Among Others

By: Jo Walton

Narrated by: Katherine Kellgren

Length: 10 hrs and 36 mins

Publisher's summary

Startling, unusual, and yet irresistably readable, 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.

©2010 Jo Walton (P)2011 Audible, Inc.

Critic reviews

• Hugo Award, Best Novel, 2012
• Nebula Award, Best Novel, 2011

“Walton succeeds admirably. Her novel is a wonder and a joy.” (The New York Times)

"Katherine Kellgren’s Welsh accent, with its lyrical cadences, suggests that audio may be the most authentic way to experience this 2011 winner of the Nebula Award." ( Audiofile)

Long and Drawn Out

I recommended this book to my book club based on the reviews, I don’t know if they will ever forgive me. I think I was the only one who finished it. Although I enjoyed the narrator, it took the book forever to get to the point. To me, there wasn’t much substance. I felt like I was listening to a chronicle of all the science fiction books every written and caught myself wonder whether or not I had read each book mentioned. Perhaps that was the point of it all, who knows? It was OK to read on my own, but not a good book club selection. GBC members please forgive me :-)

Meandering

Unfortunately, this audiobook was not my favorite - which perhaps explains why it was so easy to take a long break from listening to it! It is not a bad book, really, but the author chose to have this coming-of-age-story be relayed through journal entries. I think it would have perhaps been more successful in print version. Though I originally though that the accent would add to the fun of this, the narrator’s voice can be a bit distracting in the performance with some accents overly emphasized. What I like the most about the book is the obvious passion the journaler, Mor, has for reading - particularly Science Fiction novels. Though I have read quite a bit in this genre as well, this book includes her reactions to many titles that I had never even heard of! In fact, the majority of the book seems to be an outlet for discussion on SF literature - with a few classics sprinkled in. School, Mor’s fractured family life, romance and bits of magic are all rather sidelined by recountings of plots, characters, authors and a consistent dislike of maths. The climax feels rather rushed and genuinely unsatisfying - nor does it seem to mesh with the preceding pages (hours listening). Maybe it’s just that Walton too accurately captured a fifteen year old and that is why I never quite connected with the narrator...

Narrator makes the heroine unlikeable

The novel is a Hugo winner, but you wouldn't know it from this reading. The narrator -- whose accent I liked at first -- reads Mori as an insufferable know it all prig at the same time at once naive and hyper mature, a critic of all around her and yet completely unlikeable. Somehow I felt Holden Caulfield's pain through his dislike of everything, but I can't feel that Mori is anything but obtuse. The plot development -- to the extent there is one -- is incredibly slow and Mori, as read in this audible version, seems like an impossible teenager, at once wise beyond her years and stupidly childish. And if you haven't read LeGuin, Silverberg, Tolkien, Anderson, Herbert . . . forget it. You'll be at sea with all the SF references.

Enjoyable

I love fantasy and science fiction and loved the references to various authors and books. I enjoyed the main character and the story but it felt unfinished to me. I wanted more clarity at the end. I liked the world that Jo Walton created and that you were unsure whether the faerie world was real or something created by our main characters mental instability. I wanted more of the faerie world and I felt the ending was quick and unsatifying. It could have been carried into another book. As it was it felt unfinished.

Really Brill

Took me back into myself, into the worlds of books I dove into and jumped off from when I was a kid. I keep trying to tell people about the story, and keep finding myself saying "it's hard to describe... it's itself." And it is. Kellgren's narration is particularly splendid. I am glad I listened to the narration before I read the book myself, which is a bit of a shock to me, but listening to the cadence and passion Kellgren breathes into the first person storytelling was a warmly intimate way to meet Mori, and I savored it. Now to dig out the books that populate Mori's world, both the old friends and the ones she introduced me to.

Good but anticlimactic

It was exceptionally real feeling. The thought process written down of a young girl in her diary feels spot on. All the SF references were great, and especially amusing in a fantasy story. The fantasy aspect of the story was relatively mild, but then became disproportionately intense.

Really brill!

Jo Walton's Among Others is a wonderful story full of references to a wide variety of science fiction and fantasy books. It helps to have read many of the books, since the main character often quotes from them or refers to characters or situations from these books as part of her "diary entries". Since the protagonist is very nearly my own age, and has read many of the books that I enjoyed in that same time period, I found this aspect charming and fun, allowing me even more connection to the character and her world. She is more widely read than I am, so some of the references go over my head, and thus I can see that if you haven't read many of the books, it might be a bit hard to follow. For me, though, it just increased my desire to fill in some of the gaps in my own reading list.

I will say that if I could give the performance more than 5 stars, I would. The wonderful Welsh accent of Katherine Kellgren is such a joy to listen to, and truly brings the character alive in a way that I could not have experienced in the usual book format. This is one of those rare cases where the audio format is not just "as good as" or "a good substitute for" the regular book format, but instead adds so much to the experience that I'd recommend listening to it even if you'd already read the book itself before, just for the joy of the sound.

Highly recommended!

Fascinating

What was one of the most memorable moments of Among Others?

Talking about the most memorable moments would risk spoilers

What does Katherine Kellgren bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

Finding out what Welsh sounds like when I can't travel there was wonderful, and greatly added to the story

If you were to make a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?

A fascinating journey with one of the most memorable of literary young people

Any additional comments?

Have you read Jo Walton? I just finished "Among Others" and am very excited to find she has written a bunch of other books. "Among Others" is set in South Wales. The main character is fifteen, and a survivor of something horrible in her past, something not explained at the beginning of the book. She also talks to fairies, but the reader is unsure if they are really there or the product of a traumatized mind. Her main character, Mor, is wonderful. She is fifteen, brilliant, troubled, geeky, and obsessed with Science Fiction (Meg from "Wrinkle in Time" combined with Holden Caulfield), and the SF part is wonderful because the story is a frame for lists, discussion, and debate about books that I read during my first love affair with the genre, as the book is set in 1979. I loved this book, but it had something in common with one of my other favorite books, "Swamplandia". I think the author was propelled by her fabulous characters, and fabulous world, and didn't know how to end her story, so the ending was somewhat abrupt, a tad deus ex machina. But I will forgive her that because it was a fabulous journey. I listened to this book, and found the reader, Katherine Kellgren, to be wonderful. I had no idea what a Welsh accent would sound like (my kids were enormously amused by my struggle with the language in "The Dark Is Rising" series) so I was fascinated with the lilt and nuance of the language, but the aural book was also frustrating because I so wanted a written record of all the books mentioned and discussed. I should have used the note taking and bookmarking features, but I was too anxious to find out what happens.

Award Winner - Not So Sure

I gave this book a shot as it was the 2011 Nebula Award Winner and 2012 Hugo Award Winner for best novel. After listening I'm astounded that this won any awards. Maybe my gap is this is considered a young adult book. Or maybe it's because it references so many other SF and Fantasy classic boors or it works at a level for young readers, but I don't see why or how this won awards. Don't get me wrong, the story is ok to good and I enjoyed listening to it, but it is just not of award winning caliber. The story seems to drift along slowly for most of the book and then crams all the conclusions into the last thirty minutes.

The book is a chronicle or diary of a girl named Morwenna (Mori) over about a number of months as she discovers herself and gets her life on track after a horrible accident that kills her twin sister. There are mentions of fairies and magic, but not to any extreme. Read any review and you'll get more of the picture of the story.

I think what I enjoyed about this book was the narrator, Katherine Kellgren. Mori is a Welsh girl and the narrator's accent just works for the character. Others have complained about not understanding a word, but I had no issues with the narration and felt that's what made the book most enjoyable for me.

In conclusion, if you are interested in this type of story, it is worthy, but there are many better books that I would consider as alternatives.

A disappointment

I rarely stop reading a book before I am finished, but the very strong and exaggerated Welsh accent of the narrator was too distracting. I found myself focusing on the accent instead of the narrative. The story itself moves a little slowly and makes many, many references to science fiction writers that members of the general public may not have read. These two factors combined made this one a non finisher for me.