A Lion Among Men
core novel 2008 The Wicked Years
Record
| First published | 2008 |
|---|---|
| Original language |  EN |
| Work type | novel |
| Canon status | core |
| Reader rating | 3.36 (33,863 ratings, collected 2026-09-11) |
| First-edition ISBN | 9780060548926 |
| Internal chronology | 3 |
Synopsis
A Lion Among Men shifts the Wicked Years series' focus to the Cowardly Lion, here named Brrr, who recounts his own life story under interrogation by a dying oracle named Yackle in exchange for information she holds about Elphaba. Set against the backdrop of a civil war threatening to engulf Oz, the novel traces Brrr's uncertain and often humiliating past, including how a talking Animal comes to occupy such an ambivalent place in Ozian society, as he searches for answers about the Wicked Witch of the West's true nature and his own tangled history with her legend. The third installment in the series widens the Wicked Years' cast of narrators beyond Elphaba's immediate circle to examine Oz's turmoil from the perspective of one of its more marginal figures.
Where it sits
- Universe: The Wicked Years
- Series: The Wicked Years core; position 3 of 4 in the series' recorded order
- Author: Gregory Maguire
Notes
- From the series record (The Wicked Years): Complete four-novel quartet (1995-2011) reframing L. Frank Baum's Oz from the witches' side, beginning with Elphaba's life story. Wicked is the basis for the hit Broadway musical and 2024/2025 film adaptations. A separate, unrelated work from this project's already-admitted L. Frank Baum Oz universe (a deliberate retelling of it, not the same underlying continuity).
Neighbouring works
Publication order and internal chronology are tracked as two separate orderings, but they resolve to the exact same sequence for this book, so one combined line is shown instead of two identical ones.
- Reading order, within the series The Wicked Years: position 3 of 4: previous Son of a Witch (2005) · next Out of Oz (2011)
Sources
- Wikipedia: The Wicked Years
- Wikipedia: Wicked (Maguire novel)
- Reader rating aggregator: Gregory Maguire author list
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Lion_Among_Men
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