A Lion Among Men (Wicked Years #3)

Focusing on the Cowardly Lion, the third in the Wicked Years series which started with Wicked, the multimillion-copy bestseller and basis for the Tony Award–winning hit musical, soon to be a major motion picture starring Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande.

In A Lion Among Men, Gregory Maguire continues to flesh 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 through 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?

About the Author

Gregory Maguire has written quite a few books for adults, including Wicked, which inspired the Broadway play and the two-part movie. He’s also written several dozen books for children, the more recent titles being What-the-Dickens, Egg & Spoon, and Cress Watercress, a Boston Globe–Horn Book Honor Book. 

Reviews

“Entertaining... The author mixes some relatively weighty existential themes—the search for self, faith, redemption—into his whimsical story line. [A] darkly enchanting saga” —Publishers Weekly

“This Oz goes far beyond L. Frank Baum’s; it’s as surreal as a dream, but as immaculately and impeccably detailed as history. Maguire’s wizardlike grasp over every aspect of this reinvented land rivals classic literary landscapes like Tolkien’s Middle Earth and Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County.” —Albany Times Union

“So well-crafted that readers of all ages could enjoy witnessing Brrrr’s transformation from an insecure kitten in the woods to a compassionate, engaged ‘manimal.’” —Christian Science Monitor

“The third book in Maguire’s Wicked Years is at once funny, charming, harrowing, bleak and incredibly beautiful.” —The American Chronicle

“The minute you open A Lion Among Men, you’re back in Maguire’s exquisitely detailed environment, caught up once again in his geography, his characters, his worldview, touched anew by the loneliness that lurks in the heart of all things.” —New Orleans Times-Picayune

Dimensions: 13.49 x 1.93 x 20.32