Among Others by Jo Walton

Why I read this book?

This book was the May selection of the Sword and Laser book club.

What's the book about?

Morwenna Phelps is a teenager girl who recently lost her twin sister and escaped her home in Wales. She goes with her lost father and is now going to a boarding school for girls in England. All of her life she has find refugee in books, mostly science fiction, but also fantasy. She has also found solace in magic. This is a coming of age story, full of book references and magic...if you believe in it.

What was the thing I liked the most? 

Besides the book references? I know have a bookshelf in Goodreads of books she talked about that made me want to read it...I liked the empathy I could feel for Mori. 

What about the main character?

Mori is a teenager and it shows in some of her responses to life. However, she is also a very different type of teen since none of her peers read as much as she does and this gives her a unique perspective on things. She uses magic as she uses books, to protect herself and surround herself of a safety net; at least in my opinion. She will question a lot of the things that are taken for granted around her, and just for the fact that she changed dramatically her environment she also changes, little by little, some of her views. 

Final thoughts

I think is a precious book, but I do understand why several of the members of the book club didn't fall for it the way I did; it was hard to say it was a real Sword selection, but anyway. That said, I was horrified by the amount of people that just read, maybe a third of the book, and just quitted. In my opinion, the whole idea of a book club (even when it is a bit genre oriented like this one) the idea is to push your typical boundaries and this book certainly was not the typical thing to read.

But leaving this aside, I have to tell you I really enjoyed the book, I felt a lot of empathy towards Mori.  The only thing I guess that kept me from giving it a 5 was the missing connections at the end. But I realize that might be just me and my science head wanting to have the whole idea at the end.