Book Three of The Wicked Years
Hey Belles & Beaus!
It’s time for another of my recent reads posts because I finally finished reading A Lion Among Men. It has taken me quite a while to finish it because to be honest, it just seemed to keep dragging on forever. It’s much less action in comparison to the first two books which seemed to more b
alanced between the politics of the story and the actual action.
In this much-anticipated third volume of the Wicked Years, we return to Oz, seen now through the eyes of the Cowardly Lion – the once tiny cub defended by Elphaba in Wicked. While civil war looms, a tetchy oracle named Yackle prepares for death. Before her final hour, an enigmatic figure known as Brrr – the Cowardly Lion – arrives searching for information about Elphaba Thropp, the Wicked Witch of the West. As payment, Yackle demands some answers of her own. Brrr surrenders his story: abandoned as a cub, his earliest memories are gluey hazes, and his life’s path is no Yellow Brick Road. A Lion Among Men chronicles a battle of wits hastened by the Emerald City’s approaching armies.
As I said this part of the Wicked Years stories comes as a battle of wits than there is actual fighting action as there had been in the first two books. Brrr, aka the Cowardly Lion, has been sent to find out the truth about Elphaba Thropp and her son Lirr, as well as to see if he could possibly discover the location of the Grimmerie, Elphaba’s spell book.
Brrr’s story is unfolded through this book, explaining how he came to be the Cowardly Lion. It also takes us through some of the enigmatic Yackle’s history as well as finally reveals why she seemed to play a role in both Elphaba and Lirr’s lives. I have to say finding out the answers to a lot of things in this book made me feel like I could handle this being the last book – though it isn’t – and it really did tie up a lot of my questions from the first two books.
You can of course go to my GoodReads account and see that I rated the book a 3 out of 5 stars. This is truly just because the story line seemed to drag on forever for me. I literally left this book on my shelf for the longest time, untouched, because the story line just didn’t move along. But as you can see I finally managed to finish it. It’s partially a necessary evil so that I can finish one of my favorite series.
What book gave you a hard time to get through? Or am I alone in that some books do this to me?
