Son of a Witch CD: A Novel by Gregory Maguire

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Son of a Witch CD: A Novel from Science Fiction

Son of a Witch CD: A Novel
Available from Amazon
Price: $28.46
Updated on 12-28-2008.

Features

Audio CD

Publisher: HarperAudio; Unabridged edition (September 27, 2005)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 0060829206

ISBN-13: 978-0060829209

Product Dimensions: 5.7 x 5.3 x 1.5 inches

Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces ()

From Publishers Weekly
With a voice that sounds a bit like Richard Dreyfuss on helium, Maguire does a solid if somewhat unconventional job of narrating his own novel. His pace, like his prose, is deliberate and thoughtful. His creativity and imagination shine in his ability to provide his strange characters (not a human among them) with equally unusual voices. It is not the tonal range that makes his delivery interesting, though; it's the cadence and timbre of the voices that win the listener over. Liir, who may or may not be the son of the Wicked Witch of the West, is read with a detached, depressed air, an adolescent with ennui looking for his lost half-sister, Nor. Candle, the Munchkin girl who becomes his sweetheart, has a voice that sounds almost like backwards masking. A short interview with Maguire is an added value on the final disc; he says he enjoys the recording process and that the inspiration for the book was twofold: the many letters from young fans asking what happened to Nor, last seen as a chained political prisoner, and seeing the Abu Ghraib torture photographs. This one-two punch left an itch that could only be scratched by writing Son of a Witch.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From School Library Journal
Adult/High School–Son picks up where Maguires highly successful Wicked (HarperCollins, 1995) left off, with the death of Elphaba the Wicked Witch of the West. She left behind a daughter, Nor, and Liir, who may or may not be her son. After her death, he enters into a decade of listless soul searching. He travels for a time and then joins the military, enjoying the structure it provides his life. But eventually his rearing by the Witch as well as his possible heritage catch up to him and he finds himself in demand to start a new revolution against the tyranny of Emerald City. An odd series of disfiguring murders starts occurring all across Oz. Liir discovers that the new Emperor sits behind the machinations and uses the strange killings to spread distrust among the various races of the land. Wielding Elphabas flying broom and donning her magical cape, Liir makes some small but bold gestures that help the populace of Oz and replants the seeds of hope that Elphaba spread a generation before. Son is a tighter work than Wicked, making deft use of flashbacks and varying viewpoints to create a quicker pace. And Liirs quest–both to find himself and to save the people of Oz–is easier to believe than the motivations that drove the bitter yet heroic Elphaba. A well-written, well-crafted fantasy that can stand on its own.–Matthew L. Moffett, Northern Virginia Community College, Annandale
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Reader Reviews
This review is from: Son of a Witch: A Novel (Wicked Years) (Hardcover) The wide divergence of views about the second of McGuire's Oz books, I think, is because the two books will commend themselves to different audiences. In Wicked, while we are given one of the most memorable of characters, the story is really an exploration of preconceptions, an exploration that works best in a world that we at least think we know. Liir's story in the Son of a Witch is about Liir, the obvious parable of 21st Century US not withstanding, and it just happens to take place in the world we left at the end of Wicked. As an another reviewer pointed out, Liir is looking for himself and he starts with nothing to work with and that's the point. Because of how Liir is created as a character in Wicked, doing it in Oz in the wake of the death of the Witch works well. It provides an explanation for why Liir lack's a self conception and also provides a fantasy world in which he can develop that conception all without needing to completely rediscover and reexplain everything. The same could have been done by trying to place the story in the "real" world but frankly it works better placed in a fantasy world where the author can make anything happen. Unlike others, I did not find the book boring at all and love Maguire's writing. In the end Son of a Witch may not be as good a book as the excellent Wicked but it is nevertheless very good and well worth reading. But again, Liir is not the same kind of character as Elphaba and more to the point, while the world may be the one we first entered in Wicked, the story is not. In other words, this is not a "sequel" so it is hardly surprising that some who loved the first book are disappointed in the second. Still, I suspect that most readers who come to the book without carrying to many preconceptions, particularly those who enjoy stories told through the means of fantasy worlds, will enjoy themselves.

Son of a Witch CD: A Novel
List Price: $39.95
Available from Amazon
Price: $28.46
Updated on 12-28-2008.