned to her chores.

In the garden, no one approached with a rake to pull away last year’s matted leaves. The tulips came up crippled. The bas-relief pagan goddess, sculpted into the western wall before unionism had commandeered this ancient temple site for a cloister, had grown a beard of winter moss: no one pulled it away. A useful disguise in time of war, maybe. Who could fuss over that?

Maybe the Unnamed God would grace them yet. Maybe the coming war would prove to be rumor, fear, nothing more.

The apple blossoms trembled and fell. No one gathered them.

The cats lost their chance to practice hunting, as even the mice had fled.

In the herb garden, a spiderweb grew on the sundial. No one swept it away. On bright days, laddered shadows crept across the oxidizing numerals, giving the numbered hours new accents, one by one, until the sun went down or the clouds came in. Any variety of darkness can silence a sundial.

Maybe there would be no armed conflict, the maunts commented encouragingly. But each maunt in her own way felt the curse of war’s inevitability.

Sister Laundry would no longer dry the sheets in the sun, for they looked like white flags of surrender and no one wanted soldiers garrisoned in the mauntery. Sister Hospitality began refusing shelter to wanderers through these isolated reaches, lest they turn out to be secret agents. Behind closed doors, Sister Apothecaire availed herself of a calming beverage usually reserved for those in medical distress. Sister Petty Cash had bad dreams. The cost of war, she murmured, her voice trailing off.

We’ve no reason to fear either army, insisted Sister Doctor, when the subject came due for an update at Council. Three weeks ago, when the Munchkinland marauders swept by, making their inept preemptive strike into Loyal Oz, they didn’t stop to rape and plunder us as they passed. They hoped to wreak havoc on the Emperor’s forces massing to the west, but it appears the upstarts have managed only to wreak a spot of bother. Sisters, be sensible. Now the Munchkinlanders are in—what’s it called?—hot retreat. Fleeing for their lives. They’ll be too distracted to drop in for a refreshment while they’re being pushed back to their own borders. Lighten up.

The maunts, pledged to obedience, tried to lighten up, though Sister Doctor’s customary brusqueness of diagnosis seemed, perhaps, inadequate to riddles of military strategy.

Still, the House of Saint Glinda in the Shale Shallows, meant to be remote from worldly concerns, stood this month like a Gillikinese sycamore trying to camouflage itself in a Quadling rice paddy. An exceedingly prominent target. There was no other establishment in the district so capacious, so securable, so fitted with supplies. Most of the maunts felt it was only a matter of time. And when the time came, which army would knock at the doors? The home team or the rebel rabble? The well-trained Emerald City army forces or the Munchkinlander militia, that ad hoc volunteer swarm? Though the mauntery stood in Loyal Oz, the maunts, by dint of their spiritual allegiances, considered displays of patriotism inappropriate, if not gauche. Though they did wonder: Would either adversary show mercy to the self-quarantined isolates of a religious order?

Of course they will, argued Sister Doctor from the lectern. We are the exemplars of mercy. We set the standard, and an army has no choice but to respect our standards.

The maunts nodded, respectful but unconvinced. Men were beasts. Everyone knew that. It’s why most of the women had entered the mauntery in the first place.

Dinner conversation revolved around nothing but military operations. These days the women had to raise their voices to be heard above the sound of military skirmishes. Practice charges, they hoped. Trees were being felled for the construction of catapults: Who could think properly with all that racket? Who could pray—or, put another way, who could stop praying?

To add injury to insult, a projectile of flaming pitch and straw went astray and landed on the leads of the chapel, so the Council was burdened with the added annoyance of home repair. It was impossible to persuade skilled trade to venture behind the battle lines. Sister Hammer did what she could, but even so.

Nightly, from the bluestone bartizans, Sister Doctor reviewed the campfires of opposing forces as they shifted back and forth, west and east. A sally, a retreat: one could read the campaign from this height. Mutton for supper; one could smell the menu.

Blinking with encouragement, she reported that the Emerald City brigades looked set to push the Munchkinlander upstarts back to their borders and perhaps beyond, farther east, right into Munchkinland proper. Sister Apothecaire, a displaced Munchkin of the shorter sort, wasn’t able to suppress a bark of affront at this naked sympathy for the Throne. So Sister Doctor shut up about the rumor that the Emperor was going to use the Munchkinlanders’ misadventure as an excuse to invade and to capture the lake of Restwater, finally to sever dissident Munchkinland, the breadbasket of Oz, from its own water supply. Political pundits had long predicted this action: The Munchkinlander militias had cooked their own goose, but good. Done Loyal Oz a great service, they had, by ceding the moral high ground, handing their enemy a legitimate reason to retaliate. Very smart of them. The little morons.

Remember to breathe, advised Sister Doctor to her companions. It is, after all, the secret of life.

Obediently, the maunts breathed, if not much easier, and they sang songs of gratitude for having been spared—for those who had been spared, they took pains to remember.

They paid for their neutrality in baskets of apples, in buckets of water pulled from their well. They fed the professional Emerald City Messiars as fully as, three weeks earlier, they had fed the stumpy little Munchkinlander farmer-soldiers. They never stinted at feeding the hungry, as long as the portions could be lowered over the wall in a basket, as long as the hungry didn’t need spoon-feeding. There was a limit to everything: eggs, bandages, breath, even mercy. If the maunts beggared themselves, who would be left to offer even half a mercy?

When Sister Doctor and her lowly and disgruntled colleague, Sister Apothecaire, went forth to tend to the wounded, they left by a back door, and under cover of darkness.

• 3 •

SOME MILES south—away from the nickering of cavalry horses, the cloudy antiphons of the maunts—the nighttime sounds of Oz took on a more arbitrary rhythm. A breeze in the higher branches of trees. The percussive thunk of a frog objecting to his neighbors. Silky passage of water snake, chirr of midnight mosquito. Woodland Oz going about its nocturnal business. Adequate peace.

Safely buried in deep forest, the infallible Clock counted out the seconds of its life in waltzing ticks like hazelnuts dropping into a wooden bucket. Tik tik tok, tik tik tok.

The dwarf and his company of superstitious boys snored on. The Clock’s only female attendant, a woman of uncertain age, kept the night watch against reconnaissance scouts or beasts or light-fingered mendicants. She was still new to this troupe—and she owed them her life—so she did what she was told, picking up what information she could as it fell her way.

She’d learned that now and then, sometimes for years at a stretch, the Clock of the Time Dragon dropped out of sight. The acolytes of the Clock would shutter up the preposterous thing. They trusted in its own infernal charms to protect it. And maybe the boys were sensible enough to do so. Whenever the sergeant-at-hand called back the company—a few starry-eyed converts compensating for any no-shows—they apparently always found their treasure in working trim. Sometimes it would be overgrown with forest ivy or moss. Dead leaves, tendrils of cobweb. Perhaps a kind of natural camouflage the Clock called to itself. It didn’t matter. The handmade masterpiece snapped right back to business. The play of its gears remained deft, the tension in its belts and chains keen. Its mechanical advantage was said to have been augmented by a stubbornly adhesive magic.

The night watchwoman, a novice in service of the Clock, had asked the sergeant-at-hand their destination.

We meander as whimsy dictates unless the Clock gives explicit advice, he’d answered. Whimsy is fate, too: just less knowable.

Did whimsy bring you to rescue me, Mr. Boss, she asked, or were you bound by advice?

That’s what they all want to know. The sergeant-at-hand, a dwarf with regrettably sloppy habits of dental hygiene, leered his mustardy smile. But it’s confidential, my darling, my dimple. Trade secrets indeedy.

For five weeks the self-appointed acolytes had been pushing and dragging the towering Clock, which was mounted on a wheeled flatbed. They kept away from farmhouses, going overland through pastures and paddocks. If they had to pass through a small village, they waited till midnight.

The equipage rocked and lurched like a small ornate ship on stony seas. Above, the clockwork dragon supervised. How much of Oz those dull eyes had taken in. Oz rehearsing itself, rearranging itself decade after decade. Whimsy and fate, destiny and accident. The fall of the house of Ozma, the dirty years of the Wizard, the rise of impeccable Shell, holy Emperor of Oz. Fortunes, in any case: changeable fortunes converted into the changeless facts of biography by every passing tick of its mechanisms.

After the Clock had rescued her, its sergeant-at-hand had briefed the newest convert. We pick our way with superior caution, the dwarf told her. Everything’s tinder-hot now and ready to conflagrate. We have our task. The Clock tells us so. Quietly, quickly, like mice stealing between the toes of battling manticores and basilisks, we inch forward as we’re told.

Imagine what it’s seen since we last brung it along to an audience, one beardless boy said. Imagine the stupefied Squirrel or idiot Monkey coming across this in the greenwood! Sitting all ’lone and full of itself, like a pagan temple! Without us to service it, you think our smoky friend here would rouse itself and deliver a pronouncement?

For a chattering Monkey? Get real. That ever happen, I’d like to see so! Fun for the Monkey who goes shrieking mad and he drop right out of his tree!

The dwarf knew, but did not say, that in those quiescent periods in the forsaken outlands, creatures did creep up to sniff, to examine, even to climb over the peculiar heap of marvels. A dense woods is not off-limits to its own residents. And woodland creatures take notice of everything invading their territory, including fate.

Monkeys, venerable and caustic, lost no opportunity to chitter. Parrots, much given to expressing their opinions, gossiped in serrated squawks. Younger, more timid habitants approached in their own time. A garter snake and his sister. A raccoon with a tendency to morbid depression. The odd lion cub among them.

The newest vigil keeper didn’t worry so much about animals. Let them come up and sniff. It was men she avoided as best she could. So she liked this task of midnight watch. In company but still alone. The lads in a loose jumble of limbs, their wizened old sergeant-at-hand shifting in his creaking hammock. She could move around as she liked. It wasn’t that, if awake, this lot would plague her much. They knew better. But she enjoyed the privacy. To the veteran of prison, solitude can offer few unsavory surprises.

She removed her shawl and hung it on a branch, and with steps that whispered in the pine needles, she approached the water. A small cove of Restwater, Oz’s inland sea, made an intimate bathing chamber. Once out of sight of her sleeping companions—out of sight should they awaken, that is—she unfastened the clasps of her tunic and lifted it over her shoulders. Beneath, she wore a binding sheath, which she loosened and began to remove, folding it back upon itself as she exposed her stomach and then her breasts.

She wasn’t thinking of her breasts, still full and high, though the hormone-whipped lads often did. She was thinking of white paper and dark ink, and the difficulty and danger of scoring a page with lines of ink, to make it sing, if it could. If she could make it.

But if it sang, perhaps it would say something other than she intended. Perhaps it couldn’t help but say who she was, where she was, though she kept all things hidden that she could manage.

Books could seem to unleash all the hallelujahs of hell—she had known one that could, in her past; it was a volume of enchantments known as the Grimmerie—but even books that did not detonate into history, as the Grimmerie had, could still whisper their private secrets. And her appetite to write was countermanded by a dread of being read and recognized.

Her breasts, loosened from their cotton corset, itched; they rolled outward, toward her biceps. Absentmindedly she caressed first one and then the other with the back of her hand. Then she untucked the sash that secured her skirts. She hung the skirts on nearby branches, further curtaining herself from mortal eyes, should any be open.

Before she stepped into the still water, she ran the fingers of her right hand along the scar between her legs. This was not for pleasure—there was no pleasure left—but as a test of assurance that the seal had not been broken.

Solitude, continence, silence: custody of her own history; custody of any future that might have descended from her, squawking and looking to suck.

Satisfied. More than satisfied, relieved, she arched a foot to enter the water. But before she did, she saw in the

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