‘It doesn’t matter. I have books, new books, and I can bear anything as long as there are books.’
Fifteen-year-old Morwenna lives in Wales with her twin sister and a mother who spins dark magic for ill. One day, Mori and her mother fight a powerful, magical battle that kills her sister and leaves Mori disabled. Devastated, Mori flees to her long-lost father in England. Adrift, outcast at boarding school, Mori retreats into the worlds she knows best: her magic and her books. She works a spell to meet kindred souls and continues to devour every fantasy and science fiction novel she can lay her hands on. But danger lurks… She knows her mother is looking for her and that when she finds her, there will be no escape.
Fifteen-year-old Morwenna lives in Wales with her twin sister and a mother who spins dark magic for ill. One day, Mori and her mother fight a powerful, magical battle that kills her sister and leaves Mori disabled. Devastated, Mori flees to her long-lost father in England. Adrift, outcast at boarding school, Mori retreats into the worlds she knows best: her magic and her books. She works a spell to meet kindred souls and continues to devour every fantasy and science fiction novel she can lay her hands on. But danger lurks… She knows her mother is looking for her and that when she finds her, there will be no escape.
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Reviews
Funny, acute, and impassioned
Most fantasies evade opportunities to make the impossible plausible, to give magic accountability in a realistic setting and moral and emotional weight in a modern novel. Jo Walton accepts the double challenge and meets it with courage and skill . . . Among Others is a funny, thoughtful, acute and absorbing story all the way through, but in the magic parts it is more than that.
Compelling... Never deigning to transcend the genre to which it is clearly a love letter, this outstanding (and entirely teen-appropriate) tale draws its strength from a solid foundation of sense-of-wonder and what-if.
A hymnal for the clever and odd - an inspiration and a lifeline to anyone who has ever felt in the world, but not of it.
Among Others is a wonder and a joy.
Among Others is about a young girl brought up in a magical family who is sent to a mundane, non-magical school; a captivatingly told mirror image of Harry Potter.
If you love SF and fantasy, if reading it formed your teen years, if you do remember the magic you used to do, if you remember the absolute joy of first discovering those books, then read this.
A lovely story, unlike anything I've ever read before: funny, touching, and gently magical.
There are the books you want to give all your friends, and there are the books you wish you could go back and give your younger self. And then there's the rare book, like Jo Walton's Among Others, that's both.
Beautifully crafted... Among Others calls to those who desire a wild, magical world in place of the one they have but eventually learn that their own lives are the greatest story of all.
Possibly earning itself the Book of the Year title is Jo Walton's thought provoking Among Others, which stays with you for a long time after reading. It is the story of a young girl from a magical family who is sent to a mundane boarding school and, through her discovery of classic SF novels, has her mind and world expanded.
I don't believe I've seen, either in fiction or in memoir, as brilliant and tone-perfect an account of what discovering SF and fantasy can mean to its young readers... Remarkable.