Editors Reads Verdict
The third Wicked Years novel takes the most unexpected protagonist — the Cowardly Lion — and delivers Maguire's most sardonic and psychologically precise entry in the sequence, a novel about self-knowledge and the stories we tell ourselves.
What We Loved
- Brrr is a surprisingly complex and compelling protagonist — cowardly, self-aware, and darkly funny
- The interrogation structure — Brrr questioned by Yackle — creates useful narrative tension
- Maguire's satirical voice is sharper here than in the earlier Wicked Years entries
Minor Drawbacks
- The novel's limited scope may disappoint readers expecting the sweep of Wicked
- Brrr's passivity, which is the point, can make him a frustrating center for a 300-page novel
Key Takeaways
- → Self-knowledge is the most difficult kind of knowledge — we are always the last to know ourselves
- → Cowardice and survival are not identical, but they can be easy to confuse when you are the one doing both
- → History requires witnesses — those who look away are complicit in what they refused to see
| Author | Gregory Maguire |
|---|---|
| Publisher | William Morrow |
| Pages | 310 |
| Published | October 7, 2008 |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Fantasy, Literary Fiction, Revisionist Fiction |
The Coward’s Testimony
Of all the familiar figures in L. Frank Baum’s Oz, the Cowardly Lion is perhaps the most psychologically interesting for Maguire’s revisionist project — because his defining characteristic is an admission of failure, a quality that is both socially shameful and, in its honesty, oddly admirable. A Lion Among Men takes this character and gives him a full life history that explains, without excusing, how he became the creature Dorothy encountered.
Brrr — as the Lion is called — is telling his story to Yackle, an ancient oracle confined to a mauntery, in an interrogation whose purpose Brrr doesn’t fully understand. The interrogation structure gives the novel its frame: Brrr speaks, Yackle probes, and the gaps between what Brrr says and what actually happened slowly become visible.
A Life of Looking Away
The novel’s central examination is of cowardice as a sustained practice — not a single moment of failure but a pattern of choices made over decades, each individually defensible, collectively damning. Brrr has been present at several of the important events in Oz’s recent history and has consistently found reasons not to intervene, not to testify, not to choose a side. His survival is impeccable; his record is not.
Maguire doesn’t present this as straightforwardly contemptible. Brrr is a large Animal in a world that is systematically stripping Animals of their rights and their voices. Survival has required concealment and accommodation. The question the novel asks — at what point does survival become collaboration — is genuinely hard, and Maguire’s willingness to sit with that difficulty rather than resolve it is one of the sequence’s sustained strengths.
The Wicked Years as Political History
By the third volume, the Wicked Years sequence has accumulated enough history that it functions as a kind of political chronicle — Oz’s descent from flawed but functioning society into something closer to authoritarian dystopia traced through the experiences of characters who were present throughout but never in control. Brrr’s story adds another angle to this chronicle: the perspective of someone who observed everything and did very little.
Our rating: 3.7/5 — The most sardonic and psychologically precise Wicked Years entry — a study in cowardice and self-deception that rewards patience with its unlikely, darkly funny protagonist.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is "A Lion Among Men" about?
The Cowardly Lion — here called Brrr — tells his life story to the oracle Yackle, revealing a history of cowardice, survival, and self-deception that reframes the familiar character as a study in moral failure and its long consequences.
What are the key takeaways from "A Lion Among Men"?
Self-knowledge is the most difficult kind of knowledge — we are always the last to know ourselves Cowardice and survival are not identical, but they can be easy to confuse when you are the one doing both History requires witnesses — those who look away are complicit in what they refused to see
Is "A Lion Among Men" worth reading?
The third Wicked Years novel takes the most unexpected protagonist — the Cowardly Lion — and delivers Maguire's most sardonic and psychologically precise entry in the sequence, a novel about self-knowledge and the stories we tell ourselves.
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