The title of Among Others is pitch perfect. It’s the story of Morwenna Phelps, who finds herself living on the boundaries of several worlds. Morwenna and her twin sister Morganna were raised by their mother Liz in post-industrial Wales in the 1960’s and 1970’s, a land of factories and mines gone to ruins, occupied by fairies who are the girls’ playmates. Mori’s mother, an aspiring witch, dabbles in magic, and the lure of power it offers has driven her half-mad. One of her dark spells is opposed by Mori, who’s left crippled in the same battle which takes her twin sister’s life.
In 1979, the year after Morganna’s death, Morwenna is fifteen. She’s fled her mother to her estranged father, who she scarcely knows, but has then been shipped to an English boarding school, Arlinghurst, near the Welsh / English border. Arlinghurst is devoid of magic, friends, or family. To Mori, by reason of her Welsh background and accent and crippling injury, it’s soul-numbing.
Mori’s salvation comes from the power of reading and literature; Mori devours science fiction and fantasy novels, and the SF classics she reads and loves, related in her journal (the story’s structural frame), are a treat for Walton’s readers, who will have read and loved many of these books themselves. The books are also a tangible element of the novel, because in a snobbish school where reading is anathema, they’re another source of separation from most of the other girls. In an effort to find like-minded friends, Mori is tempted into magic herself, casting a spell to create a karass (a term from Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle), a network of SF readers.
But the magic of Mori’s world is dangerous and twisted; it screws with cause and effect, so that the desired results of a spell ‘just happen’, and are indistinguishable from ordinary reality; there’s an ambiguity to it- did the spell actually happen? Mori’s karass is a SF reading group in the nearby town which she stumbles into. She befriends like-minded people (including her boarding school’s librarian) and even finds a boyfriend. She’s also left wondering if the friendship is real, or simply a glamour of the magic- another twist of using magic.
And the magic has one other effect: it attracts the attention of Mori’s mad mother Liz. There’s also dark unfinished business with her sister’s death, the resolution of which the fairies, never far away, want her to accomplish. This sets up a final confrontation with her mother. This book’s magic, and the questions it entails, will haunt you.
Among Others won the Nebula for Best Novel in 2011 and the Hugo for Best Novel in 2012.