Saturday 23 June 2018

Among Others by Jo Walton


Everything has changed for fifteen year old Mori Markova. Her twin sister is dead, she's crippled for life, her beloved grandfather has had a stroke, and she has been sent from the wild Welsh valleys of her childhood into the care of a father she barely knows. Packed off to boarding school in England, Mori deals with her loneliness and homesickness through books - but her mother is out for revenge and not even her new friends from the library can save her from a final reckoning.

Among Others is a work of magical realism that has won a slew of prizes, including both the Hugo and Nebula Awards in 2012. I really liked the first half of this story as I can relate to escaping an unhappy and lonely existence through books. I found Mori to be a very sympathetic character and Jo Walton really captured that feeling of floating through life rather than engaging in it. I also liked the very light touch of magical realism; Mori can see faeries and talks about the magic of the everyday, but I was never quite sure if it was real or just a coping mechanism to deal with a mentally unstable mother and a dead sister. 

However, I was disappointed with the second half of Among Others. Because I liked Mori, I wanted her to come back into the real world through friendships and a better relationship with her father. I wanted her to still love books, yet become far more than just a bookworm, and it annoyed me that still all she ever talked about with anyone, ever, was books.  Another problem for me was that I never found out what happened before Mori was sent away. I get that there was a car accident, possibly involving her mother. I get that she ran away and was in a children's home and that there was some sort of court case. These are major aspects of the story, and yet they are only mentioned in the most maddeningly oblique way. However, the most disappointing part of the story for me was the ending. It really jarred. For most of the book, the magic was very insubstantial and then suddenly Mori was able to shoot fire from her fingertips? I was so annoyed by this, it spoilt the book for me.

At its heart, Among Others is a coming-of-age story about the difficulties of being fifteen and a bit odd as well as being a love letter to books and their ability to help people cope when tragedy strikes.

Recommended For: Readers who enjoy reading books about fantasy as much as reading fantasy books themselves.

Read On: Another book which has won both the Hugo and Nebula awards (as well as a pile of others) is Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie.

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