It's been awhile since I finished a book (tee hee).
Gregory Maguire's Son of a Witch is an experiment in frustration.
Son of a Witch is the sequel to Maguire's book Wicked.
It is the story of what happened to Liir, the son (probably) of Elphaba (the Wicked Witch of the West).
While Wicked had a very broad scope where you were always aware of the world around Elphaba full of political, social and religious depth, Son of a Witch generally has a much narrower view, largely focussing just on Liir and the people around him with little concern for the broader picture.
The result of that shift is that readers have much less of a grasp of what is going on in Oz and why certain things might be happening.
The political situation is extremely fuzzy and unclear and the religious issues are much harder to understand.
This kind of hurts what could have been a very interesting book.
In general, I wasn't terribly happy with this book. It wasn't bad, but I wouldn't recommend it either.
I could have lived without reading.
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