Or What You Will

by Jo Walton

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, 73, 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.At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Genres: Fantasy, Fiction, Books About Books, Historical Fiction, Adult, Science Fiction Fantasy, Speculative Fiction

316 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 7, 2020

About the author

Jo Walton writes science fiction and fantasy novels and reads a lot and eats great food. It worries her slightly that this is so exactly what she always wanted to do when she grew up. She comes from Wales, but lives in Montreal.

Reviews

[Jo Walton]

"Of course, all books are easier to read that to describe. This is true even when you’re a character in them, when that’s been your whole life, when you began as the author’s imaginary friend and wound up as narrator, protagonist, and bit part player in her over thirty novels. But I don’t know why we’re talking about you. This is a book about me."

That's the narrator's blurb for Or What You Will, and it's about a good a description of it as I can get.

The first chapter of this book is extremely fun to read aloud, which is a genuine plus for me. This book is very meta, indeed its filename was "Meta".

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

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 book that assumes you are a serious, serious reader. If you haven’t read a ton of books, especially fantasy books, there’s a lot that you’re going to miss. If you aren’t interested in the craft of writing, then this book is probably going to be boring. If you’re not at least vaguely familiar with The Tempest and Twelfth Night, you’re going to not understand a ton of things - Walton doesn’t feel the need to explain to the reader who Orsini and Miranda are. But if you love hearing authors talk about their experiences and influences, if you love reading rough cuts and early drafts, and if books have been your constant companion for your entire life - then there’s a good chance you’ll love this book.

There are two principal characters. One is Sylvia, an aging fantasy writer, acclaimed within the SF/F fandom community but not particularly known outside of it. I’m thinking like Robin Hobb-level. The kind of writer, at the point in her life she’s at, might well get named a Damon Knight Grand Master. (I’m not trying to gatekeep here - I’m really not - but knowing what the Damon Knight Grand Master award is may well be a good barometer for how much you’ll appreciate this book.) The other principal character, who serves as the narrator, lives in Sylvia’s head. He has no name, but he’s been Sylvia’s muse and inspiration for her entire life. Nearly every book she’s written, he’s one of the characters. Not in a Hoid from the Cosmere sense, but he’s always been inside one of the characters. Hero, villain, side character, important-character-who-only-shows-up-briefly-but-looms-large, even a dragon - he’s been them all.

As the book begins, Sylvia is trying to write a book without him (“I’m worried you’re getting stale”) but generally failing because he keeps worming his way in. She’s also dying of cancer, which has the narrator frightened both because he loves her, and because without her he’ll die too.

The book revolves around Sylvia revisiting Ilyria, one of her earlier worlds, a world where immortality is possible (thanks to the heroic efforts of one of the earlier embodiments of the narrator). He’s trying to convince her to go to Ilyria before she dies, so they can keep living, and he can exist outside of her. What happens is a very meta story-about-stories, where we learn about Sylvia’s life at the same time she’s trying to write this new book, her final book, and the narrator’s attempts to steer things so that the two come together (after convincing her that it’s possible at all, that Ilyria is real in a way she can go to).

The parts about Sylvia’s life feel very autobiographical. I don’t know if it is or not - this is my first Jo Walton book, and I don’t know anything about her personal life - but I have no doubt that even if the details have been changed, she poured a great deal of herself into this book.

This was an ARC, so it’s not going to be generally available for a few months. I’m going to be waiting impatiently for it to come out, because I’m pretty certain I’m going to be chewing on this for the entire time. I want someone to talk about it with. This wasn’t a conventional read for me, but I greatly enjoyed it.

[Sherwood Smith]

There are two dangers, I've discovered in my decades of reading, in the evocation of Shakespeare in fiction. One is of course that many readers have avoided Shakespeare ever since that horrible class in high school in which you endured multiple choice questions about who was who, and who said what in which act. (I've found behind nearly every Shakespear, yeccch! comment a badly taught class).

The second danger is one for the reader familiar with the plays: the echoes of brilliant words and complex emotions can totally overwhelm the actual novel in your hand. Harold Bloom addressed this in his Anxiety of Influence.

But then along comes this novel, in which the prose is so lovely, so image-rich and full of allusion as well as illusion, the Shakespearean layer is like the sun meeting the fountain. Add in vivid word-pictures of Florence, and intriguing bits of Florentine history, blended with breathtaking felicity through fandom and science fiction and fantasy lovers, reality and being.

I think of this as a writer's book. Not that the reader must be a writer to enjoy it. I don't think that's true, but the meta woven so beautifully and poignantly through the novel will get into a writer's head in the most delicious way. At least it did mine. Though I do think that the reader unfamiliar with Shakespeare would do well to look at synopses of Twelfth Night and The Tempest..

Walton's books are all quite different from one another, except for their examination of a theme running through most of her recent fiction: humans discovering how to be better humans. How this works out in story form is one of the many delights to be discovered here.

To read this especially in this year of total crazy freighted insight and motivation, generosity of thought and connection in a way so effective that I know I'll be returning to it again, more slowly.

[zerogravitas · Rating 2 out of 5]

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 enjoyable to the right crowd of readers, marketing it as fantasy just demonstrates the publisher didn't know what to do with it, and then came up with the idea while being drunk. "But it made sense at the time!"

Marketing is all about setting the right expectations in readers and making sure the product lands with the right audience.

The book is a Umberto Eco-esque collage of rambly meditations, mixed with real world history bits, with pseudo-alternate history and pseudo-fantasy, and with literary reference porn (it's porn when there's so much of it that it amounts to parading). Alternatively, it's a loose collection of essays that have been Arc Welded into a loose "story" that's dishing out 3,000 references per minute while talking about something unconnected.

That's maybe not bad if you know all the references, but it does not a book make. What it makes is a very long inside joke between the writer and the several hundred people who have exactly the same pool of references, provided that those people enjoy being briefly mentioned things they already know, like in some sort of trivia contest. It's like if I wrote a book where all my friends would make cameos where nothing happens, which renders the book enjoyable to my inner circle of friends who amuse themselves with guessing who's who, but makes it virtually trash to everyone else.

And all of it is topped with a metatextual approach of meditative literary commentary. Exactly like in literature class, but cleverer, I guess. Also a lot looser.

With this is mind, it should be clear why it's misinformation to classify the book as fantasy.

The problem with misclassifying is that the book gets to the wrong audience. I'm not the right audience. I find the references and facts in the book interesting, the fantasy bits nice, and the rambly meditation writing style that connects the two both unnecessary and tedious. I'd like to read the facts as facts, and the fiction as fiction but the mix makes me want to say "get to the point already". But the point is that the book needs to be enjoyed in the style it's written in, which requires a certain type of reader. Beauty is in the eye of the wine holder, or [insert your preferred reference here].

Thing is, there's so much collage that the original idea advertised in the blurb essentially vanishes. Another thing is, in order to appreciate this book, you gotta like the historical bits, and the pseudo-history, and the Shakespeare fan fiction, and the bunch of literary references (get your kicks out of metatextuality), and the rambly meditation style, and the slow development, and the essay Arc Welding into story, and don't be sour the idea you've been sold doesn't feature a lot in the book. Tall order which basically reduces the audience at every AND filter gate.

So the real, complete title of this work is "This Is a Book, Or What You Will".

[Ari · Rating 3 out of 5]

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Thank you NetGalley and Tor Books for this ARC. All thoughts and opinions are mine.

You see, I know her.
I've been in all her books.
But I've been in her head much, much longer than that.

When you read the work of a new author, you're about to step into a new and different world. You have no idea what you're in store for, not matter how interesting the synopsis of the story may seem. I find myself feeling both excited and wary, but with as open a mind as I can keep in all situations (which is rather open, I'm always pleasantly surprised to realize).

Before I read Or What You Will, I did not know what metafiction was. It could be that throughout my years as a reader I came across a story that had meta components, but I wasn't aware of it, or didn't look into it further enough to find out. I've always loved that about books, however: you're going to learn something new in each one, about the book or about yourself, even if it's the fact that you've discovered an author whose imagination you now enjoy. And regardless of any other factors, you're going to appreciate the book for that alone.

I certainly do.

I now know that I'm not a fan of metafiction. It's not my cup of tea and I accept that. Despite this, this book is worth the read. Not only is the writing itself fantastic, but the way that you are drawn into the story happens seamlessly. Yes, you're given a lot of information that is mingled in with the narrative—most of it historical details of Florence, which tie in with the rest of the book—and it can be quite a lot to take in. But as history stands, they're fascinating facts that will just make your life richer for knowing, especially if you're a fan of art and European culture; it's intriguing, and it does help in becoming further immersed.

It took me some time to go deep into the novel, but once I did, I did not want to come back up until I'd finished it.

Or What You Will won't be for everyone, but there's a special kind of magic that makes it irresistible to read. After all, as a reader, who doesn't want to explore a story about a fictional character coming to life?

[Algernon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Let me tell you – what, show you, you say? I can’t ‘show’ you anything. This isn’t a picture book. It’s all telling here. We only have words between us. But let me tell you, so you may, if you choose, weigh the qualities of different silences.

Say the right word and a whole new world is born out of the mist of possibility. Part Renaissance Italy, part Shakespeare fanfiction and part stream-of-conscience or whatever the reader likes to read between the lines, this unusual construction is nevertheless a compelling argument for literature as art and for art as the redeemer of a life under review.
Jo Walton has a certain approach towards storytelling that almost defies a cold analysis. Her books, of which I read “Among Others” and “All Her Children” so far, defy genre boundaries by blurring the dividing lines between reality and fantasy, between the outside world of facts and the interior landscapes of the ‘bone cage’. The end result is intelligent, intimate, interesting in a provocative and emotionally charged manner

She asks if that’s really how I’m going to describe it, the deepest most numinous part of her head, the wellspring of everything? It isn’t just ‘mist’, she says, grumpily. It’s a place, a place swirling with potentiality. It’s huge, and though you can’t ever see far you feel that if the twining tendrils of mist thinned you might find unexpected vistas opening before you. It’s the source, the foundation, the origin. It’s the valley of the shadow, and the dreamcrossed twilight. It’s Ginnungagap, where nothing is and all things start.

Out of the mist inside a writer’s head an entity takes shape and starts to tell a story about an elderly lady from Toronto named Sylvia. She is visiting Firenze and is persuaded to write a book about a city named Thalia, set in a parallel universe stuck in a timeloop of Renaissance Italy and peopled with historical characters and with heroes from Shakespeare plays. This personage, this entity who is part imaginary friend and part alter ego for the artist, speaks directly to the audience and engages in arguments with Sylvia about her art, her life decisions and the shape of the present novel as it emerges from this imaginary interplay.

Anyway, all of what you are would not fit within the bounds of any page, the shape of any story.

This sort of metafiction is the sort I have come to expect from the likes of Italo Calvino or Robert Coover, yet it feels more than a simple literary gimmick here. There is a sense of urgency and of painful self-exploration here as Sylvia is trying to deal with old memories of domestic abuse, with the recent loss of her beloved husband and with an implacable terminal disease. Could art make sense of all this personal pain and help one cope with mortality and disillusion? What are the lessons to be learned from Pico della Mirandola who once wrote an “Oration for the Dignity of Man” , and how can Miranda and Caliban, Duke Orsino and the other personages from “The Tempest” and “Twelfth Night” remain relevant in the modern world?

I am the egg of aspiration. I am the spaceship in the sunrise. I am hope, lurking amid the evils. At least, I hope I am. I’m getting desperate in here.


The answer is probably to be found in the deliberate setting of the novel in the duality of the real and imaginary city of art, in what Thalia/Firenze represents through the ages – the embodiment of a revolutionary movement that left its mark on our culture and on our conscience. A change of priorities, a recalibration of the modern system of values is one of the paths to reconcile a life of strife with the need for meaning, for beauty and for immortality: invoking the Renaissance here is an appeal for a return to a sense of belonging, for a higher purpose and for an appreciation of beauty.

As the religious go to kneel where prayer has been valid, artists of all kind come here, where art has. It’s not just art, but art as life, art as the wellspring, the community of art, the golden age where everyone is making things, full of burning excitement to show them to each other.

The novel alternates between chapters from the novel Sylvia is writing, a sequel to the “Twelfth Night” set in Thalia, where Duke Orsino and the magicians Ficino and Miranda have to deal with a family crisis, and interior monologues between the author and her nameless alter ego, ranging in style from essays on modern living, creative processes and flashbacks from the troubled past of Sylvia. As a bonus, there are anecdotes and art presentations of the city in its period of glory, of paintings and architecture and the people who made it all possible, as well as portraits from the street life today.

Petrarch is a poet famous for love. Well, he fell in love with the whole ancient world, and he thought his own day would be better if they could get it back. So he began humanism to achieve that.

A discussion about the merits of various contemporary writers may be followed by a description of the revolutionary perspective used by Brunelleschi or by his infamous pranks at parties. The merits of ebook readers next to the protection of Jews and artwork by a German officer during World War II. Technology and magic argue about ethics, while plumbers try to fix recalcitrant hot water pipes and ‘Perche No!’ has the best gelato in town.

We’re all going to die. Finding ways to save other people is one form of immortality.

Modern fantasy, even, and perhaps especially “grimdark” fantasy, is often written by people without much close-up experience of death. The horror of the Dead Marshes, in Tolkien, comes direct from Flanders field. They are not there for thrills.

“What’s more significant than art?” Dolly asks indignantly.

“Do you think we wizards live so long because there is always more to learn?” [from Miranda]

There’s nothing bad about technology, what’s bad is turning away from the good to pursue other ends

I’d want stars to be destinations, not destiny.

Whatever may be lacking in terms of traditional plot progression or characterization in the beginning of the novel, is made up for me in the progressive clarification of the scope of the argument and in the elegant weaving together of the two worlds, real and imaginary, into a personal quest for identity and relevance. Sylvia and the secret narrator each have their own personality, their own priorities and their own vibrant emotional life, yet they have to share the same mortal ‘bone cage’. What is left when that bone cage goes apart? Hopefully, a name that future generations will remember ...

She is Fate, Fortuna, God for her characters, and I am one of her characters.
[...]
What are my constants? I am male, always, unquestionably, with the kind of cocky, slightly pompous confidence men often have but women very seldom, because it is the kind of confidence that comes with taking yourself seriously, and it gets punctured too often in girls growing up.

“I have flown on the wings of the world. I have stolen fire and words and power. I have been a message and a messenger. I have been a boy with a book and a word on a page.”

and my name is Ariel

Obviously, Sylvia is fictional and not a thinly disguised placeholder for the author. Yet, as with previous protagonists from Jo Walton, her pain and her quest feel real for me. I wish her and her imaginary friend somehow find the portal into Thalia, where magicians are working to discover the secret of immortality. Even if this will fail, they will have Florence and its art in their lives.

It may be that there are other, better, unimaginable ways of being happy. But this will do, Sylvia says, watching a toddler laughing and chasing after a dog over the uneven paving stones near the Loggia dei Lanzi, with the father puffing along behind, grinning.

[Heidi Wiechert · Rating 3 out of 5]

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 point of view of a character inside another character's mind and between flashbacks to real life and an on-going fictional story-within-the-story, Or What You Will sounds quite complex. But once I got into the flow of it, I enjoyed this quirky tale quite a lot.

"Readers remember you. So you'll live on in the books. It's the only form of immortality the real world has." pg 53, ebook.

I loved learning about Sylvia (the fictional writer's) life, loves, and writing process. Part of its charm is that this is a meta-filled book for readers who love the process of writing and the development of characters. It is also filled with surprising and entertaining tidbits of real history about Florence which appealed to the amateur historian in me.

There was plenty to enjoy in Or What You Will. My quibble with the book has to do with its ending.

After meticulously building an immersive world, or two, the author unceremoniously ends the story in a few paragraphs.

It was incredibly disappointing, especially when you consider the book is only 226 pages long (ebook). She had room to do more. In fact, I could have stayed in the world she created for twice as many pages.

That being said, the last few pages of the book made me cry. So, perhaps it was a satisfying ending in its way. I just wish it had been developed more fully.

Other than the ending, this is a brilliant and totally unique story, unlike anything I've ever read. If you like Jo Walton's other fantasies, you may want to give it a try.

[Mel (Epic Reading) · Rating 3 out of 5]

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 English lit majors would be happy to tell me how brilliant it is; but for me it was okay. Or what It Will is the type of book I’m liable to forget about by next year. Which is unusual as I have really enjoyed Jo Walton's works in the past.

The biggest thing about this that should have been exciting, but ended up being confusing, was that our narrator is unreliable. Normally an unreliable narrator is the best! You have to read between the lines, get a gist for their bias and preferred outcome. While that is all here and present with our narrator; the reality is that they are not really the main character. The 'author' actually is. The narrator is telling the author's story; and then relating it to his existence. Now this is relevant as the narrator is the muse inside the authors head (more or less) and so does not exist with them. As the story goes on this idea of who exists where and when gets more convoluted. It is not helped by the idea that the narrator needs a name, or when the narrator starts to talk to us, the reader. I wish I like this more. It could be a super cool 'break the third wall' type of literature. But instead it just got a bit haphazard for me.

What I did enjoy however were Walton's tidbits and comments on writing good fiction; especially certain genres. If you are an aspiring writer you could get really great tidbits on what not to do from the discussions the narrator and the author have that we are privy to. If you look closely enough it's possible Walton has actually explained how best to avoid these many pitfalls. I was a bit distracted and less engaged at times (as our narrator was a bit verbose) and so likely missed some great tidbits. This lengthy narration is why I say this book is likely a literary major's dream. There is a lot that could (I think) be unpacked here. Especially about how characters in stories come to life, where ideas are generated from, and in general how people consume stories.

If you want something a bit wild, definitely weird, and certainly introspective on writing then Or What You Will might be for you. If you're looking for a lighter, fun read I would avoid this Walton story. But don't let it have you avoided her work entirely as Jo Walton has some wonderful pieces out there!

Please note: I received an eARC of this book from the publisher via NetGalley. This is an honest and unbiased review.

[Celeste · Rating 3 out of 5]

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 this excited over the first paragraphs of a book was when I read The Ten Thousand Doors of January, which ended up being my favorite book of 2019. My pulse actually sped up as I read, and I had to stop and go back and reread those first few paragraphs because they were just so gorgeous. I had read passages to my husband and frantically text my fellow Novel Notions besties about how excited I was before I even finished that first chapter. And I continued to deeply appreciate the writing all the way through, and highlighted and annotated an incredible number of passages. But after such a wonderful beginning, things went from beautiful literary fiction to an unexpected accounting of the art scene of Renaissance Florence. I mean, I have no problem at all with the topic but that shift came out of nowhere. I would say it was jarring if the air of the novel wasn’t so meandering. And then there were a ton of Shakespearean characters added into the mix, which was surprising. But the book never really came back to what I loved so much in those first few pages, and I’d be lying if I didn’t admit I was incredibly disappointed by that decision on Walton’s part.

“What am I? What am I? Figment, fakement, fragment, furious fancy-free form.”

This is a book that doesn’t hold your hand. Walton expects readers to be familiar with certain histories and literary works and, if they flounder, that’s not really her problem, is it? I would strongly advice anyone interested in reading this book who has no Shakespearean exposure to at least find summaries of Twelfth Night and The Tempest and read those before diving into Or What You Will. There are micro-sequels to both plays in the pages of this book, and those will make far more sense if you have an idea of what said plays are about and who their characters are. Said sequels also tie the two plays together in interesting ways. I love the idea of these tales continuing on after the curtain closes, and I love even more the idea of those stories continuing on in a world parallel to ours where magic is real and the Renaissance never ended. But these well worn characters underwent little new development in my opinion, regardless of their near eternal life in this magical world. They continued on without really moving forward, though I feel that might have been the point.

“Imagine that power, to make worlds! I can make and shape and take no worlds. I slide myself into the worlds I am given and find myself, frame myself, tame myself into the space there where I can see to be me.”

The concept of telling a story from a fictional character’s perspective while they’re inside their author’s head and aware of that fact is an interesting one. As is this eternal, magical Renaissance in a Florence populated with Shakespearean casts and real, historical artists and scholars. Both stories had promise but, in my opinion, mixed about as well as oil and water. There was a lack of continuity that was distracting every time the story flipped from the real world to the fictional world. Sylvia, who is the author of the fictional world and whose mind is the dwelling place of the nameless narrator, has a very interesting back story. But I felt that her story and the book she was writing never did fully cohere, despite that being the point of the novel.

“I’d want the stars to be destinations, not destiny.”

This book is one of the most meta, experimental novels I’ve read in recent memory. The ideas were wonderful, and the narrative went in enough different directions to make heads spin. But the amount of fourth-wall breaking and self commentary came across as self-indulgent instead of endearing. The book was brief, at little more than 300 pages, but it felt exhaustingly labyrinthine. The writing was exquisite and the ideas unique, but I had a hard time making myself pick this little book up. I also found myself disappointed in the ending. While the entire book was building toward a particular outcome, that final scene was so brief as to feel woefully abridged and ultimately unsatisfying. However, the quality of the writing and the social commentary woven into the narrative about the fantasy genre and religion and the world as a whole saved the book for me. I enjoyed having a chance to peer so deeply into the mind of both the author of this book and the author in the book.

“There’s no difference between fairy tales and war stories… Pah. All stories start both ways. There’s no difference between once upon a time, and believe me, because I was there and still bear the scars. There are scars in everyone’s stories…”

I’m sure Or What You Will shall become a new favorite for many, and I deeply regret that I’m not part of that number. However, I look forward to trying more of Walton’s work, as she is a brilliant wordsmith whose prose I can’t wait to sample again. Even though I didn’t love this particular story, I deeply respect what Walton both attempted and was able to do in the writing of it. Hopefully I’ll find a book or multiple books in her catalogue that will ring as true to me as Sylvia’s books did for her fictitious fanbase in this novel.

All quotes above were taken from an uncorrected proof and are subject to change upon publication.

You can find this review and more at Novel Notions.

[Michael Finocchiaro · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another fantastic book by Jo Walton like The Just City. I loved the characters and the story and wish I could visit Ilium. It was just so fun to enter this fantasy world and I also enjoyed her classic meta-fiction approach complete with reading suggestions throughout. This one reminded me of her Among Others quite a bit and was just as good. Highly, highly recommended.

[Phyllis · Rating 5 out of 5]

I did not want to leave the world of Or What You Will when I reached the end of the book. I'm recklessly diving in to provide what will be a totally inadequate review of this most lovely of tales within tales within a tale.

The story is about Sylvia, a Canadian (specifically Montreal) writer of over 30 books of fiction, and her muse, who has lived in Sylvia's "bone cave" since she was just a little girl and who loves her fiercely but also has his own very strong sense of personal identity and preservation. In 2017-18, Sylvia and her muse are in Florence, Italy, to spend time writing her latest novel, which is set in the mythical world she has built of Illyria. In her imagined country of Thalia, humans & gods & wizards & (mythical) creatures all live together, locked in the time of the Renaissance, and people never die of anything unless murdered or by choice, and progress never happens. The main characters in her novel-in-progress are roughly those of Shakespeare's The Twelfth Night, but time/world-traveling allows for other characters from other worlds & times. We, the readers of Or What You Will, get to read Sylvia's entire last novel, as it is written, chapter by chapter (a lively, fun story, by the way).

So that's the set-up of this book, as you probably could have read in any blurb anywhere. But this book is so much more, because it is a love letter to readers and to writers and to muses everywhere and everywhen. It is for everyone who has ever been a child or a parent or a grand-parent or a lover or a spouse, in all their loving and trying relationships. It visits museums and architecture and music and philosophy and mythology and religion and culture. It doesn't shirk from birth or from death or from questions of eternity.

I just have to include this one quote from the book's narrator, that immediately heralded how warm and cozy of a read this was for me:

"So listen now, like a bedtime child, snuggle down under the texture of the soothing word blanket and let yourself be lulled. . . . Trust me now, forget your self-consciousness, . . . let yourself sink down beneath the warm weight of the story I am telling you."

For the life of me I can't figure out who mentioned this book to me, but I know I was totally unaware of Jo Walton's writing until just a few weeks ago. I know it was someone I encountered during The Morning News' Tournament of Books Super Rooster tournament of 2020 who turned me onto this, and my recollection is that it was someone who had very different views from mine about the measure of literary achievement. To that person whose name I can't now recall, I am grateful. This book is in my favorites of all time.

[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nearing the end of her life, and after a vibrant career, Sylvia returns in fiction to Illyria, the world she created for her first book. Her nameless muse, who has been with her since she was a child, helps her- not just because he always has, but because he wants to find a way to Illyria in reality, so that he can live outside of Sylvia's head.

Strange and wonderful, populated with Shakespearean lovers and monsters, real people and ghosts, this is a real booklover's book, an author's book, as well as being a love letter to the city of Firenze- That's Florence to us peons who haven't been there! (But now I really must, and I know exactly where to eat, too!)

[Jemppu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinatingly original premise, which plays around several personally recognizable reflections and thought processes.

Walton's fondness for things Italian/Mediterranean is strongly present once again, with familiar historical minutiae and pleasantly speculative tangents. It is easy to feel the presence of the 'idea' in this book indeed encompass Walton's whole oeuvre.


4 to 5 stars.

_____
More in the lengthy reading updates.

[Diamond Cowboy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really loved this read. It concerns an author and a charicter she created in many of her books. She travles to Itally and attempts to make her charicter live on beyond her own existance.

[Cassandra · Rating 5 out of 5]

update--Releases this week! Go get it.

Big thank you to Netgalley and Macmillian/Tor for the eARC in exchange for an honest review.

This is a story that readers will either love desperately or hate and never finish and I imagine Walton knows this and thus the references to Sylvia's one-star reviews. No matter, readers who love Shakespeare, love art and good food, and love ideas will love this book. It's hard not to see this book as a tribute, a love letter, to Walton's readers over the years. It's all there: the dragon from the King's Peace books, Ficino and Pico from Thessaly, all of Florence from Lent wrapped up in one big meta-discussion on artistic creation and subcreation.

I'm still so gobsmacked by this book that it's hard to review it rationally and writing a synopsis is pointless because the story took me places I never expected to go. But they are wondrous places and I so want them to be real. Illyria, Brunelleschi's walk into canvas, Teatro del Sale, Miranda's house--all were marvels. And the ending, well who else could such a changeable spirit be but the one who carries out his mistress's imaginings and makes them come alive.

This is a marvel of a book and especially to be reading it now during the COVID-19 pandemic, it gives me hope that the best of people will prevail and find a way through.

I also read this with some sadness as I had to cancel a long-planned trip to Florence this spring due to the pandemic and quarantine. But Walton's story gave me hope I will get there in the end.

[Alan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I ran across a copy of Jo Walton's novel Or What You Will at the perfect time—just a few days after my wife and I had returned from a long-anticipated trip to Italy, during which we were able to spend several days in Walton's beloved Florence, the city in which she wrote this book and in which so much of it is set.

It might not have happened that way. This old ARC (its cover warning in no uncertain terms that it's an "Uncorrected Advance Reading Copy") was half-hidden on a bottom shelf in a second-hand store I only visit now and then, and I almost overlooked it. Or, I could have found it earlier, and read it before I was ready—after all, Walton's work normally goes on my to-read list as soon as I hear about it.

As it happened, I read Or What You Will at just the right moment, and I loved the heck out of it.

Your own mileage may well vary, though. This is one of those books that we call a "novel" for lack of a better word. It's most certainly fictional, and novel-length, but... it's not very novel-like. Or What You Will stretches the boundaries of conventional fiction in multiple ways.

One way is by just how metafictional it is. Or What You Will's narrator repeatedly breaks the fourth wall, addressing the reader familiarly. He also doesn't exist—or, at least, has no independent existence outside the skull of the book's protagonist, the novelist Sylvia Hamilton. Sylvia's a character who feels intensely personal and even perhaps autobiographical—although I hope Sylvia's fragile health is not reflected in Jo Walton's reality!

This novel's metafictionality connects it with the previous book I read, Erin Morgenstern's The Starless Sea—although the two are otherwise almost entirely dissimilar.

Another way is in how much of Or What You Will is a nonfictional travelogue, focusing on Florence. Walton includes an immense amount of detail about the Tuscan city of Firenze, and while I found all of it fascinating (and accurate, as far as I can tell), I'm not sure how much someone who hadn't been to Florence would get out of it.

Once, in a land of rolling hills and gentle swift-flowing streams, a land of vines and olives and hard wheat, a land where all the towns and villages were built on hilltops, for defence and to see far away, there was one town, rich with the manufacture of art and wool and luxury goods, that lay in a plain beside a river. It was not defenceless, however, for it had walls. The walls were bigger than the town needed, for after it had grown and extended its walls several times a terrible plague came, and the population no longer filled the whole of the space the walls enclosed. They were strong walls of smooth grey stone, and the six gates set in them had towers and portcullises like castle walls, and bright flags flew from them, and they were defended by guards in glistening mail and coloured surcoats. The flags caught the breeze and showed their brave devices in bright colours: flowers and eagles and the sun. Here and there in the walls stood solid stone bastions, and on the bastions were set cannons. That's what bastions are, solid blocks strong enough to take a cannon recoil, which makes the common term "last bastion" have much more resonance. Bastions were invented in the early fifteenth century by Brunelleschi, an artist and architect who spent a season in the field with the army and came up with this innovation, a man of this city, because yes, this city in the plain is the flowering city of Florence, or rather let us call it Firenze, because why should we choose to filter its name through the tongues of its French enemies? They're the reason why they needed the walls and those bastions in the first place.
—pp.26-27

This may seem like self-indulgence, but I think it's well-earned self-indulgence—and Or What You Will does become more novel-like later. In the rhythm of the end of Chapter 7, for example, when Orsino says,

"But I could not see my city spilled away in carelessness and waste, or watch somebody else depose my brother and take his place."
—p.153

So many of Walton's observations rang true for me:

Italy has unfairly great food. It's the terroir and the habits of life, and perhaps the fact that they didn't have railroads in the nineteenth century so people never got used to eating stale processed food. The fruit and the dairy and the meat are of a quality you can't even imagine unless you've been there. It makes it very easy to believe in Plato's analogy of the Cave. If you've been used to eating strawberries and tomatoes and carrots elsewhere and then you go to Italy, you do naturally realise that what you've had all your life is like a shadow on a cave wall thrown by this transcendent thing. Even the nuts are better. (How can the nuts be better? Do they have better pine trees? Better hazel trees? Better macadamia trees? How could they? Macadamias are Australian!)
—pp.189-190

—or—

The Ponte Santa Trinita, the bridge designed by Michelangelo, took three charges to blow up, and in the fifties they pulled the stones out of the Arno and set the bridge up again, reconstructed as closely as they could to what it had been.
—p.216

I've walked across that very bridge, on those very stones.

—or—

"It was down by the Ponte Vecchio. I think it was where that awful gelateria with the huge piled-up gelato is, just as you get to the bridge."
—p.285

Our guide Tina warned us about that place...

In and around and among all of this scenery, there is a story—and a lot of it feels real, autobiographical, and not just the Florence material. Some of it is heartbreakingly beautiful, and some of it is just heartbreaking. But it's all so vivid—Walton retains that gift for expression that first attracted me to her prose 'way back in the 1990s, back when she was just another poster to the Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.sf.written. No one had yet seen her words between the covers of a Real Book... but we knew, some of us, even then.

Or What You Will feels like a culmination of that early promise—it's chatty and intimate, like a post shared with a group of friends, but also assured and, ultimately, enthralling.

There is a pernicious lie in Western culture that Sylvia has tried to combat in her books for years, and it is this: a child who is not loved is damaged beyond repair. Relatedly, anyone who has been abused can never recover. These lies are additional abuse heaped on those who have already suffered. Being told that the worst thing has happened to you and you cannot recover can be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Very much so! Certainly recovery is hard. Certainly it takes work and time and help. But it isn't like losing a body part that can never regrow. People who have been abused will not be the people they would have been if it had never happened. But they can be splendid people going on from where they are.
—pp.254-255, "Sunlit Uplands"

Jo Walton obviously poured a lot of herself into this book... but I hope at least some of it is entirely fictional—the crisis that propels the plot's urgency, in particular.

Or What You Will won't be—wasn't, I guess—for everybody... but it felt as if it were written for me.

[Nadine in California · Rating 3 out of 5]

It took me a little time to get comfortable with this book - I was afraid it would be too....twinkly?.....for me, despite the meta elements that give it the kind of twist I love in books. But once I got comfortable I was SOOO comfy - it felt like an intimate conversation with a friend who shares her favorite things, like restaurants in Florence (she prefers 'Firenze'), wonderful books, and historical gossip. And as time goes on, she also confides her feelings about the people in her long life. On top of that, she can whip up a great story that improbably gathers together characters from The Tempest and Twelfth Night in a fantasy Renaissance Firenza. There's one little twist to this friendship though - we are conversing with our friend through her imaginary friend who knows her better than she knows herself. This book was a lovely little break from Pandemicland.

[Colleen Bethea · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had plans on Saturday - things I needed to get done. Instead I opened 'Or What You Will' by Jo Walton. It is one of those books that grabs you by the throat, by the heart, by the imagination...and won't let you go. It is a book by an author I've not read before, and now I want to read every single book ever written by Jo Walton. I owe a huge thank you to my boyfriend for Saturday. He created a quiet space around me all day, so that I could fully emerge myself into this new world. It was completely satisfying. Thank you Jo Walton, for writing this book. It was cathartic and lovely.

[Alison · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautifully written, wonderfully strange imagining of the links between author & character, and those between the our world and fictional worlds. Plus a little Shakespeare thrown in there for good measure. What’s not to love?

[Richard Derus]

Winner of the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature! More info, and a press release, is here: https://mythsoc.org/awards.htm

[Kaora · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have never read this author before, so this is my first experience with her although I have heard so much about her that I've been wanting to try her for a while. This book immediately sucked me in, the writing between Sylvia and her character is lovely, and the author is truly gifted. In a short amount of time I fell in love with the character and Sylvia, the sign of a good writer.

Then we started to get more into the Illyria side of things and I found it more of a struggle to get through. I didn't enjoy that side of the story as much, although I know why it was necessary, those chapters just dragged.

I think overall the book is brilliant, and a powerful love story to books. It kept me thinking about it for a while after I closed it, but I just wish I could have spent more time with Sylvia and a little less in Illyria.

I am definitely intrigued by this author and will read more.

[Sarah]

A weird and wonderful metatextual musing on fantasy, Florence, Shakespeare, death... beautifully written, as with all of Walton's books.

[Teleseparatist · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the hands of a less accomplished writer, this might have dissolved into a solipsistic navel-gazing mess. But instead, I loved it. Maybe not as much as Lent, which enraptured me, but still rather a lot. Walton is playful and melancholy here, spinning a story of many worlds and characters and bringing together her love of Florence, Shakespeare, sff literature and metafiction. There is experimentation here, and self-indulgence, and not everything she throws on the page sticks the landing completely, but the parts that do work so well. I laughed, and I cried a little, and I thought "this is the most canlit Walton has ever been" and then there was that ending. I think Walton's commitment to ending on a happy note is simply exceptional, and while it didn't have the same weight Lent had, I loved the life-affirmation.

It also made me want to read everything, which is always the case with Walton and one of the reasons I wanted to start 2021 - a new year, a new decade - with her.

[Gabi · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars

This book is difficult to describe. It doesn't follow an usual narration structure, it is delightfully different. The meta layers have their own meta layers when we as readers jump between plotlines in the 'real world' of the author who this story is about, narrated by the personification of her imagination who tries to get a life of its own. Then there is a couple of characters living in Firenze of 18something, who are characters in a book of said author, who find themselves transported into a fantasy world build upon the works of Shakespeare and the Italian renaissance. And the worlds overlap constantly.

Sounds complicated? Yes. The reader has to pay attention and has to love Walton's philosophical excoursions, then they are in for an experience like they most probably haven't had before.

I adored this bold work where the love for Firenze and Shakespeare shines through on every page and which was able to transport me in a world of imagination of grand scale.

It is one of the remarkable novels I did put on my Hugo nomination ballot for this year.

[Peter Tillman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well-written but the meta stuff gets old, for me anyway. I'm taking a break from it, and will return in due time, assuming the book doesn't come due first. The Florence stuff is fun: her love for that city and its history shines through. Stalled as of 1/1/23: not sure I will continue, as my on-hand TBR stack is more enticing!

Florence & Venice are both places I've always wanted to visit. But the huge crowds of other tourists are a big turn-off!

DNF: came due at the library. I doubt I will try again. 2.5 stars to where I stalled (maybe 40% in?). Not really my sort of thing.

[Steven Halter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just finished an ARC of this— fantastic, in every sense.

[Suncerae · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Good: Fantasy book about reading and writing, birth and creation, and living forever
The Bad: Not for novice readers
The Literary: Story within a story, Shakespeare, LeGuin, and the Italian Renaissance

Award-winning author of over thirty novels, Sylvia Harrison, 73, has someone who exists solely in her mind. He's played a part in most of her novels, whether as a scholar, a warrior, a thief, a god, or a dragon. But his consciousness is real and separate from Sylvia, and as she nears death, he fears he'll die too. As Sylvia writes a new fantasy novel set in a world similar to  renaissance Florence, he sets out convince her that they can both become immortal if she writes themselves into the book.

I adore this novel for a lot of reasons, but one is because it's unlike anything I've ever read.

Let's start with the narrator,Sylvia's muse. He narrates his own life both inside Sylvia's head and embodying Sylvia's characters, his calling into existence, and how his thoughts and opinions are separate and distinct from Sylvia's. It's a sort of rambling story that jumps around in time as he shares Sylvia's past and their life together, follows Sylvia around as she writes and researches her book in Italy, and as he tries to convince Sylvia that he has a plan for their immortality. As Sylvia ages, she begins to accept the inevitability of her death, but he can't. And it's no wonder. As a muse, he barely qualifies as living entity. Sylvia isn't even sure he's real. As a reader, you want to believe, but skepticism lurks in the corner, waiting for a rationale to explain him away. So what chance does a little muse have to beat death? Not much, and that's why you root for him.

Alongside chapters of Sylvia and her muse discussing life and death in the present day, chapters in Sylvia's new book are revealed as she writes them. The story-within-a-story is also set in Italy, or rather a fantasy version of renaissance Florence called Thalia. Two 19th century teenagers, Dolly and Tish, stumble into a world where death is rare, wizards heal, and giants roam, and learn to navigate their new world and interpret signs from their gods.

It's no secret that Jo Walton is a huge fan of scifi and fantasy. See her series of essays compiled in An Informal History of the Hugos: A Personal Look Back at the Hugo Awards, or if that isn't enough, fans of her work no doubt enjoy the referential nature of her novels. Or What You Will is no different, and in it you'll likely find lots of fantasy works you need to add to your reading list, but there's also significant references to the Bible, Shakespeare's Twelfth Night and The Tempest, and Brunelleschi's art and architecture. But let me clarify. Some works are referential in that they copy great works or want to generate some sort of in-group fan-boy club. Walton is referential in that she praises great works, incorporating them into her stories in a wholly original way, and genuinely invites the reader to explore the art she finds joyful and miraculous.

Whereas many of Walton's books seek to elevate the joy of reading, this also offers a glimpse into the magic and the mundane of creation. As with her muse, Sylvia's characters are set upon the page, given life, only to surprise her with their own actions. Writing can be stifled for weeks by an uncomfortable chair or stories can leap into reality when you least expect them. Realities and time and life and death are blurred, resulting a postmodern fantasy with all the fun of metaphysical lucidity without the pretentiousness.

Highly recommended for serious fans of fantasy, the craft of writing, Renaissance history, and playful reflections on death.

readwellreviews.com

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book that challenges the reader to think, but truly requires you to feel. Allowing this story to take hold is a struggle, as Walton traverses genres, manipulates plot devices, and references literature, painting, sculpture, and history in an attempt to write about death and artistic creation. The plot shifts from the fictional reality to the reality created by the fictional author to the fictions of other authors to actual history and back, lacking any linear progression but maintaining a coherent enough structure, ultimately. I felt Walton lost her mojo quite noticeably in the last 50 or so pages, yet still she presented enough emotional depth and fabulous conceptual juggling to keep me reading. I expected to find the meta aspect of the text irritating, but Walton succeeds admirably in keeping it germane to the overall story but still quaint, funny, and emotional. Some reviewers have complained they don't know of what Walton writes, and felt she was trying too hard to "look smart" (or some self-referentially whingeing other phrases that just reinforce the fact that Walton has read, a lot, and enjoys it, a lot, and isn't ashamed or afraid or concerned as to whether or not her readers have read what she has read in their reading. Yep, she's smart too. Deal with it.). There is even a joke or three about readers and commenters in the story, each of which I chuckled at for their perspicacity, and not so subtle jab at a-hole readers. This is a lovely book to read and one to cherish for its frank discussions about death, family, trauma, abuse, choices, and love. Not maudlin or saccharine or forced, just authentic and honest and real A book to force your attention, and well worth the effort demanded.

[Catherine Heloise]

This is an absolute wonder of a book, full of Shakespeare and Florence and writing and food and love and poetry and strangeness. It’s a story that draws you in so deeply that you become completely immersed, and just swim through it as though you can breathe the water and will never need to surface. At a time when we can’t travel, it feels like travelling; at a time when I have found it hard to focus, it engaged my attention completely. It shifts so seamlessly between reality and fantasy that I had to keep stopping to check whether this particular character or that particular restaurant really existed in our world, or really did that… and in some cases, I’m still not sure.

It’s the sort of book where you finish it and you don’t want to leave. I have so many books that I desperately want to read right now, and yet I can’t bring myself to start, because I don’t want to lose the sense of being in Firenze, of being in Thalia, of being spoken to by the narrator and watching as Shakespeare is twisted and turned and made rich and strange and queer (more queer than it already is) and wonderful (more wonderful than it already is). And I desperately want to go to the Teatro del Sale, which really does exist, but which is as inaccessible to me right now as Thalia is.

Full review will appear on Smart Bitches, Trashy Books on July 13.

[Amanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

I walked into this book a little skeptical of the very meta concept--a writer's character, or muse, is trying to save her from death--but i was so quickly won over by the delicate weave of history and character that I came away absolutely ENAMORED. During reading, at first I thought the book couldn't possibly deliver satisfaction in the paging remaining, then that I could see the possible endings--I was delightfully surprised on both accounts.

This book is for writers, this book is for readers, this book is for lovers of Florence, or of art, or of wondering what makes a soul out of paper and thought. I almost hesitate to call it a novel, because the shape and what Walton is trying to do with the story here happens as much off the page as on it, and is not at all typically shaped for genre. Some readers may not like it for that--do not go into this expecting a straight forward fantasy. Its going to be a book I sit and have thoughts about for a long time, and as a writer and reader, that's the best kind of book.