Lifeload by Jo Walton - 2009 - 192 Pages

 

Lifeload by Jo Walton - 2009 - 192 Pages 

Lifeload won the 2009 Mythopoeic Award awards by Hugo, Nébula, and World Fantasy.

(Mythopoeia (also mythopoesis, after Hellenistic Greek μυθοποιία, μυθοποίησις "myth-making") is a narrative genre in modern literature and film where a fictional or artificial mythology is created by the writer of prose or other fiction.)

In August last year I posted on Among Other by Jo Walton,also a multiple Hugo and Nébula Award Winner.  I was pleased to find another of her multiple fantasy Award winning books marked down in a Kindle edition flash sale.  As the  pandemic rages on I thought maybe a bit of fantasy might be in order.

Lifeload is set in a farm community structuted along feudal lines.  Lifeload is the role in the community you were meant to have.  Family Life is important.  Your heritage defines to an extent your Lifeload.  The Lord of the Manor is descended by Birth.  Family and marriage arrangements seem almost polymorophous.  Sex outside of marriage is normal.  Both husbands and wives can have extra sexual partners.  In the World of Lifeload, the the further east you, the stronger is the power of magic.

The plot line develops around the return of a woman who was once Lord of the msnor but left fifty years ago to study magic.  

People can live a very long time in this world.  Communities have priests but what they do is vague.  Much is left unclear which lets our mind fill in the details.  An army is sent to attack the community, another Lord has a claim on the area from long ago. The army has about 150 soldiers.  All in The comminity Go inside the fortified manor.  Weapons are bows, swords, shields and magic spells. The community has about 200 residents, The Lord of The Manor is Under a higher Lord.

For me the great fun of Lifeload is in the intricate history and mythology of the world Walton has created.

Jo Walton has published fourteen novels, most recently Lent. She has also published three poetry collections, two essay collections and a short story 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 Non Fiction award for What Makes This Book So Great. She comes from Wales but lives in Montreal where the food and books are much better. She gets bored easily so she tends to write books that are different from each other. She also reads a lot, enjoys travel, talking about books, and eating great food. She plans to live to be ninety-nine and write a book every year.  From http://www.jowaltonbooks.com/about-jo-walton/

I intend to read more of her books.

Among Others by Jo Walton - 2010 - Winner of The 2012 Hugo and Nebula Wards

Among Others by Jo Walton - 2010 - Winner of The 2012 Hugo and Nebula Awards

If you are looking to expand your reading in the Science Fiction and Fantasy genres, as the real world sucks right now, I suggest you look for Hugo and Nebula Award Winning works.

Among Others  focuses on a young woman, she is 15 when we meet her, who uses classic science fiction and fantasy works to help her cope with her life.  It is structured as a series of brief diary entries.  For sure the central character and narrator Morwena Phelps lives a very reading centered life.

She was raised by a mentally disturbed mother.  They lived in an abandoned industrial park in Wales.  Welsh fairies are fond of such places.  Morwena played with the fairies as a child.  Her refuge is in classic science fiction and fantasy works.  Her mother tries to use the spiritual forces for an evil purpose. She wants to take over the world.  She is a witch.   Morwena  is drawn into a contest of will with her mother which leaves Morwena half crippled and her twin sister dead when her mother causes a car wreck.  She is sent to to her father who she barely knows.  Luckily for her he also loves science fiction.  He places her in a boarding school.

Throughout the narrative Morwena sees fairies of all sorts.  We see her encounters with other girls, teachers, a helpful librarian.  She joins a book club and gets interested in boys.

The mother continues to harass her at school through threatening letters.  A great magical battle ensues.

I found this book fascinating.  I can very much relate to an adolescent who used books to escape from an unhappy existence in which she was made to feel like she was an outcast.  The more she reads, the more she sees beyond the world in which she was raised, the odder she is made to feel.

Of course she is attracted to magic and magic to her. Those who believe in the intrusion of magic into this world, as do I, will love this book.  Science Fiction fans will relish reading along with Morewena.

This is my first venture into the world of Jo Walton, I will be back.

Jo Walton won the Hugo and Nebula Awards in 2012 for her novel Among Others, and the Tiptree Award in 2015 for My Real Children. Before that, she won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and her novel Tooth and Claw won the World Fantasy Award in 2004. A native of Wales, she lives in Montreal.

Check her very interesting website for more information

http://www.jowaltonbooks.com/