Among Others in Crazy Challenge Connection

Jun 13, 2012 Rusty rated it liked it

This is about Mori (Morwenna), 14, a surviving twin whose mother is an evil witch. Her sister was killed in a battle with their mother and Mori will forever limp because of the car that hit them during the fight. Her father, who abandoned her mother, found her to take care of her and enrolled her in an English boarding school. She dislikes her new school, has few friends, and the food is awful but reading science fiction is her outlet. The book contains dozens of references to her reads and I ma ...more

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Jun 27, 2012 mussolet rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: region-europe, type-audiobook, g-magical-realism, language-english, 2024-shelf-read-question

EDIT:
I have thought about this a lot, and am now counting this as "Magical Realism". It is a love letter to the SFF genres, but I would not count this as Fantasy itself. Thus, I feel Magical Realism is more appropriate.
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"Among Others" is set up as a diary, written by Welsh girl Mori, who has lost her twin, is at odds with her evil magic mother, and is sent to a posh English boarding school by her father. Mori loves books, and half of this bo EDIT:
I have thought about this a lot, and am now counting this as "Magical Realism". It is a love letter to the SFF genres, but I would not count this as Fantasy itself. Thus, I feel Magical Realism is more appropriate.
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"Among Others" is set up as a diary, written by Welsh girl Mori, who has lost her twin, is at odds with her evil magic mother, and is sent to a posh English boarding school by her father. Mori loves books, and half of this book is actually her talking about Science Fiction. If you're not into that, you should probably stay away from the book.

I wasn't too sure what to expect, but somehow "Among Others" managed to miss my inexistent expectations.
Although I'm quite a bookworm as well, I couldn't relate to Mori, and it seemed to me that she shied away from the reader as much as she shied away from the people at her school.
She is really set in her ways and her opinions, a little bit too much so for my taste. There was a line about someone she'd just met, which immediately jumped to my attention: "And even if he's wrong about some fairly fundamental things, he's prepared to listen."
I felt like Mori could go a long way, if she would take everything she has learned from books, and actually applied it to her life. Because she seems like a good judge of characters and reasons within the boundaries of the books she discusses, which makes me feel a bit sad that she doesn't take it a step further.

What I missed a little bit was an emphasis on England and Wales. Mori does seem to miss her home, but it is more about the fairies and her grandparents, than it is about actually describing the difficulties a Welsh girl might encounter at a posh English boarding school.

As there is a lot (a lot!) SF in this book, it will certainly inspire you to read something new. But I hope that the message the readers take from this is not
"Don't be like Daniel here, always reading stories and no time for anything real. I'm the opposite. I have no time for stories."
Mori seems to find a kind of balance between the two by the end of this, and I think that is the best message you can get. ...more

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May 31, 2013 Susan rated it really liked it

Shelves: science-fiction, fantasy, recommended

The most striking thing about this book is how many science fiction works it mentions. It's not itself science fiction, but fantasy; but its protagonist is an avid reader and consistently gives her thoughts about things she's read. To some extent, it got in the way of my getting absorbed in the story, because I felt like I had to keep taking notes. I ended up with dozens of books and short stories I want to check out. It feels like I should plan to go back and read this again once I've read all ...more

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Jan 01, 2013 Helen Southall rated it liked it

Despite this being both the Hugo and Nebula award winner for 2012, I was not thrilled with this book. It was aimed at an audience who had detailed knowledge of sci-fi authors pre-1979. Most of the plot revolved around discussing and comparing styles and premises of the early writers of this genre. Even though I am from that era and very familiar with the writers mentioned, it is hard for me to recommend a book that does not appeal to a broader base. If you are a sci-fi aficionado, then you might ...more

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Nov 03, 2019 Tien rated it liked it

Shelves: young-adult, fantasy, urban-fantasy, mm-19

A lot like love letter for SF fan for the genre. Sooo many authors & books mentioned and I've barely read any. I've heard of most authors but maybe only read 5% of books mentioned (if that!).

Written epistolary style (diary entries), it was actually a little annoying to read as narrator seems to ramble on quite a bit. ...more

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