Review: Son of a Witch

Son of a Witch: A Novel by Gregory Maguire

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
I initially was extremely disappointed by this book. I read this book once and just didn't get into it. Liir as a main character just seemed far too much of a shadow of his supposed mother, Elphaba, seeming to have missed the genes for the ambition, drive, and talent that Elphaba possessed in spades. It was a difficult read, with Liir stumbling about the countryside obliviously running up against his fate and possessing little control of it. The story, while occasionally engaging, was fractured and lacked the clear forward drive that comes with a strong lead character. All of this I imagined to be the weaknesses of the book, keeping it in the shadow of "Wicked" in the same way that Liir was eclipsed by Elphaba.



"A Lion Amongst Men" came out recently, and in anticipation of another riveting story from Maguire, I reread 'Son of a Witch'. In my second time around, I recognized that I had missed the entire point of the book.



Son of a Witch is brilliant precisely BECAUSE it tackles the exact problems that I listed above. As our story opens, Liir is cast aside from all that he has ever known. Elphaba is dead, his extended family has been kidnapped, and he can't even keep the attention of the vacuous-yet-well-meaning Dorothy. Lacking any real skills, he is thrown, friendless, into a world that he doesn't understand and that is far beyond his control.



For the first half of the book, Liir is truly a pitiable soul. He loses his home, then he loses his innocence. Seeing the corruption of the world around him, he hides away and abandons those who he has decided he cannot help. Liir is constantly making comparisons between himself and the woman he imagines might be his mother. He fully understands how inadequate he is in this match-up and wastes only a little while on pity for himself before he gives up and throws his lot in with the soldiers of the Emerald City. Liir learns more of discipline in the army and he has time to catch up to his peers in learning and wisdom. When another betrayal and more evidence of corruption come up during his service, he has the skills to roll with the fate life has dealt him.



What follows is a remarkable blossoming of Liir's character. His lack of confidence and grace give way to a sort of bitter-sweet recognition of the way that the world works. He develops a well-honed sense of irony and healthy self-depreciating humor - one that was not immediately apparent to me during my first read, but which is all the more precious for being so well hidden.



In the end, Liir has become a hero, though he does not even recognize this himself. Perhaps this is because his heroics are not those fit for a bedtime story of Brothers Grimm. Instead, Liir is a well-rounded man of principals and compassion. He is a hero in a world where the princesses are not always innocent and lovely. A hero in a place where the dragons are still terrible, but less so than the Machiavellian schemes of the humans behind them. A hero in a time when one man, no matter how devoted, must recognize his own limitations and inability to remake the world in a better light.


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