This is the SF Experience edition of my “mini reviews” thing, which on occasion aren’t very “mini” because I do ramble so aimlessly, but these are the stuff I’ve been thinking while reading these books. Three of these books (with * after the titles) double as reads for the Diversity on the Shelf Challenge!

My Real Children, Jo Walton

I never did write about Walton’s Among Others, because I have a feeling that I’ll never be able to do it – and Walton – justice. I feel the same about My Real Children, but I will try. The thing about My Real Children is that it’s an alternate history book, but taken to a very personal level. The story starts in 2015, where Patricia Cowan is in a nursing home, feeling confused. She seems to have two sets of memories – one in which she marries Mark and is called Pat, and one in which she doesn’t, is called Trish, and lives with Bee instead. This whole double memory thing immediately brings Fire and Hemlock to mind, which lets me know that I’m going to love this book very much, and I do.

The rest of the book goes through each of Patricia’s lives – as Pat, and as Trish. In a way it reads almost like contemporary fiction, because even the SF elements feel completely in place and ordinary and just part of her life. One of these lives is happier than the other, and one of them is a better future for the world in general than the other, but she has children in both lives and consider them all her real children. It is a story of how every choice can make a big difference in a person’s life, but it’s also a story of how one woman’s choices can determine the fate of the world. I’m still not sure as to the hows and whys of her decision changing what happens to the world, but I find that I don’t really care about that detail, not when this book about a woman whose lives are as different as mine as I can possibly imagine, still manages to speak to me on a very personal level. As much as I love the two alternate histories shown, it is Patricia, and the families and friendships she makes in both histories, that really got to me. Also, usually I hate reading anything remotely historical, setting-wise, but so far Jo Walton always manages to get me to read – and love – things outside my usual interest.

Continue reading “Reviews: My Real Children, Ancillary Sword, Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand, Salt Fish Girl, The Years of Rice and Salt”