Son of a Witch by Gregory Maguire
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Well, this book took too long for me to finish – partly because I was distracted by YouTube and partly because I found it boring and slightly confusing in the beginning. But I finally did get how the book is structured and actually enjoyed it. It’s kind of like baking a cake – in the beginning, you have to put the flour, egg and sugar and mix them all up nicely before you put other more interesting ingredients to bake whatever cake you want. This book is just like that.

The story started of with a caravan driver (I think) named Oatsie Manglehand who found Liir close to death and was brought to The House of Saint Glinda, a mauntery, where a group of Sisters lived. They would eventually work to try to revive Liir. But Sister Doctor and Sister Apothecaire weren’t the ones who were able to do that and the one who did was Candle, a so-called mute of the house, who played the domingon.

The book then began to go back and forth between living Liir and halfway-dead-lying-in-the-mauntery Liir. And that’s the confusing part. I do not know, as a reader, whether the living Liir was what actually happened somewhere between the end of “Wicked” and the beginning of this book. This is when I stopped reading because I couldn’t get it. But I rarely give up on things so I decided to continue and gave it another go. And I’m glad I did because I did finally get how the book was written and what happened in the beginning was subtly explained halfway through the book.

As I mentioned, I do enjoy the book in the end because I do feel for Liir. Liir isn’t any different from any young people we know in our world. He was trying to find himself – who he was, who he is now and what exactly he’s supposed to do in the world, what he wants to make of his life now that Elphaba is gone. Can he shake off the image of Elphaba or will he embrace it and use it for good?

You will go through the same emotions as Liir, doubting himself as the son of Elphaba and then somewhat believing that he might be and then go back to thinking he wasn’t. I like that constant questioning only because that’s what the character was going through. You feel like you’re going through the journey with the character to where he’s meant to be in the end.

Anyway, I thought this would be the last book I would read from the series because I thought “A Lion Among Men” would be separate from “Wicked” only because I’m judging from the title. Oops, mistake right there because the ending from this book doesn’t suggest that. The ending of the book makes me want to buy “A Lion Among Men” right now because it just shocked me. It’s not surprising but it will shock you. It will make you go “What? No way! Nope. Nuh-uh.” But no, you were reading it right. Ooohh, what happened, Siti? I’m not going to tell you. If you haven’t read this book, then I suggest you do.

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