In Wicked Gregory Maguire retells L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz from the point of view of the Wicked Witch of the West. He restructures Oz into a complex society with limited technology and complex religious beliefs. One of the minor characters is the boy Liir who lives with her, but due to a large gap in her memory, no one knows if he is her son.
Written 10 years later, Son of a Witch picks up where Wicked leaves off and begins a series of three sequels to the original novel called The Wicked Years. I found it helpful to reread Wicked before starting this book.
The second book is a coming of age novel where Liir starts out as a child and grows to be a man, fulfilling his destiny in the strange world that Maguire created. However, with Dorothy and the Wizard gone and the witch sisters dead, it is an Oz that relies very little on Baum's writings for support. This is Maguire creating an Oz of his own.
I enjoyed this book very much and am looking forward to seeing if Maguire can continue creating compelling drama in A Lion Among Men and Out of Oz, the final two volumes of the series.
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