Book Review: Among Others by Jo Walton

This book was a giveaway from Sarah at Book Worm Blues. The book sounded interesting so I entered and won. And what a beautiful book! A hardback with beautiful font, little squiggles to decorate the chapter (entry per day) headings and just very pleasant to read (physically, if you see what I mean).

Among Others: What it is About

First we find the main character, Morwenna, and her twin sister make a factory shut down because of some magic they carry out as instructed by their fairy friends.

Four years later, it’s 1979, 14-year old Mori is being sent to boarding school by her father and his sisters, who all live together. Her twin sister is out of the picture (it takes a little while before we know what happened) and Mori has been placed with her estranged father by social services as she somehow can’t live with her mother anymore.

Soon the reader realises Mori is afraid of her mother, and especially of the magical powers she has.

As she has a limp (and a walking stick) as well as a Welsh accent, the children at the posh English boarding school ignore her or call her names. Mori doesn’t mind too much, she’s a reader: she loves fantasy and science fiction novels, and is excited to find out that her father also enjoys these.

Through her love of books she eventually makes some new friends and finds a way to deal with her mother.

The book is written as a diary with (almost) daily entries for about 6 months from the moment Mori starts at her new school school.

Among Others: What I thought

This book is about magic, in quite a subtle way initially, but later it becomes more important. It never becomes the focus of the story, until we’re nearing the end.

No, I’m not one for fairies normally, but in this book, they didn’t take center place. In fact, I was able to maintain for many pages that Mori was just making them up, seeing things that weren’t really there.

I enjoyed the story, although I did think that nothing much happened for a long time. Still, it didn’t bore me. Just. It almost did, but then the book had a little twist and the story meandered on in a more interesting way.

A lot of books were mentioned: most were fantasy and SF from the 1970s and 1980s. I recognised quite a few author names and there were some books that I’d read too. I found it fun, but a bit unnecessary to keep on reading about yet another book, and another book, that Mori was raving/talking/arguing about.

I don’t think I’d call this a YA book. Just because the main character is 14/15 years old doesn’t make it YA. The writing is good and adult readers will enjoy reading between the lines to understand things that Mori herself didn’t maybe see that way.

Other than that it was a bit slow, with not a great deal happening, this was a satisfying read.

Rating: 4/5

I got this book: won from Sarah at Book Worm Blues

I read this in: English, the original language

Number of pages: 302

First published: 2011 (January)

Genre: speculative fiction, magic

I enjoyed this book. If you read it and absolutely loved it, consider nominating this book for the Independent Literary Awards under Speculative Fiction. Any book blogger can nominate titles! (nominations open September – December)