Among Others

By Jo Walton

Book Overview

Winner of the 2011 Nebula Award for Best Novel
Winner of the 2012 Hugo Award for Best Novel

Startling, unusual, and yet irresistably readable, Jo Walton's 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 SF, 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 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. Then her mother tried to bend the spirits to dark ends, and Mori was forced to confront her in a magical battle that left her crippled--and her twin sister dead.

Fleeing to her father whom she barely knew, Mori was sent to boarding school in England-a place all but devoid of true magic. There, outcast and alone, she tempted fate by doing magic herself, in an attempt to find a circle of like-minded friends. But her magic also drew the attention of her mother, bringing about a reckoning that could no longer be put off...

Combining elements of autobiography with flights of imagination in the manner of novels like Jonathan Lethem's The Fortress of Solitude, this is potentially a breakout book for an author whose genius has already been hailed by peers like Kelly Link, Sarah Weinman, and Ursula K. Le Guin.

One of School Library Journal's Best Adult Books 4 Teens titles of 2011
One of io9's best Science Fiction & Fantasy books of the year 2011

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1250237769
• ISBN13: 9781250237767
• Release Date: March 2020
• Publisher: Tor Books
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 0.62 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.4" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

A delicious feast of magic, family dysfunction, and way-finding

Walton made a space to show us all how to grow into ourselves in a world that wants to force you into a predetermined shape. Mori is living with grief and loss and self-discovery, and finding the boundaries of her needs and wants. Never has a magic system made so much intuitive sense to this reader, and rarely have a I found a book that demonstrates so well how to grow into yourself. The epigraph is something about what you would tell your past teenage self—that it will get better, that people will love you. And the whole narrative demonstrates this, as well as providing a delicious reading list of classic science fiction and fantasy novels. Walton has made a fully-realized character as well as crafting strong sentence structure and using rich descriptive settings.