Or What You Will, Jo Walton
Or What You Will, Jo Walton
List: $24.99 | Sale: $17.50
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Or What You Will

Author: Jo Walton

Narrator: Emily Lawrence

Unabridged: 12 hr 2 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 10/22/2024


Synopsis

Or What You Will is an utterly original novel about how stories are brought forth from Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Award-winning author Jo Walton.

He has been too many things to count. He has been a dragon with a boy on his back. He has been a scholar, a warrior, a lover, and a thief. He has been dream and dreamer. He has been a god.

But "he" is in fact nothing more than a spark of idea, a character in the mind of Sylvia Harrison, seventy-three, award-winning author of thirty novels over forty years. He has played a part in most of those novels, and in the recesses of her mind, Sylvia has conversed with him for years.

But Sylvia won't live forever, any more than any human does. And he's trapped inside her cave of bone, her hollow of skull. When she dies, so will he.

Now Sylvia is starting a new novel, a fantasy for adult readers, set in Thalia, the Florence-resembling imaginary city that was the setting for a successful YA trilogy she published decades before. Of course he's got a part in it. But he also has a notion. He thinks he knows how he and Sylvia can step off the wheel of mortality altogether. All he has to do is convince her.

About Jo Walton

Jo Walton is a Welsh-Canadian author of science fiction, fantasy, and poetry. She has published thirteen novels, three poetry collections, and an essay collection. She won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 2002, the World Fantasy Award for Tooth and Claw in 2004, the Hugo and Nebula awards for Among Others in 2012, and in 2014, both the Tiptree Award for My Real Children and the Locus Award for What Makes This Book So Great. Walton comes from Wales, has lived in England, and now lives in Montreal, where the food and books are much better.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Mike on March 22, 2020

This is not a book for beginners. I hate saying that, because it’s super patronizing - Malazan devotees, I’m looking at you - but I kinda have to on this one. Not because it expects you to remember a zillion details and characters (there’s about half a dozen of significance) but because this is a bo......more

Goodreads review by zerogravitas on August 06, 2020

The fact that this book is marketed as fantasy is shockingly ill advised. This isn't a fantasy novel, because those have a plot, structure, characters, and conventions. This book is a literary postmodern meditation masquerading as metafiction masquerading as fantasy. While this layering may well be e......more

Goodreads review by Heidi on November 09, 2020

Or What You Will is a unique fantasy novel about a writer, one of her fictional characters, her real life, a final story she is writing, and her love affair with the city of Florence. "I have been a character, and I have been a narrator, but now I don't know what I am." pg 8, ebook. Told from the poin......more

Goodreads review by Mel (Epic Reading) on June 17, 2022

I’m clearly a child of the 90s as all I could think when there is a segment about naming our narrator was Never Ending Story. Which made me giggle and took away any semblance of deep soul searching that might have been happening in this book. Added to that it’s a bit haphazard of a read. I’m sure En......more

Goodreads review by Celeste on May 08, 2020

Actual rating: 3.5 stars I received a copy of this book from the publisher (Tor) and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. “I have been a word on the tongue. I have been a word on the page. And I hope I will be again.” Or What You Will blew me away from the very first page. The last time I got th......more