Setting the Bar

Son of a Witch by Gregory Maguire picks up where Wicked leaves off - the death of Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West.

Elphaba has died, not as a withered, desiccated old lady but in her prime, as she’s getting ready to make things happen.  Would she have really changed things in Oz - with the Animals and her work on their behalf and on other fronts that she wasn’t able to explore due to her untimely death? A decade after her death, Liir, the young man whose parentage is unknown, is found by a group of maunts unconscious, bloody and on the brink of death himself. He is brought back to the nunnery of St. Glinda, the same one that Elphaba was at where she was nursed , to be nursed by the nuns there and by Candle, a novice in training, who manages to revive him with her ethereal and uncanny abilities to play music. The political climate is stressful - humans have been found skinned and bloodied throughout the land of Oz and wild outlanders are blamed for it. The land has become increasingly militarized.

This book explores Liir’s life from the date of Elphaba’s death, to his revival and beyond. It tracks Liir’s growth into a man as well as Oz’s political development. It is a a treatise to the behavior of leaders to their subjects as much as it is a treatise as to one’s development into their own person and a person’s relationship with religion. Maguire uses magical language and symbolism to convey his views; these words should be savored and gone through slowly, not simply plowed through, in order to get every little bit that is conveyed by Maguire. I enjoyed Maguire’s prose very much.  I didn’t like the seeminlyg gratuitous forays into bloodshed and sexual violence that Maguire sometimes wove into his tale.  The story could have done without quite easily.

All in all, though, definitely a worthwhile to read and for sure, a necessary addition to your personal library.

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