A Lion Among Men (Wicked Years book 3 of 4) by Gregory Maguire (book review).
‘A Lion Among Men’ is the third in the four book series ‘The Wicked Years’ by Gregory Maguire.
This book focuses on Brrr and his task, given to him by the Emerald City, is to find and interrogate Yackle to discover the whereabouts of Grimmerie. Brrr and Yackle spend a lot of time going over previous events to try to figure out what happened to the Grimmerie along with a lot of the characters from previous books. A lot of this centres on Elphaba Thropp and what happened after her death. Brrr and Yackle exchange stories while trying not to give too much away as the Emerald City sends its armies closer and closer.
I need to say that I didn’t enjoy the previous two books in this series and I also did not enjoy this book. The writing style is not for me, the characters all irritated me, I often had no clue what on earth was going on. Basically this book was not for me at all, but that’s not to say someone out there might like it.
With regards the odd writing style. It always seems to feel quite convoluted and confusing for not real reason other than to cause me confusion. It reads like some kind of old fairy tale, but then there are random acts that are quite gross and shocking. I’m honestly not sure why this was done as it just didn’t allow me as a reader to sink into the story. I often found myself simply reading the words and not really knowing what they were meant to mean. I understood the words but in the sentences that were constructed they just didn’t seem to make any sense or maybe I’m just not smart enough to understand.
I did find some elements of the story interesting when taken on their own as we see some characters we’ve already been introduced to. We can see some stories from a different angle to the one we’ve previously read which was interesting if a little repetitive. Plus Brrr does get to meet some interesting new characters but they were all just so odd and confusing I didn’t really understand what the point of many of them was. These little interesting bits were great but they were like little nuggets of gold in amongst a lot of dross and they weren’t enough to make the book good for me.
Along with reading the majority of this book, I also listened to some of it which made a nice change. I did find it all a lot easier to understand in the audio version but it still didn’t really hold my attention. So you can’t say I haven’t given this book or even this series the absolute best chance to catch my attention.
Overall, this was really not an enjoyable or easy read for me and I can’t see me reading the last one in the series.
Sarah Bruch
February 2021
(pub: William Morrow, 2008. 212 page hardback. Price: £20.00 (UK). ISBN: 978-0-06054-892-6
check out website: www.harpercollins.com/collections/william-morrow
