A Lion Among Men

Infobox Book |
name = A Lion Among Men
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image_caption = Cover of "A Lion Among Men"
author = Gregory Maguire
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country = U.S.
language =
series = Wicked Cycle
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genre = Fantasy
publisher =
pub_date = October 14, 2008
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preceded_by = Son of a Witch
followed_by =

"A Lion Among Men" is the third novel in Gregory Maguire's Wicked Cycle and was released in the UK on October 2nd, 2008, and will be released in the US on Tuesday, October 14th, 2008.

In an interview with the Akron Beacon Journal in October 2006, Maguire said "this book will be about the differing moralities... among soldiers, for one, and diplomats, for another... about decisions to wage war" and "One of the main characters is the Cowardly Lion". In an interview in March 2008, Maguire also said of the novel: "it starts off about eight years after the end of Son of a Witch".

According to Amazon.co.uk, the novel is set as a civil war looms in Oz, and it concerns the stories of Yackle, who is mentioned in the previous two novels, and Brrr, the Cowardly Lion, who is searching Oz for information about Elphaba.

Previously, it has been known as "A Cowardly War" and "The Depostion of an Oracle".Fact|date=June 2008

ynopsis

The summary that has appeared on Gregory Maguire's web site is as follows:

"In the much-anticipated third volume of the Wicked Years, we return to Oz, seen now through the eyes of the Cowardly Lion—the once tiny cub defended by Elphaba in Wicked.

While civil war looms in Oz, a tetchy oracle named Yackle prepares for death. Before her final hour, an enigmatic figure known as Brrr—the Cowardly Lion—arrives searching for information about Elphaba Thropp, the Wicked Witch of the West. As payment, Yackle, who hovered on the sidelines of Elphaba's life, demands some answers of her own.

Brrr surrenders his story to the ailing maunt: Abandoned as a cub, his earliest memories are gluey hazes, and his path from infancy in the Great Gillikin Forest is no Yellow Brick Road. Seeking to redress an early mistake, he trudges through a swamp of ghosts, becomes implicated in a massacre of trolls, and falls in love with a forbidding Cat princess. In the wake of laws that oppress talking Animals, he avoids a jail sentence by agreeing to serve as a lackey to the war-mongering Emperor of Oz.

A Lion Among Men chronicles a battle of wits hastened by the Emerald City's approaching armies. What does the Lion know of the whereabouts of the Witch's boy, Liir? What can Yackle reveal about the auguries of the Clock of the Time Dragon? And what of the Grimmerie, the magic book that vanished as quickly as Elphaba? Is destiny ever arbitrary? Can those tarnished by infamy escape their sobriquets—cowardly, wicked, brainless, criminally earnest—to claim their own histories, to live honorably within their own skins before they're skinned alive?"

Notes