I’m not entirely sure why this book won quite so many awards. Among Others is a YA fantasy by Welsh author Jo Walton. It is predominantly a cover-to-cover ramble about all of her favourite pre1980 sci-fi books. The main character Morwenna Phelps/ Markova is a Welsh teenager, who escapes her evil witch mother to stay with her estranged father and his three sisters in Shropshire and gets sent to boarding school. As a nerdy sci-fi reader with a cane and a limp she struggles to fit in and spends every spare moment reading and going to the library or a book club. Morwenna has magic of her own, but the subtle, plausible deniability kind. She sees fairies but they are poorly fleshed out and barely there. It almost seems as if the real story took place before the book, with her mother wanting to take over the world, and Morwenna and her twin sister Morganna fighting her with magic, ending up with Morwenna injured and her sister dead. None of this is ever explained. Maybe Mor is just an over imaginative teen dealing with her mother’s mental illness and abuse, and suffering the effects of her traumatic car accident. There is an icky moment with her father which is moved past and not dealt with. There is her boyfriend Wim, who seems to have treated his ex-girlfriends poorly, but that’s OK as they were all morons. It was an OK read but clearly designed for die-hard sci-fi buffs not really for fantasy readers. ( )

3.5 stars ( )

Neil Gaiman said in 2013 "Fiction...[is] a gateway drug to reading." This book is a gateway drug. All I can think about, now that I've finished it, is how much I want to read, or re-read, all the wonderful books referenced in this story.

Among Others is recounted in the first person by 15-year-old Mor. She's grown up in the industrial ruins of South Wales and has always been able to see fairies. Magic is as much a part of the world for her as trees, or mountains, or a derelict foundry. But Mor has had to come to England, escaping her insane mother, the woman responsible for Mor's crippled leg and worse, her twin sister's death. Now Mor has to negotiate the tricky social terrain at boarding school as well as figure out how to have a relationship with her father, a man she barely knows. She's alone and grieving for her lost sister as well as her lost childhood.

Mor's solace is books, specifically, SF and fantasy. She loves Tolkein, Lewis, Le Guin, Asimov, Heinlein, Silverberg... honestly there are so many books and authors it's probably best if you just go and have a look at the bibliography helpfully compiled here, or Mor's LibraryThing page. The book takes place in the autumn and winter of 1979-1980 so that limits the books Mor has access to. I desperately want to know what she would have thought of The Handmaid's Tale but it wasn't published until 1987. Anyway, I digress...

The book is really a story about the consolations of reading fiction, the enjoyment of new and challenging ideas and the importance of having access, not just to books, but to people who read some of the same books as we do. I mean, I wouldn't use this site unless I had a need to connect to other people who read and love to read fiction. I'd just use a spreadsheet or some other soulless tool to record what I've read and want to read. Or I wouldn't bother. But we're here because books connect us, stories connect us and shape us, whether we're 15 or 45 or 105.

So I'm going to post this review, then go and update my "To Read" list, then maybe start re-reading LOTR. ( )

I picked this up because it was just awarded the 2012 Hugo award for best novel. It didn't really appeal to me, though I can tell it's well written.

But. If you're interested, do give it a look. The world Walton creates is complex, the characters are very human (and non-human), and it name-checks a host of classic SF and fantasy. I suppose it's just not my flavor right now. ( )

3.5 stars ( )