Among Others
While the quickest way to get me to read a book is to give it to me and then tell me you want to borrow it (which is what happened with the book I read prior to this), I do eventually get around to all the books people tell me to read. At least the ones I remember. Among Others came onto my radar nearly five years ago at a friend's wedding. Another guest and I got to talking about books and after comparing notes she told me that I must read Jo Walton's Among Others, which had just come out.
The problem is that Jo Walton is surprisingly difficult to find, in both new and used book stores (and I try to avoid Amazon for physical books, even though they're slowly sinking their claws into me with the kindle and my need to read one-handed while nursing my son). And there are a million other books on my to-read list. And so it took a while for me to stumble across this book and pick it up.
But I'm so glad I finally did. In fact, I'm glad I waited as long as I did. I picked up on a lot more of the references than I would have five years ago. And if it just doubled the size of my to-read list (I literally went to the store after finishing this book and bought fourteen more), well that seems to have been half the point of it.
I loved this book with a fierce, personal kind of love that will make it difficult for me to ever recommend that anyone else read it. It's so specific, so stubbornly unlike most of the other books I read, that I'd be too scared someone would hate this book. And I loved it so much that, irrational as it is, that would almost be like that person hating me. So I will hold it closely and jealously and hope that others stumble across it and love it as I did.
Among Others reminded me strongly of Robin McKinley's Sunshine, another book I recently discovered and devoured and remain unsure of how to recommend. Even the the latter is about vampires in the unspecified (post-apocalyptic?) future and the former deals with fairies in the recent past, the bones of these two books are the same. I think they'd be friends. I put them next to each other on my bookshelf for this reason. Again: irrational. But there are vampires and fairies involved. And more importantly, magic.
The magic in these books (and I'll try to focus on just the one for the rest of this review) is messy and powerful. Difficult to grasp, let alone master, and easy to be corrupted by. Morwenna's mother gets corrupted by the magic (as did Sunshine's father), and her twin sister is killed when they attempt to stop her. Not by magic, probably, but then again, it's hard to say.
The thing is, this all happens before the book begins. The book itself is concerned with the aftermath. What happens after the ending and how do you turn it into a new beginning. It's mostly about Morwenna dealing with an impossible tragedy and figuring out how she's going to move forward with her life. And this is where I have trouble recommending this book, because very little happens. There are no major conflicts, the book doesn't build to an exciting climax so much as a release of tension you hardly knew was there. Morwenna throws herself into science-fiction, inhaling books at a rate I envy, in an attempt to make sense of what happened. But the lesson she ultimately learns is that life is not a story, and this book refuses to play by the traditional rules.
I loved it. As a fellow inhaler of books (though my two-a-week seems like nothing compared to Morwenna's two-a-day), I felt like Morwenna was a friend of mine. Or could have been a friend. And if I haven't read nearly as much classic science-fiction as her, I at least recognized the authors and most of the titles. I liked that she never needed to be saved. I liked that she struggled mightily with ethical conundrums. I liked that she was so unapologetically herself, even when she couldn't share that self with anyone.
I need to read more Jo Walton. Up to now it's just been her reviews on tor.com (of Vorkosigan and Kingkiller, another clue that I'll like more of her writing). But the synopses I've seen of Tooth and Claw (Sense and Sensability with dragons) and My Real Children (an elderly woman remembers two distinct lives) makes me sure I'd love them as much as this one. I just hope it isn't another five years before I come across her in a bookstore.
The problem is that Jo Walton is surprisingly difficult to find, in both new and used book stores (and I try to avoid Amazon for physical books, even though they're slowly sinking their claws into me with the kindle and my need to read one-handed while nursing my son). And there are a million other books on my to-read list. And so it took a while for me to stumble across this book and pick it up.
But I'm so glad I finally did. In fact, I'm glad I waited as long as I did. I picked up on a lot more of the references than I would have five years ago. And if it just doubled the size of my to-read list (I literally went to the store after finishing this book and bought fourteen more), well that seems to have been half the point of it.
I loved this book with a fierce, personal kind of love that will make it difficult for me to ever recommend that anyone else read it. It's so specific, so stubbornly unlike most of the other books I read, that I'd be too scared someone would hate this book. And I loved it so much that, irrational as it is, that would almost be like that person hating me. So I will hold it closely and jealously and hope that others stumble across it and love it as I did.
Among Others reminded me strongly of Robin McKinley's Sunshine, another book I recently discovered and devoured and remain unsure of how to recommend. Even the the latter is about vampires in the unspecified (post-apocalyptic?) future and the former deals with fairies in the recent past, the bones of these two books are the same. I think they'd be friends. I put them next to each other on my bookshelf for this reason. Again: irrational. But there are vampires and fairies involved. And more importantly, magic.
The magic in these books (and I'll try to focus on just the one for the rest of this review) is messy and powerful. Difficult to grasp, let alone master, and easy to be corrupted by. Morwenna's mother gets corrupted by the magic (as did Sunshine's father), and her twin sister is killed when they attempt to stop her. Not by magic, probably, but then again, it's hard to say.
The thing is, this all happens before the book begins. The book itself is concerned with the aftermath. What happens after the ending and how do you turn it into a new beginning. It's mostly about Morwenna dealing with an impossible tragedy and figuring out how she's going to move forward with her life. And this is where I have trouble recommending this book, because very little happens. There are no major conflicts, the book doesn't build to an exciting climax so much as a release of tension you hardly knew was there. Morwenna throws herself into science-fiction, inhaling books at a rate I envy, in an attempt to make sense of what happened. But the lesson she ultimately learns is that life is not a story, and this book refuses to play by the traditional rules.
I loved it. As a fellow inhaler of books (though my two-a-week seems like nothing compared to Morwenna's two-a-day), I felt like Morwenna was a friend of mine. Or could have been a friend. And if I haven't read nearly as much classic science-fiction as her, I at least recognized the authors and most of the titles. I liked that she never needed to be saved. I liked that she struggled mightily with ethical conundrums. I liked that she was so unapologetically herself, even when she couldn't share that self with anyone.
I need to read more Jo Walton. Up to now it's just been her reviews on tor.com (of Vorkosigan and Kingkiller, another clue that I'll like more of her writing). But the synopses I've seen of Tooth and Claw (Sense and Sensability with dragons) and My Real Children (an elderly woman remembers two distinct lives) makes me sure I'd love them as much as this one. I just hope it isn't another five years before I come across her in a bookstore.
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