Title: Son of a Witch

Author: Gregory Maguire

Publishing Information: September 26th 2006 by HarperCollins

Genre: Adult, Fantasy, Fairy tales

Series information: Book 2 in The Wicked Years

Format: Hardcover, 337 pages

Source: Owned

Recommended For: Fans who have read Wicked and are looking for further insight into the political and emotional turmoil caused by Dorothy’s arrival.

Liir hid in the shadows of the castle after Dorothy did in the Witch. Left for dead in a gully, the teen is shattered in spirit and body. But silent novice Candle tends him at the Cloister of Saint Glinda, and wills him back to life with her music.
What dark force left Liir in this condition? Is he really Elphaba’s son? He has her broom and her cape – but what of her powers? Can he find his supposed half-sister, Nor, last seen in the forbidding prison Southstairs? Can he fulfill the last wishes of a dying princess? In an Oz under new and dangerous management, can Liir keep his head down long enough to grow up? (Via Goodreads)

Another review for Project Fairy Tale! If you want to learn more about this fun event head over to my intro post!

As I prepared my review for this book I realized how different this series is from others currently out there. The Wicked Years is a series of four books, but the novels don’t work entirely like a series or entirely like companion novels. They are their own entity, working on their own to tell a different piece of the story, yet also working in tandem to weave together a much larger tale.

Son of a Witch works more as an individual story, telling the story of Liir, Elphaba’s son and how he moves on after the death of his mother. The parts I genuinely liked about this novel were when Lirr was coming into his own. He was recognizing himself as more than “The son of the witch,” and he was cowardly, childish and mean at times but he came into his own and grew as a character. I do have to mention that I am reading Out of Oz right now and I am finding Liir to be much more likable in this novel, but we will get into that when it’s time for that review! I thoroughly enjoyed the relationship between Liir and Candle and I was happy with the action of this novel, it seemed as if things were continuously moving forward. When I first read Son of a Witch I didn’t know that there was going to be a third book in the series and I was seriously disappointed and confused by the ending. Thankfully we all know that there are two more books after Son of a Witch and with that knowledge I can say that the ending of this novel was genius and captivating.

I enjoyed Son of a Witch as much as Wicked, however it was a different sort of novel, telling the story of the growth of a man and not the fall of a witch.

“Happy endings are still endings.”