Among Others

The best part of the book was so nostalgic – the idea of combing bookstores and finding The Book! The Amazing Fantasy or SciFi book that you've never heard of before, but it's by your favorite author and it is just so perfect! Finding The Book in bookstores and on my friends' book cases was a huge part of my adolescent years. It makes me kind of want to earmark the authors that Walton name checks that I've never read: (Zelazny, Delany, Tiptree embarrassingly enough) and never Amazon or Google them and only hunt down their books in used bookstores to recreate the feeling. But I know that truly that feeling is a little eradicated, because even if I play by the rules, I know that they're arbitrary and in real life I can get whatever book I want whenever I want, which is great, except that it ruins the mystique.

I also liked that “is it real or isn't it?” feel of the book. Reading as a teenager, I never would have questioned that the subtle magic in the book was indeed the highest reality. But I love Walton's depiction of that subtle magic, which as an adult, you can't help but second guess: “maybe Mor is just subconsciously coming up with a narrative to explain why bad thing X happened.” I love that the book works on both levels and that it forces you to consider both – it's such a great way to depict magic.

So what didn't I like? Well, I think my expectations were set too high by Jon and Beka, who both said this book was the most amazing thing in the history of books. Also, while reading the book I had an overwhelming, terribly distracting sense of how much I would have loved this book if I had read it back when I was 18. My 18 year old self would have promptly declared it her favorite book in the history of books, too, but since I'm no longer her, I felt almost guilty reading it.

Ultimately, I just felt like I didn't “get it.” So, there's this girl, and some bad magic happened in her past, and now she goes to a boarding school, where she's a little social isolated, but then she joins a book club and along the way she buys a lot of books and sees a lot of faeries, and that's all well and good, but when is the plot going to begin? Oh, the book is over, so I guess there just isn't a plot? And I can handle a lack of a plot if the character growth and development is well done, but after awhile I got bored of reading about Mor read and go to bookstores, and I would rather be reading and going to bookstores myself.

I really wanted to give this 3.5 stars, but had to round up because 3 stars was too low.

I'm not generally a fan of books which have a subtle story (sounds better than saying nothing happens). I've recently read a couple of books like that, such as Post Office which I did not like at all. I think the main difference for me is that I identified with Mori; I suspect you have to care about the character if the book is about the character rather than about a big event/quest.

I really enjoyed all the book references even though I haven't read most of them

See this review and others at my blog: http://lazerbrain.wordpress.com

Among others is at heart, a coming of age story. Jo Walton herself characterized it as a woman's intellectual coming of age story. Mori (short for Morwenna), is fifteen years old and has run away from her crazy witch of a mother (no, she is actually a witch) not too long after the untimely death of her sister Mor (short for Morganna). We meet her after she has been through a children's home and is meeting her Father, who left her mother just after the girls were born, for the first time. The book follows Mori over a few month period in which she deals with being an outcast, her evil witch mother, faeries, boys, coming to grips with the death of her twin, and a squishy kind of magic that doesn't have any clear rules or laws, all through the ideological lens created by the great sci-fi and fantasy books of the late 70's and early 80's.

There is really only one or two things about this novel that I didn't like. The biggest, I think, has to do with the character of Mori. Walton's characterization is definitely first rate (which I may get to later), so my quibble is not with that, but I had this nagging feeling that Mori was too pragmatic, too sensible in thought and action for any 15 year old that I have ever known, (or been, I suppose). By pragmatic, the most obvious examples are the way she thinks about sex and homosexuality, and the way she thinks about class and class division. It feels like Mori is constructed to be an ideal fifteen year old by today's world's standards, and then put back into the early 80's. I just had a little trouble believing it.

The second thing is that I was disappointed that I had not read a lot of the books mentioned in Among Others, even though I consider myself fairly well read in sci-fi and fantasy. To put a finer point on, I think book was meant for those who love fantastical fiction and grew (or at least read widely during) the 70s and 80s, not someone like me who has read widely in the late 90's up to today. Anyway, that being said, I have read Lewis, Tolkein, some Zelanzy, some Heinlen, some LeGuin, some Vonnegut etcetera. But apparently not most of the ones that are mentioned in the book. I guess I'm really just sad that there is at least one layer to Walton's book that is currently inaccessible to me.

So I wrote much more on the negatives than I meant to . . . The positives are much more numerous, but I honestly don't think I'm going to have time to treat them all appropriately.

Probably the best praise that can be given to a book is verisimilitude, Among Others positively reeks with it. I don't usually associate fantasies with verisimilitude, but if faeries and magic did exist, Walton does a pretty convincing job of telling me what it might look like. I love how the faeries are somehow more natural, they are sometimes beautiful, but most often strange yet believable if incomprehensible. And I love the way the magic is squishy; it doesn't have rules per se and there is no ways to be certain that magic was being used, because its effects can be easily rationalized away.

I guess this is kind of a counter to my critique of Mori's character. One of Mori's defining characteristics is pragmatism and clarity of thought regarding “real” life. Walton beautifully sets this up as both contrast and complement to the fantastic elements of Mori's life. Consequently, the main flaws in all of “the real world” based characters are highlighted. While the majority of the characters are totally in the “real world”, they have an utterly unpractical and fantastic outlook on life, regarding what things are important in life, such as class, sports standings, etc.

Walton brilliantly uses magic and fantastic literature to inform Mori's relationships throughout the book, which provides new perspective on old themes Here are a couple of examples. Fantastic literature is used as an escape from the reality, because the reality is almost unbearable for Mori, at least until she meets the SF book club. Also, talking about SF books with Daniel serves as both a way to connect with her estranged father, and a way to keep him at a distance so that Mori doesn't have to ask him hard questions, and her father doesn't have to answer.

Finally, I really enjoyed how Walton gave Mori some serious emotional baggage. Not just the obvious stuff, like the crippled leg, loneliness and dealing with the loss of her sister, but she is so used to getting shafted by life that she feels guilty when good things happen to her. Another example is her relationship with Wim. She feels guilty about the whole korass thing, and so tells him about it and then she gets worried that he is only hanging out with so he can see the faeries!

In summary, this book was fantastic. If you like character driven books as opposed to plot driven, you just have to read it. Even while a bit unbelievable, Mori is such and interesting character that if you don't get to know her through this book, you are really missing out.

I really am not sure what I think about this book. There were parts that I absolutely loved, parts that itched under my skin, and parts that flat-out confused me. In the end, it's a book I'm glad I read even if I don't fully understand it.

One of the things I love best is that this is the most diary-like piece of fiction I've ever read. A lot of authors (especially in children's books) will use phrases like, “Let me go back to the beginning...” or “Maybe I should explain.” Well, no you shouldn't because this is not meant to be read by anyone. Diaries are personal and free the author from needing to include exposition. Mor writes like she doesn't intend this to be read by anyone but herself, and as such she never explains anything she isn't working out for herself. This makes for an amazing amount of suspense as reveals happen so very slowly. The reader's mind is always buzzing with questions, and I found myself urgently rushing to the next entry, hoping it would explain the one before. This structure also means fantastic events are dealt with in a very commonplace way because they're common to Mor. It cements the story firmly in reality and is by far my favorite part of the book.

A close second is Walton's use of magic. What a fresh and fantastic take on an old theme. Walton's magic is grounded in connection and seems to only work when that makes sense in the user's mind. Mor's magic is grounded in her sense of the earth and how the earth works and in her connection to the people around her. There are no spellbooks, no classes, and no rules other than the universally imposed ones. It's also infinitely deniable and ends up looking like coincidence. This makes the entire novel entirely deniable, and indeed if you take out the magic, you have a perfectly acceptable coming of age story. If you believe Mor is an unreliable narrator (and she is clearly trying to paint a picture of her own character through her diary), then you could deny all of the magical events in the story. Each one serves to emphasize a change in Mor's life, whether it is a normal adolescent transition or a far more traumatic upheaval specific to her. Whether or not the magic is real, it still serves a purpose in showing Mor's growth and change.

Walton's treatment of fairies is also quite original and yet sensible. She never fully explains what they are or how they are, just gives the readers hints that we can make our own conjectures. Their variety and communication is fascinating, and I wish I understood it better. They are not Mor's focus though, and Walton never lets them steal the show away from her protagonist.

All that said, I still don't find Mor particularly likable. It's odd because I should clearly identify with her. She's an awkward teen without many friends obsessed with books and longing to be older than she is. Everything about that describes my adolescence, but I didn't like myself much then and I don't really like Mor now. It's something in the way she denies feeling and criticizes her classmates and even adults in her life as stupid and dramatic. I think it's appropriate to her history for her to think like this, but she comes off as too harsh for me and really never makes any effort to get to know people beneath their veneer (until Wim), despite expecting them to look beneath hers. I think I'm supposed to admire how contrary she is, and certainly this aspect saves her life, but most of the time I just wish she'd cut other characters a little slack. The references also make it sound like she's desperately trying to be an adult too, but that could be the fact that I'm used to people referencing Heinlein and Zelazny to sound smart. It's different to talk about contemporary authors who were out of the mainstream. Actually, Mor's something of a late 70s hipster.

There's a lot I still don't understand about Mor (I'm still not entirely sure which Mor she is, why she chose to sign Morganna but makes everyone call her Morwenna, which name is on the death certificate of her sister) and I did find watching her cope and change interesting, but part of me reacts to her in the same way I react to all teenagers.

On similar confusing notes, the ending. I think I am so used to Hollywood endings that this one seemed painfully rushed. If this were a movie, the showdown with the fairies and with her mother would be lit up in blockbuster lights and 3D CG. As is, the ending is just another entry in a diary, and an understated one at that. It sort of encourages me in my theory that Mor is using a lot of metaphor to deal with losing her sister and coping with her insane mother (what a risk to have a shadow antagonist like this and only show her for a page at the end). She defeats the fairies by emphasizing her will to live. She defeats her mother by literally rooting herself in the earth. Mor's a clever girl, and it's entirely possible she's crafting a novel out of her life, and I love that, but I wanted a lot more closure than I got. I didn't dislike it, but it left me a little dissatisfied.

Among Others isn't like any book I've ever read, and I'm very happy S&L tossed it my way. It's definitely a story that will stay with me and make me keep asking questions.

This book was wonderful! I so enjoyed the old sci-fi references mentioned in the book. It is not hard sci-fi but it is very hard to categorize this book other than paranormal. It is light on both. More of a coming of age story but not really. If you can listen to this on audible as the woman narrating it does a wonderful accent as the main character is Welsh. It is also a clean book that young adults could enjoy as well.

Executive Summary: An interesting book, though one that just didn't resonate with me as much as it might with others.Full ReviewI think I first heard about this book when it won the Hugo last year. Probably from Sword & Laser, which selected it for the June 2013 pick.There are several things in this book I greatly identify with. There is one scene when the main character meets other people who share her interest in sci-fi and fantasy books and feels both self-conscious about that she is talking too much and yet at the same time is unable to control herself. I've been there entirely too many times in my life, especially after long periods of mostly being alone and catching up with friends.The main part that I identify with is losing yourself in books. This is something I seem to be doing more and more of lately, for several reasons. I'm thankful for good reads as an outlet to discuss them all, and to find other people who read as much as I do.So why only 3 stars? Well there were three main reasons:1) The early part felt very ramblely to me. As someone prone to rambling I can forgive this in conversation, but not really in a book. It's meant as a diary of a teenage girl, so this is probably realistic, but was too realistic for me. This leads me to my next problem:2) As the diary of the teen-aged girl, there were parts I just couldn't identify with. Having never been a girl myself, and understanding entirely too little about the female species in general some parts of this book were just awkward for me. Not a fault of the book, just something that didn't resonate with me personally.And my final drawback was:3) All the book references. I'd like to think I've read a decent number of books in my nearly 30 year reading career (I don't remember exactly what age I started reading books). I've tracked over 200 books on good reads, and I know there are books I've read missing from the list, especially if I counted all the stuff I read as a kid. There are at least 80 books referenced in this novel from the various lists I've seen. I've read less than 10 of them. That made for a lot of references I'm sure I just missed out on. This is another thing that isn't the book's fault. This book is set in 79/80. I was born in 82. I didn't really start reading a ton of sci-fi or fantasy until the early 2000s. Most of what I've read was written after I was born.I LOVED [b:Ready Player One 9969571 Ready Player One Ernest Cline http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1333576871s/9969571.jpg 14863741]. It's chock full of geeky 70's and 80's nostalgia. If you took that away, the book wouldn't have been nearly as good. So that might be exactly what's happened here for me.Overall, I'm glad I read this, but I'm also glad I'm glad I opted to borrow it from the library. With inter-library loan no less! Somehow that seems fitting.

Among Others is a lovely book, even wonderful. It is not very exciting or thrilling, but it did keep me reading.
I cannot assign it to a genre. It seems to be a coming of age story. The protagonist is a teenage girl who was raised by a mad mother and has suffered a tragedy. She is trying to get on with her life through pain and sorrow. That would make it sort of a YA book. But, Among Others won both the Nebula award and the Hugo award as best book of the year, which would make it SF&F.
Why? Well you see, the main character, Morwenna, sees and communicates with fairies. She also tries to do some magic. Whether she succeeds or not ... well you will have to read to story for that.
I myself would not call it SF&F, but just a lovely and peculiar story and leave it at that.
Oh, and by the way, Morwenna loves books and talks about them constantly. They become sort of a character in the story.

3.5 stars out of 5.0 (I round down)I actually really liked this book, despite my low rating. Mori, the protagonist, was amazing! And the magic was so realistic to me. It was very subtle (except for the ending) and it just fit (if that makes any sense). I'm a believer, although I know that some may read this and think that Mori was just mentally ill or something (which is fine–I mean, I found myself questioning Mori a lot and, at some point, the reader just has to decide what they are willing to believe [don't be boring, choose magic!]).Things I did not like about this novel: all the book references. I have read a decent amount of SF and I am a big fan of the genre, but Mori reads so much! Almost all of her book references went over my head, especially because most of the novels she read were published before I was born ([b:Among Others 8706185 Among Others Jo Walton https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1317792367s/8706185.jpg 6449955] is set in 1979-80 and I would say about 75% of the books I read are post 1985). I felt like I was missing out on something because I have not read most of the 60+ books she refers to. That feeling happened so often it was kind of distracting. I think people who have a read a lot of SciFi from this era will really appreciate all of these nuggets that the author weaves into the narration, but having so many was off-putting for me (although it really stayed in character as far as Mori is concerned). I also did not enjoy the journal/diary format that Walton uses. However, I think that's more of my personal preference than anything else. I just don't seem to enjoy novels that use journal entries to tell a story. The plot tends to drag on for me. Anyways, all things considered: I would recommend this to people who enjoyed reading [b:The Time Traveler's Wife 14050 The Time Traveler's Wife Audrey Niffenegger https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1274656075s/14050.jpg 2153746] or [b:Dragonflight 61975 Dragonflight (Pern, #1) Anne McCaffrey https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1320425845s/61975.jpg 2467422]

God this book was so annoying!! Parts of it were really good but other parts just pissed me off.

First of all, Mor is an asshole. She has a bad case of I'm-not-like-the-other-girls. She ‘s so condescending toward the girls in her school. Sure most of them do treat her badly but even the ones that are supposedly her friends she treats like shit. She calls the girl who is her only constant friend through the book repeatedly stupid. There is another girl who is friendly to her and they have relatively similar interests. Mor finds her creepy. Of course this has nothing to do with the fact that she's a lesbian, oh no Mor unlike the other girls isn't homophobic. Therefore her stopping talking to her completely after telling her she's not interested is a coincidence too. Another girl is jewish and Mor is constantly jealous of her because she gets special food. She considers faking being jewish to get the same food. Seriously? This girl is 15!!

The whole book is incredibly weird about sex and sexuality. Mor out of the blue claims most people must like both men and women but not her, she only likes men. Because she is “peculiar”. Towards the end she meets a “beautiful boy” and the book more or less becomes about the shitty romance. The boy, Wim has a bad reputation, because his ex-girlfriend got pregnant and had to get an abortion, or that's what the rumors say. No one knows for sure. People still warn her away from him. Mor tells him that they were both stupid but the girl was even more so for making a big deal out of it. Wim repeatedly calls his exes morons, unlike Mor who is smart and reads science fiction. Mor is generally happy to hear this. It's infuriating. Oh and while I'm at the topic. God she keeps going on about how she doesn't want love or marriage, ever. She only wants a friendship where they sometimes have sex. And yet she's jealous over Wim, and there is stuff obviously indicating she's in love with him. I think Jo Walton really tried to have her this super special ahead of her times girl but couldn't let go of the dumb romance either.

However the worst bit -(tw csa) at some point in the story Mor's father while drunk attempts to sleep with her, she tells him off. Later thinks maybe she shouldn't have, because she doesn't really consider him her father. Which in itself, fair enough she hadn't met the man before a few months ago. But surely a 15 year old girl would have a stronger reaction to this? It's never brought up again it serves no purpose. Besides perhaps Jo Walkton trying to tell me that incest isn't that bad?

However this stupid annoying bullshit book was still fucking FUN I was going to give it 3 stars but typing up all that made me realize it doesn't really deserve it at all. I enjoyed Mor's voice in the first half I generally like young narrators. But honestly, I hadn't realized she was supposed to be 15!! She simultaneously manages to sound both like a 10 year old and a 80 year old. I also liked the parts she talked about books, though I can see it might be annoying to a lot of people. She just kept dumping book title after book title saying a few words if anything about them. The ones I did read I generally had a vastly different opinion on than her. But it was still fun. But you know what? I would have gotten the same experience going through someones goodreads list. It felt like and attempt to appeal to nostalgia. Oh she liked lord of the rings? Oh why, I love lord of the rings! This book is amazing! (This is hypothetical I in fact can't stand Lotr). The magic stuff was interesting too but in the end it ended in an unsatisfying stupid place when Wim got involved god forbid the love interest wont put his nose everywhere. I liked it much better when it was vague.
ANYWAY the longer I go on the lower I want to rate it, it was enjoyable so I guess I'll give it 2 stars and feel angry some more.

The biggest strength of this novel is the combination of a coming-of-age story with a subtle magical world. The way that magic works, by indirect manipulation of reality, so that a spell seems to reach back in time to set up a chain of events that lead to the desired result, is fascinating. It also plays well with Mori's teenage insecurity; when she makes friends, she doesn't believe that she earned it. Even though she's a clear, natural fit in her book club, she chalks it up to a spell she cast, and agonizes over the “ethics” of her actions.