Title: Son of A Witch (The Wicked Years #2)
Author: Gregory Maguire
ISBN-13: 0060548932
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Pub. Date: September 2005
Binding: Hardcover
Pages: 337 pp
Genre: Fantasy
Read: 11/1/05 – 12/28/05
Where Obtained: Personal Library
Reason for Reading: BNUniversity author led book group. And because it’s the sequel to Wicked.
Rating: 6/10 (3/5)
Opening Line: SO THE TALK OF RANDOM BRUTALITY wasn’t just talk.
Synopsis:
From the Editors
Ten years after his tour de force Wicked, Gregory Maguire returns to the Land of Oz. Son of a Witch unspools the story of Liir, an adolescent boy who is discovered battered and comatose a decade after Elphaba melted into oblivion. Nursed back to health by the enigmatic Candle, this mysterious foundling is soon confronted by urgent questions: Is he Elphaba’s son? Does he himself possess magical powers? And where is Nor, the who is rumored to be his half-sister? A literate witchery well done.
From the Publisher
The long-anticipated sequel to the beloved and hugely successful novel Wicked, now Broadway’s #1 smash-hit musical.
When a Witch dies – to as a crone, withered and incapable, but as a woman in her prime, at the height of her passion ad prowess – too much is left unsaid. What might have happened had Elphaba lived? Of her campaigns in defense of Animals, of her appetite for justice, of her talent for magic itself, what good might have come? If every death is a tragedy, the death of a woman in her prime keenly bereaves the whole world. Ten years after the publication of Wicked, best-selling novelist Gregory Maguire returns to the land of Oz to follow the story of Liir, the adolescent boy left hiding in the shadows of the castle when Dorothy did in the Witch.
A decade after the Witch has melted away, the young man Liir is discovered bruised, comatose, and left for dead in a gully. shattered in spirit as well as in form, he is tended by the mysterious Candle, a foundling in her own right, until failed campaigns of his childhood bear late, unexpected fruit.
Liir is only one part of the world that Elphaba left behind. As a boy hardly in his teens, he is asked to help the needy in ways in which he may be unskilled. Is he Elphaba’s son? Has he power of his own? Can he liberate Princess Nastoya into a dignified death? Can he locate his supposed half-sister, Nor, last seen in shackles in the Wizard’s protection? Can he survive in an Oz little improved since the death of the Wicked Witch of the West? Can he learn to fly?
In Son of a Witch, Gregory Maguire suggests that the magic we locate in distant, improbable places like Oz is not greater than the magic inherent in any hard life lived fully, son of a witch or no.
Comments:
I so bummed by this book. I really wanted to love it, but I just wasn’t feeling it. I feel let down. It doesn’t even come close to living up to Wicked.
I loved the way the beginning of the story was told through Liir’s memories. I even liked the end bot at the farm, although it was no surprise. And the identity fo the Emperor was a surprise. I didn’t see that coming at all.
But overall, it just didn’t do it for me. Some things were tied up neatly, but too neatly and to in any special way. It left more questions than answers.
It was like watching The Two Towers. You know there’s more, but it feels like a filler. It felt…well… anti-climactic, I guess.
What was Maguire thinking? Was he hoping to simply ride on the success of Wicked? Or is there another book in-store? Was this simply the second in what will become a Wicked trilogy? I sure hope so. The more I think about it, the more this feels like a belly flop.
Quotes/Passages:
“He’s just like Santa Claus.” Dorothy’s eyes were bright with apostolic zeal.
“Don’t know what you mean.”
“Santa Claus? Jolly old elf? Magic as anything. At Christmas every year he comes to your home and leaves you treats, if you’re good. Or if you’re not, coal in your stockings. We don’t always have extra coal in Kansas so one he filled my stocking full of manure. I cried like the dickens but Uncle Henry said it was punishment for me singing too brightly in the hop pen. I was scaring the pigs shitless, he said, and here was the proof.”
“The Wizard of Oz puts manure in your socks?”
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Candle was not simple, not in the least, but her debility had made her a still person. She listened to church bells, when they pealed, trying to translate; she watched the way the paper husks of onion fell on the table, and examined the rings that onion mites had left parallel rows on the glossy wet inside. Everything said something, and it wasn’t her job to consider the merit or even the meaning of the message; just the fact of the message.
She was therefore a calmer person than most, for there seemed no dearth of messages fro the world to itself. She merely listened in.
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People say “My God!” all the time, but usually they mean “Oh shit.”
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Wisdom is not the understanding of mystery, she said to herself, not for the first time. Wisdom is accepting that mystery is beyond understanding. That what makes it mystery.
Recommendation: If you loved Wicked, stop there and cherish it. Don’t taint it with SoaW. If there does end up being another book, then go ahead and read Son. Otherwise… just let it be.
Edited to add: Since I’ve read this book, there have indeed been not one but 2 sequels. Reviews to follow as soon as I can get my hands on them.
Simply Christina 