2005; 329 pages. New Author? : No, but it’s been a while. Book 2 (out
of 4) of “The
Wicked Years” series. Genre :
Revisionist Fairy Tale. Overall Rating :
7*/10.
The
paying passengers won’t like it, but Oatsie Manglehand can’t just leave him lying there. The poor lad is unconscious, his
clothes are shredded, and he’s bleeding to death from huge scratches all over
his body.
There
isn’t time for the Grasstrail Train to stop and bury the dying soul. But there is time to pick him up and just dump him
on the doorstep of the nearby Cloister of Saint Glinda. It would take a miracle to save him, but at
least the maunts there can facilitate things by praying him into the next
world.
But
the eldest of the maunts vaguely remember the young man, from his stay there many
years ago. He was just a boy back then, and was in the company of a witch. A very special witch. Elphaba.
There were rumors, never verified, that she was his mother. And he had a name, which one of the maunts remembers after much deliberation.
Liir.
What’s To Like...
Son of a Witch is the sequel to Gregory Maguire’s
best-seller, Wicked (reviewed here). Liir, a minor character (IIRC) in the first book, now takes center stage. For a while, the chapters bounce around
between Liir in the present (a young man), flashbacks of his life immediately following Wicked, and a couple of maunts (“nuns”) investigating some mutilation killings, albeit with some understandable trepidation.
The characters are a pleasant mix of holdovers from the first book
(mostly in the flashbacks) and new beasts, Beasts, and beings. The book is well-written, and is a
vocabularian’s delight. The author
offers some pithy insights on Religion, Politics, War, Ethics, Animal Rights,
and Prophecy; and the interconnection of all of them.
For quite a while the pacing is poor and the storyline meanders
aimlessly along. But if you stick it out
until 62%-Kindle - which is when the flashbacks end and everything thereafter proceeds linearly forward –the action picks up and the storyline comes into focus. The ending is particularly strong.
There is a lot of R-Rated stuff: adult language, masturbation, gay sex,
and “forced” straight sex. I suppose
this is because Maguire is trying to tell a darker version of the Wizard of Oz
tale, but frankly it felt awkward and unnecessary. OTOH, Wicked
was equally “R”, and that was a smashing success, so maybe it’s just me.
For
the most part, SoaW was a plodding and somewhat
confusing read for me – partly due to the aforementioned pacing, partly due to
the fact that it had no reference point (Book 1 has The Wizard of Oz), and partly due to a 6-year
personal reading gap between Wicked
and Son Of A Witch. There were characters to recall, and
specialized “Ozzian” parlance (maunts, Quadlings, menaciers, animals/Animals, etc.)
to fathom out again. A bare-bones
backstory is inserted around 4%-Kindle, via one of the maunt’s musings, but
things would’ve gone smoother with a glossary/appendix or two.
Kewlest New Word...
Wiftier (adj.)
: Ditzier; Sillier; More Eccentric.
Others : Loggia
(n.); Colloquy
(n.); Epibolically (adv.); Fillip (n.); Stroppy (adj., a Britishism);
Chilblained (adj.); Flitch (n.).
I never did find an apt definition for ‘flitch’.
Excerpts...
He’d left the
unionist mauntery too young to absorb any of the tenets of faith that supported
the cloistered way of life. From the
distance of a skeptical adolescent, unionism seemed like a thicket of
contradictions. Charity to all, but
intolerance toward the heathen. Poverty
ennobles, but the Bishops had to be richer than everyone else. The Unnamed God made the good world,
imprisoning the rebellious human being within it, and taunting humankind with
tinderbox sexuality that must be guarded against at all odds. (loc. 499)
“I can’t be in
danger here. Look, what? Are the very elm leaves going to wreathe up
by magic and smother me?”
“Something
attacked you six weeks ago, and for a reason,” she reminded him.
“I had a flying
broom. Of all things. No reason more than that.”
“You had the
power to fly on it, too.”
“An ant has the
power to wander aboard an eagle.” (loc.
3400)
Kindle Details...
Son
of a Witch sells for $3.99 at Amazon. The other three books in the series are in
the $4.99-8.00
price range. Gregory Maguire has another
dozen or so books available for the Kindle, the majority of which have a
“Fractured Fairy Tale” motif, in the $1.99-$8.99 range.
“The world is the womb now, and the Afterlife waits for one to be
born into it.” (loc.
294)
At
its core, Son of a Witch is a story about a small-yet-tenacious
uprising against the Emperor, that started with Elphaba and is helped along by
Liir. If you keep that in mind while
reading the book, the plotline will seem a lot less disjointed.
If
you read SoaW as a coming-of-age story about
Liir, you’ll find it to be a slow, and oftentimes an aimless slog. Liir visits a prison (Southstairs), attends a
bird conference, and peels a ton of potatoes in the Home Guard. Yawn.
It’s even worse if (as I did) you thought you'd be reading a “Looking for Nor” adventure story.
You will be chasing a chimera, because Nor is nothing more than a
literary MacGuffin here.
So it is not surprising that the book left me feeling a bit underwhelmed. Upon reflection, however, it dawned on me that I had approached it wrong. This is a series about a rebellion. Nor may or may not ever show up again.
7 Stars. The strength of Gregory Maguire’s writing is
countered by the not-very-focused storytelling. The next book in the series, A Lion Among Men, is on my TBR shelf, and I will read it with a different expectation. Add 1 star if you read this book for the sedition, not
for the seeking.
No comments:
Post a Comment