To be honest... I'm getting frustrated with Maguire. His first book in the series (Wicked) has received national (if not global) acclaim, as it rightly should. I was originally entranced by Maguire's ability to reinvent Oz while still keeping the classical whimsical elements alive, in fact fleshing them out by putting them in a realistic and harsh reality of social commentary. However, with the introduction of Son of a Witch, about which he has said he never planned for, Maguire has gone on to t More...

So. The third book in what's now referred to as The Wicked Years. Alright. I adore Wicked, both in its written and musical forms. Son of a Witch was a decent sequel. And I was really excited when I learned that we'd get the Lion's perspective in all this.

Brrr is on Emerald City business, in search of the oracle Yackle, who was mentioned in Madame Morrible's notes. Why? Mostly in search of both The Grimmerie, Elphaba's book of magic, and Liir, her son. Yackle was often on the outskirts of Elphab More...

I really love Gregory Maguire's writing style, and I love where he has gone with this story over the three novels. The structure of this book, however, felt somewhat scattered--it wasn't until the end, the last few chapters, where I started to feel that it had any coherency, unlike in Son of a Witch, where although it may not have always been clear what the connections where exactly, they always felt like connections. I suppose this is due to the fact that the protagonist in this story had littl More...

The third book in Maguire's return to Oz fills in some gaps in the ongoing storyline, and has a few moments, but overall falls short of the entrancing epic of "Wicked."
I enjoyed the book, and am glad to have read it, but wouldn't put it in the 'classic' status like "Wicked" or in my "must read again" bookshelf.

Considering how much I enjoyed Wicked, and how much more I enjoyed Son of a Witch, I found A Lion Among Men disappointing. I was all geared up to find out what happens with Liir and you-know-what-from-the-end-of-Son of a Witch, but the third book in this series barely mentions him. Instead, this book focuses primarily on the Cowardly Lion and his life experiences, and touches a bit on Fiyero's daughter.
I found the author's language annoying, if not incomprehensible at times (or maybe I just did More...

I love Maguire's style and use of language. As he writes, I can hear his voice narrating and performing (which is why I won't spoil it with the audiobook, Maguire himself is a wonderful performer, and it was a delight to see him in person.) Lion is not as compelling as the previous two books, but gains momentum with the reappearance of Yackle, and the subsequent explanation of the character.

Maguire is a fantastic world builder and blew audiences away with Wicked back in 1995. Lion continues in this tradition, but offers no characters that differ greatly from those in Wicked. Maguire has a tendency of making all his characters very similar: Incredibly pessimistic and overly verbose. Often they sound like depressives who have just walked out of a thesaurus. But what is more unfortunate is that Maguire tries to substitute this pessimism for the guiding philosophy of the book. By empha More...

It took me ages to get into this book. It's not the best of the series by far. I didn't even Like Brr or Yackle. You do learn a lot more about Yackle though. It is funny in parts too. The ending left room for more books. Eh...

"Wicked" was fantastically drawn, while at the same time intriguingly vague and introspective. In my opinion it was a masterpiece. "Son of a Witch" and now "A Lion Among Men" only make blind attempts at creating the same mystique; they stumble along the way and end up a jumble of meaningless revelations that do nothing but create a more convoluted and less intriguing story. At the same time that story has none of the charm of "Wicked". Fleeting references to and reimaginings of the original Oz b More...

After the rushed feeling of "Son of a Witch", MacGuire redeems himself with this novel... it made me feel as if some wounds were healed for both the reader and the characters.

Disenchanted. That's what I am with Gregory Maguire. This book is almost completely backstory; we learn nothing more about Liir and Tristam and Candle and the new arrival. The part of the story that does advance moves only about 3 inches, and it was no mystery who the handmaiden of the clock is anyway. And Yackle's story--if you have to summarize it at the end, it wasn't well delivered. Speaking of the ending, it was ponderous, and Maguire could have done better than use a literal deux ex machin More...

I'll start this out simple; Maguire has yet to equal the writing he exhibited in Wicked. This being said, A Lion Among Men was a much stronger novel than Son of a Witch.

I don't get the sense that Maguire's writing abilities have improved since Wicked was published. Fortunately, he created a truly brilliant character back then in the form of Yackle. It is Yackle's presence that gives this novel much of its metaphysical spark and devious humor. She develops a rapport with the lion that is enterta More...

What a disappointment! Wicked was an act of amazing and original brilliance, taking a world that we are all familiar with, and turning it completely upside down. Brilliantly imagined and equally brilliantly realized, one of its strongest suits was the way in which Maguire took elements of the original books, (not just Wizard) and wove them together into a familiar and yet wholly new world.

Since then, his approach to the series feels labored and incomprehensible to me. Son of a Witch was weak, a More...

This book focuses on the Lion as its central character, who, after the brief time as part of Dorthy's entourage, becomes a very low-level government employee seeking information about the lost son of the Wicked Witch of the West. My general feeling at the end of the book was that the climax was unsatisfactory (and difficult even to determine), and the Lion's story seemed to begin in the middle and end before anything of importance happened. I never like to be set up for the next book. But this s More...

Arg! Just finished this last night, and it has the same curse as "Son of a Witch," in that it reveals just so much, but leaves you with so many more questions. I'd really hoped, for the satement of my curiosity, that this would be the last book, in which all is revealed. But, no. Which some day will be magnificent, when we sit down with the many books in this series, a cup of coffee, a warm blanket, and days and days ahead to gorge on this delightful brain candy. For now, I am agonized over the More...

This is the third book in the Wicked series and follows the Cowardly Lion as everybody keeps reminding him. Interestingly enough he is a misunderstood Animal who cannot seem to fit in the human world, nor the Animal world so playing on the feelings both societies have for him he acts as a spy to find information for the Wizard.....or is he?. It is interesting to follow the Lion before during and after the Dorothy meeting. We also got to learn a little bit about the Tin Man and a clock character. More...

i loved this. maguire writes in a way that really attaches the reader to the characters. the characters or fully realized with little idiosynchracies and foibles. this wasn't as interesting as his second "wicked" novel as i believe the second seemed to be more of a set up for something else. this one felt like a real continuation of the story. there were revelations and intrigue and it sparked a desire to know more. to have the story continue. i sort of fell in love with the cowardly lion despit More...

Why does Gregory McGuire insist on wirting about "heros" that you don't want to root for? He made the lion so repugnant, that I lost interest in the story after a few pages. The only reason I continued on was in some hopes that he would take all the loose ends that he created in his first two books, and tie them all up. Well, frankly, it didn't happen. And again, like the other two books, he took our main character's life, and spread it so thin that every event wouldn't only equal a page or two, More...

Brrr seeks out Yackle and the Grimmerie in a quest for answers and leads to his own past. Despite some criticism, I believe I liked A Lion Among Men better than Son of a Witch. While Son of a Witch continued the story of Wicked, it answered no questions about the strange occurrences in Wicked and added to the problems by raising story questions itself. A Lion Among Men answers some questions from Wicked, but fails to really continue the story of Liir. I was glad to see the Time Dragon Clock thin More...

By this book, there is little doubt in mind that Maguire captivates me in one of 3 ways. His prose, his painstaking abilities in Character definition, and a philosophical subtext which leaves one rapt through mid-novel portions that otherwise would have been tedious.
Just when everyone thought they would get a third book to tie up the mysteries of the first two, Maguire seems to have learned from the minor mistakes of the 2nd book as he previously attempted to abandon the the formula of Fairy tal More...

Continuing the saga of The Wicked Years, A Lion Among Men is the story of Sir Brrr, a.k.a. the Cowardly Lion of Oz, and his quest to find out his own origins. Also tasked by the throne of Oz with acquiring any information he can find about the late Elphaba Thropp, the Wicked Witch of the West, he comes to the mauntery known as the Cloister of Saint Glinda to interrogate an ancient oracle known as Yackle on what she might know about the dead witch. In return, Yackle wants some ansers of her own, More...

This is the third book in the "Wicked" series, best known to most now for the musical. I love the idea behind these books, taking the familiar Wizard of Oz characters and expanding their stories. This book I was a bit confused by as there had been a gap since I read the first two volumes, Wicked and Son of a Witch and there is lots of history and references to both. I would recommend these books but for sure start with Wicked. I'll be interested to see what others think of this series and author More...

It has been three long years since we last traveled to OZ. And much has changed.

The land, once joined together, is now separated into two parties: those that support the current Wizard of OZ and the Munchkinlanders who long to be free and their own people.

It is not the OZ we’ve come to know. It is an OZ on the brink of war and on the cusp of social change. Whether it is change for the better remains to be seen.

Heedless of the turmoil of OZ that surrounds him, Brr, The Cowardly Lion, is on a miss More...

An entirely enjoyable read - but one that, unlike its predecessors (within the 'Wicked Years' series) almost impossible to read with any sort of understanding without having read Wicked and/or Son of a Witch. As such, this more or less shifts 'The Wicked Years' from being a series of standalone novels to a series, with all of the incoherency that that implies. Obviously, being in a series isn't a bad thing, in the least - but when I buy a lovely, not-exactly-cheap hardbound book, I tend to expec More...

The first Wicked book was like Rosencranz and Guildenstern in that it took it's own mythology and crafted it on top of an existing structure, playing into and against the particulars of a story we all know. It felt kind of like a puzzle: you had the broad outline already and putting it together was fun.

As Maguire has gone deeper into this series, he's gone farther from the Baum mythology and into his own world with his own structures, which would be fine - if Maguire's framework were as strong a More...

Though I found the first book in the Wicked Years a bit rough around the edges and lacking in direction- a book wrapped all 'round about itself, with the bluster of a twister- I was thoroughly impressed by Son of a Witch, and so lept on this book with the hunger of a starving lion. At the same time, the "Oz as social commentary" thing- a school of thought with a long history- works for me, and I liked how the story was developed. I enjoyed A Lion Among Men more for the backstories it clears up, More...

"Hardly more than a kitten . . . I had thought to call it Prrr, but it shivers more often than it purrs, so I call it Brrr instead." —From Wicked Since Wicked was first published in 1995, millions of readers have discovered Gregory Maguire's fantastically encyclopedic Oz, a world filled with characters both familiar and new, darkly conceived and daringly reimagined. In the much-anticipated third volume of the Wicked Years, we return to Oz, seen now through the eyes of the Cowardly Lion—the once More...

I got this book with a gift card for $8.99. I really was torn between buying this copy and the pretty, larger one. But to get the most out of my "free money" I choose to get the smaller version. When buying a series I like to get the same style of book, so that my book shelf looks uniform in some way. But I wanted my money to stretch a little more in order to get more books.
This book, the third in the series covers the life of The Cowardly Lion. Once again we have a story that starts in the cur More...

If you were as excited by the style and language as much as the story of the first two installments of the series, "A Lion Among Men" will be another delightful read for you. Clearly, this volume in Maguire's "Wicked" series deals with the Cowardly Lion, Brrrr. As with the previous books, Maguire suffuses his characters with life and meaning that runs against what appears to be his natural inclination for glibness. As the book progresses, many of the questions that "Wicked" and "Son of a Witch" More...