Title: Among Others

Author: Jo Walton

Series: N/A

Genre: Fantasy

Rating: 2/5 stars

The Overview: Startling, unusual, and yet irresistibly readable, Among Others is at once the compelling story of a young woman struggling to escape a troubled childhood, a brilliant diary of first encounters with the great novels of modern fantasy and science fiction, and a spellbinding tale of escape from ancient enchantment. Raised by a half-mad mother who dabbled in magic, Morwenna Phelps found refuge in two worlds. As a child growing up in Wales, she and her twin sister played among the spirits who made their homes in industrial ruins, but her mind found freedom and promise in the science fiction novels that were her closest companions. When her mother tries to bend the spirits to dark ends with deadly results, Mori is sent away and must try to come to terms with what has happened without falling prey to the darkness. –Goodreads

Dave’s Review:

Among Others is one of those books that sounds great on paper, and seems perfect for anyone who spent time reading classic science fiction and fantasy during their younger years – which certainly describes me. However, if you are actually looking for any sort of narrative to go along with that nostalgia, you will probably need to look elsewhere.

The novel follows Morwenna (Mori), a teenage girl attending a British boarding school. It takes place over the course of about a year, 1979, and is presented in the format of a diary written by Mori herself. The fantasy/magical elements are very subtle here, while the emotional core centers on Mori’s immersion in books as a coping mechanism for her childhood trauma. She goes extensively into the books that she is reading – and there are a lot of them over the course of the year. For me, this was the most fun element of the story, but unfortunately, they are not very well integrated into the narrative, often serving as more of a diversion from the lack of much of any plot than anything. I enjoyed the references to many authors and books that I have either read, or own and are waiting to be read, but anyone without much background in the classics may find all of the unfamiliar name-dropping to be tedious and repetitive.

Mori herself is an interesting and sympathetic narrator, but her arc feels flat over the course of the book. There is a conflict with her mother that is mostly internalized, and some dark things in her past which sound more interesting than anything that occurs over the course of the book, but this is alluded to only sparingly. There are also some magical elements that are so subdued and ambiguous that they seem almost unimportant. I also found the conclusion of the book to be very anticlimactic. Some of this may be a result of the diary format itself, which in general tends to be a reflective way of telling a story rather than immersing the reader in actions of the present.

The book contains magical realism elements and is written in a lyrical yet accessible style that will probably appeal to fans of Susanna Clarke or Ursula Le Guin (in fact, Le Guin wrote the introduction to my edition of the book). However, I find both of those authors to be superior to Walton, or at least to what we get in this book, which is the only Walton that I have read. The endless lists of books and name-dropping are more akin to the likes of Ready Player One, and although the writing style of Among Others is better, Cline uses them to tell a riveting adventure story, whereas Walton makes them too much the focus of the bare-bones story.

Sadly, this book did not work for me at all. It did win both the Hugo and Nebula awards, and it is apparent why it has some avid admirers, but the author’s approach just did not work for me. The classic science fiction and fantasy book references kept me going through the novel’s relatively short length, but I was relieved to be moving on to something else when I reached the end. Ultimately, Among Others feels more like a celebration of the genre rather than a compelling novel in its own right.