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Self-discovery in Fairyland: Gregory Maguire’s Son of a Witch

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Published on December 30, 2010

Son of a Witch by Gregory Maguire
Son of a Witch by Gregory Maguire

Wicked sold well enough that ten years later, following a long standing Oz tradition, Gregory Maguire wrote a sequel, Son of a Witch. Like the first novel, this was a hit (if apparently less popular than the first novel, if online bookstores are anything to go by), and like the first novel, it plunged into the questions of evil and choices. Unlike the first novel, it seemed more inclined to explore the Oz it had created, leaving Baum’s more secure, joyous world behind—even as the book returned to more of what most would probably be called adventure.

Son of a Witch, as the title suggests, is the story of Liir, the probable son of Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West. It starts on a stark note, as his broken body is found under mysterious circumstances, and it ends on a slim and fragile note of hope and forgiveness.

Injured and broken, Liir is brought back to life by music: the playing of a mysterious Quadling girl called Candle. The music also restores his memories, allowing Maguire to tell Liir’s story in a slow flashback. This is where the adventure comes in: Liir joins Dorothy and her friends on a trip to the Emerald City, where he meets Glinda, explores a prison, joins an army, and eventually heads off to the Quadling Country with the army of the Emerald City.

The invasion into the Quadling Country is meant as a rescue mission: it grows into an occupation, and then things go terribly wrong. It is almost impossible not to draw parallels with Iraq and Afghanistan, although to be fair, Maguire could probably not have foreseen the extent of either when he was writing this book. Or maybe, as a deep set pessimist, he could, and meant the entire Quadling Country sideplot as a warning, as well as an example to what happens to the aimless and neglected when asked to commit evil.

Unlike his putative mother, Liir turns to unquestioned evil, unadulterated by idealism. Not simply through following orders, either: many of his evil actions are taken to protect himself, or to quell an internal discomfort, or for both (as when Liir drives a fellow soldier into suicide.) Eventually, this becomes too much, and Liir flees the army, if not the past he knows, returning us to the beginning of the book, and the next part of the tale, filled with dragons and birds and dying elephants and the Emerald City.

This is a story of how even a seemingly distant war and training for that war can destroy or nearly destroy a person. The war exiles Candle from her home; further drives the lost Liir into acts of evil; and later shatters Trism, not to mention some dragons and those birds. I like to think that it is the very abandonment of the pacifist ideals of Oz that has created this situation; an Oz where everyone is focused on having fun and adventure is, not surprisingly, kinder on the mind and ego than this one, filled with spies, betrayal, torture and severe self-doubt.

In the comments on the last post, one person noted that Wicked seemed to him to be more of an anti-fanfic, not a deliberate response to anything in Baum, but rather an original novel with Oz elements grafted on. I’m not at all certain this is true for Wicked, but I must admit, my mind slipped back more than once to this comment as I read through the first half of the book, where, whatever the presence of Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman and the Cowardly Lion, Oz seems left far behind, a sense that only grows as Liir leaves these familiar figures and Glinda. It is almost as if, having established in the earlier book that this is very much not the original Oz, Maguire felt free to run with his own creations, his own imagination, no longer as concerned about reworking Oz.

But then, Liir runs into an old woman and a boy named Tip, clearly visiting from The Marvelous Land of Oz (and a scene that I’m hoping gets followed up in later books), and later into the Hungry Tiger, jolting me back, just a little, into Oz again. And the appearance of Iskinaary, the Grey Goose, seems meant at the very least as a homage to Magic of Oz, if not an outright appearance of one of Oz’s most frequently appearing villains. (If the second, I can only hope that Maguire does a better job in the next two books with Ruggedo than some of Baum’s successors.)

In many ways, Son of Witch is a better crafted novel than its predecessor, making better use of narrative and literary techniques, taking more confidence in the world it has created, and proceeding at a much more sustained pace. And yet, this craft does not prevent the work from occasional slowness and dreariness, and I must agree with the commentators who warned that this could be a very depressing work. Part of the problem is that a descent into evil is not always that fun to read about, particularly if the person descending isn’t having much fun, either—gleeful villains rubbing their hands in joy may be irritating, but they are at least having fun. One or two of the jokes, particularly the one on page 255 of the hardcover edition, are just a little too clever, a little too self-referential, and some of the minor characters (especially at Saint Glinda’s) are just irritating.

And once again, I find myself troubled by some of Maguire’s implications, particularly the thought that people who do not know where they come from—in particular, not knowing their parentage and history—are more likely to become lost and troubled, and more likely to drift towards evil. I am not entirely sure that my friends who are adopted but never met their birth parents would agree either. And I’m certain that L. Frank Baum, with his self-confident orphans, American hobos, and proudly created creatures with no parentage at all, would not.

The ending will not satisfy those who need things in their novels wrapped up, even if untidily. Questions abound, perhaps because with this novel, Maguire knew he could continue the story. (I have not yet read the next novel, so I’m not sure if Maguire does, but even if the answers don’t appear in the next novel, Maguire reportedly has at least one more novel planned for the series, and with the world he has created, could conceivably write far more.) Perhaps because Maguire wants to remind us that real life is rarely as tidy as the fairy tales of Oz. And perhaps because many of the questions have nothing to do with Liir’s growing self-knowledge and acceptance; the last line of the novel does, after all, say quite a lot.

But I did find myself curious to understand Liir, to find out if he could climb back from the abyss he and Oz had created, to find out if he could ever learn who he was, or would always be wondering, and wondered about this Oz, so different from the joyous land of adventure and acceptance. I liked the casual acceptance of bisexuality, the rich development of Maguire’s Oz, the well depicted political floundering that follows the Wizard’s departure. And I found myself utterly believing in the bleak picture Maguire created, of the effects of bureaucracy and war on the lost, even as I found myself hoping that Ozian life will be a little kinder to the Cowardly Lion in the next book.


Mari Ness found that this book is considerably less depressing when consumed with holiday cookies. She lives in central Florida.

About the Author

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Mari Ness

Author

Mari Ness spent much of her life wandering the world and reading. This, naturally, trained her to do just one thing: write. Her short fiction and poetry have appeared in numerous print and online publications, including Clarkesworld Magazine, Apex Magazine, Daily Science Fiction, Strange Horizons and Fantasy Magazine.  She also has a weekly blog at Tor.com, where she chats about classic works of children’s fantasy and science fiction.  She lives in central Florida, with a scraggly rose garden, large trees harboring demented squirrels, and two adorable cats. She can be contacted at mari_ness at hotmail.com. Mari Ness spent much of her life wandering the world and reading. This, naturally, trained her to do just one thing: write. Her short fiction and poetry have appeared in numerous print and online publications, including Clarkesworld Magazine, Apex Magazine, Daily Science Fiction, Strange Horizons and Fantasy Magazine.  She also has a weekly blog at Tor.com, where she chats about classic works of children’s fantasy and science fiction.  She lives in central Florida, with a scraggly rose garden, large trees harboring demented squirrels, and two adorable cats. She can be contacted at mari_ness at hotmail.com.
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