Among Others, by Jo Walton (2011)

I recently finished reading Among Others, the Hugo & Nebula award-winning novel by Jo Walton.

I liked it well enough.  But I didn't love it.  More about that after the cut.


I guess my main problem with the novel is that it's a memoir.  I think it's interesting to compare notes with Morwenna about SF novels published before 1980 (though I must admit I've read damn few of them compared to her).

Or maybe it would be more engaging if Elizabeth Phelps had a larger role in it. I can't really buy the conceit that she knows exactly where Morwenna is, yet does nothing about it.  We know (because Morwenna tells us) that the rest of the Phelps family sided with Elizabeth.  If Elizabeth wanted to get to Morwenna, but maybe couldn't figure out how to get there exactly, couldn't she have had another member of the family help her out?

The description on the back cover is a bit misleading.  The confrontation between Morwenna and her mother really doesn't seem to be much of anything, in the end.  Morwenna "wins" rather easily and goes on about her way.  She then meets up with Wim, her father Daniel, and Daniel's father Sam.  I felt this resolution was a bit unsatisfying.  Since the initial conflict between Morwenna and her mother wasn't laid out beat-by-beat at any point, it doesn't feel like she earned her happy ending.  But the end is a bit ambiguous anyway.

Regardless of the presentation, not much happens.  The pace through the first third is rather slow, picking up slightly when Morwenna meets her "karass", the SF book club.  It then picks up a bit more once she and Wim get to know each other better.

In general, Morwenna is quite effusive about the material she's reading.  But in a couple of cases, notably Glory Road and Donaldson's Thomas Covenant series, she is a bit negative.  Her comment about Glory Road is that it's a "stupid adventure story".  It may be flawed, but it's a fantasy novel by a die-hard SF writer who was so serious about his science that he was calculating orbits and such with his wife.  Wim has to correct her assumption that Donaldson put a Tolkien comparison blurb on the cover of Lord Foul's Bane. A bit silly, but I guess we're supposed to accept it since she's 15.  Given how well-read she is, I figured she'd know better.

I have to admit that I expected more.  By no means is this a bad novel, per se.  I don't think the ending leaves room for a sequel, necessarily, but it's clear to me that much of the story has been untold.