Among Others starts slowly, but is immediately intriguing.
Told through the diary of a 14-year-old Welsh girl, Mori, to begin with it
appears that the main action has already happened - Mori has run away from home
after some terrible magical occurance which left her crippled and her twin
sister Mor dead.
Mori is then forced to live with her father, who she has never
met before, in Shrewsbury, which feels very far away from the rolling Welsh
mountains and the enigmatic fairies Mori is used to.
As Mori is sent to
boarding school in Oswestry, the story takes on a slight Harry Potter feel, but
in reverse, with the magical girl having to try to fit in at a very normal
school.
Mori's love of sci-fi is a theme throughout the story, but
even without knowing the authors she mentions the story still flows, and the
books she reads eventually turn out to be more than just a diversion for a
crippled girl who can't play sports.
Living in Oswestry myself, I found myself wondering if girls
from Moreton Hall boarding school had ever caught the bus into town to look for
fairies, or if the school had been the basis for Mori's school, especially
after finding out that the author, Jo Walton, went to boarding school in the
town when she was the same age that Mori is in the story. There are lots of
little hints of description when Mori visits Shrewsbury or Oswestry, and a
lovely diary entry chronicling the train journey through Shropshire on the way
back to Wales - all of which will have a very familiar feel to anyone who knows
the area.
Set in the 1970s, Among Others has a nice, almost old
fashioned feel, and it was a captivating read that I didn't want to put down.
5 out of 5
- Among Others by Jo Walton
- RRP £7.99 (paperback)
- Published by Corsair
- ISBN-10: 1472106539
- ISBN-13: 978-1472106537
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