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)

A Must Listen

The story is interesting and fun. The performance, however, is wonderful. Katherine Kellgran makes this book a great listen.

Starts in the middle and ends in the middle

This book sort of caught my interest because of the accents and colloquialisms but that is about it.

It starts with little or no explanation how the girl got there accept a few vague crazy mother observations by only the girl and ends with a crazy mother and the mother does what????

Seems like reading a paragraph out of a long book without the context and expecting folks to enjoy it.

Great tone and voice, mediocre ending.

Don't want to get spoilery so I'll just say that I loved the narrator and thought the coming of age story was interesting, but the plot was not very satisfying. I guess I was hoping there was something more interesting going on than the actual story. The reader is amazingly good, I'm not a native but the accents seemed spot on and shifted over time as the characters changed. Still recommend it as a listen.

Good Performance, okay book

I read this book because it is the 2011 Hugo award winner for best SCI-FI novel. Now my assessment is based on the fact that I expected SCI-FI. What I got was a pretty good story told from the first person via a diary about a teenage girl with an odd past. There is mention of magic and some use of magic, alot of discussion about fairies and even more discussion about SCI-FI authors. But very little actual SCI-FI.

That being said, the story is compelling and the performance is great. The setting is the late 1970s in england and the reader brings off the various accents very well. I loved the reading and the story is pretty good. It is just not SCI-FI (at least from my background).

Preferred Others

I'm a bit disappointed with this book, being that it won both Hugo & Nebula Awards. I think that's because it's so genre self-referential that it gives the voters goosebumps (much like 'The Artist' in 2012's Oscars).

Fabulous Book, Incredible Performance

Would you consider the audio edition of Among Others to be better than the print version?

What makes this audio book better than the print version is that the main character, from who's perspective the book is written, is a girl from Wales who moves to England and gets put in a boarding school - and the narrator's accent changes gradually from Welsh to posh English and the story progresses!!
You don't get an effect like that from the print version.

What did you like best about this story?

How magic changes not just the future but the past.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

I loved how the girl in the story gradually became attached to the father and grandfather she never knew.

A Different Kind of Fantasy Novel

What made the experience of listening to Among Others the most enjoyable?

Genre: Fantasy (technically, urban fantasy, but it doesn't fit any of the tropes)There is very little plot to this book, it is more a mood and character study. It is told entirely though diary entries of a high-school aged (or in Britain and Wales where the book is set forth form/lower fifth form aged) Mori Phelps during 1979. What has happened in the past is explained in dribs and drabs - there was an accident and Mori's twin sister died and Mori herself was crippled. This accident was either caused by their mother or caused by Mori in an attempt to stop their mother from doing something vile with magic, it's not quite clear. Mori was then forced to live with her mother after her grandfather's subsequent stroke and runs away. Child services sends her to live with her father, Daniel, who abandoned them when she was a baby, so he's a stranger to her. Luckily for her, Daniel shares her love of science fiction, not so luckily, he lives with his sisters who immediately pack the Welsh middle-class Mori off to an upper class British boarding school. Her only solace is reading. Her diary is filled with the books she's read obsessively, which are mostly science fiction, but she does read mysteries and Plato as eagerly. In many ways the book is an homage to scifi and fandom, but it's also a fond stroll down memory lane, when there was no internet and the way you discovered new books was to see them all bright and shiny in a bookstore and eagerly gobbled them up.

The way magic works in this novel is unique in my reading experience -- it's not like D&D, reliable do X get Y result. It's very fluid: the effects of a magic spell can't be foreseen, and can always be explained away. Mori struggles with the morality of her own actions magic-wise, which is made worse by the very intangibility of determining exactly what she did. There are fairies (although it's not at all clear that that's what they are -- that's just what Mori calls them) but most people can't see them, and they don't look like what most people think fairies look like; they aren't Tolkein's elves, or Shakespeare's Peaseblossoms and sprites, nor Tinkerbell. They are more earthy and non-human, and they generally don't talk - and when they do, they don't use nouns. Like classic fairy stories, it is best to treat them with caution, although Mori, being a socially awkward teenager, frequently fails to do so, with varying results.

What other book might you compare Among Others to and why?

I enjoyed the book very much - but it is not a fast paced action-adventure, if that's what you're looking for. It's more a slow period piece, examination of character, time and place. Off the top of my head I can't think of another science fiction/fantasy book its similar too. It did leave me with a substantial list of sci-fi classics i want to go re-read simply from Mori's excitement reminding me about them!

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

Katherine Kellgren uses a welsh accent throughout the audio book; it adds a lot to Mori's perspective and the class-conflict between her and her classmates, although it did take a bit to get used to initially.

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

For all the diary tone is fairly light, much of the subject matter was rather dark somewhat depressing.

Utterly wonderful.

Would you consider the audio edition of Among Others to be better than the print version?

Without question... the audio version should be the only "allowed" publishing... :-)

Who was your favorite character and why?

Not applicable... the whole idea was the book.

Which scene was your favorite?

I don't want to telegraph anything... but this book builds to its ending the way a great book should.

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

I am not good at capsulizing an entire book... especailly one specifically *about* words... into a few words... or a "tag line". For anyone to do that with this book, it would be insufficent and take away from its magic.

Any additional comments?

The reader took my breath away. She not only read the book as if she understood every word almost as if she had written them herself, but as if she understood every one of the many books this story mentions and precis's in its very illuctable way.

I have never heard any other books read by Katherine Keligher. However, I have been listening to talking books since 1954, so I have no idea how she isn't among the few dozen pure favorites I have come to love. If it means anything... which it most certainly actually does... I will be reading every other thing she has ever done. Soon."

There is an almost magical simultaneity here... but then, that is what magic and this book is about. I recently listened to another book just out on Audible... a book by Orson Scott Card (Earth Unaware). At the end he metnions his favorite authors and that he loves reading audible books. His notes sounded as if I had written them myself. I love Sci-Fi and Fantasy, the bigger, the more epoch, the more amazing ... the more I like it. He seemed to echo my very thoughts about this. The precise authors he named are somehow my absolute favorite authors as well. He even put a special and unchanging place of honor for J.R.R. Tolkien and his Lord Of The Rings. It was uncanny to say the least. Of course, I want you to read everything Mr. Card has ever written so you will appreciate that book as much as I did.. and thereby, hopefully, appreciate his short wonderfully "telling" note about his favorite authors. What he wrote could have been a prescient revue of "Among Others".... whether he has read it yet or not... I have no idea.

In any case, if you are in the same realm as he and me in our love of The Lord Of The Rings... and Science Fiction/Fatasy overall... then you will simply love this book. It isn't big, and epoch and it didn't seem like something that would be anything other than a nice read... coming from that full depth of grand fiction and Universes that live in the pages of the best SF and Fantasy. I just didn't think it would blow me away... yet somehow it did. Maybe it did so because it sneakily and smoothly integrated the author's same love of it all into the main thread of the book itself... and it does it magically.

I wasn't quite sure all the way through just how much I really loved it, and wondered a time or two just why it was holding my interest so fast... until the end came. It was nothing short of one of the best passages and conclusions that I have ever read (or heard...) and remember that note about me listening to audio books since I was 5 years old (circa 1954). If you're counting and calculating... and I am now that I'm thinking about it and writing this revue... that is thousands and thousands of audio books. Yes, you can take it to the bank... this is a great piece of science fiction/fantasy and along with the phenomenal reader, this is one credit you will think very well spent. The Lord Of The Rings and all the wonderful books beside it notwithstanding, but included, this little snip of a book fits in and fits in well.

The only thing I could wish for you to make this book the pleasure that it was for me... is that you could somehow *be* me, with my memories of the past 58 years of reading and listening to audio books before you start it. Too bad.... cant make that happen for you... but if your love of The Lord Of The Rings and the genre of SF and Fantasy, and of reading itself... is even one millionth that of mine... this book will bring you great joy.

And if OSC has somehow not yet listened to this marvelous little production... which I highly doubt... he at least won't have to write a review... my bet is he would agree word for word and thought for thought with this one. I saved him some work. -Esak

Good story, GREAT narration

Only three chapters in and so far the book is pretty good but the narration is incredible. Unfortunately, she died last year, quite young, which really is a loss because she reads as if she's actually acting. It sounds sort of like I have the TV on in the background, but since it's a book I don't miss out on anything by not watching because there's nothing actually to watch. Narration really doesn't get more top-notch than this. I thought this book was a fantasy novel in a modern setting but it's actually magical realism. It's told from the point-of-view of the main character who is quite a character. She's definitely entertaining enough to listen to. The story is told through her diary, which she makes entries in daily. The magical realism is done so deftly that you're never sure if what she calls magic is actually magic or a young person who just believes in her own imagination. It has a similar humor to Angela's Ashes and a similar overall feel except you'd have to replace one part grit with one part fairy dust.

Very offbeat, but interesting if only . .

What did you love best about Among Others?

I love the quirky main character

What didn’t you like about Katherine Kellgren’s performance?

Almost everything!!! The main character was Welsh and I've heard Welsh people speaking English but NEVER with an accent like that. It was so bad I had a hard time listening to it.
Her other accents seemed fine.