Or What You Will, by Jo Walton (Tor Books)
Imagine a world that unites Shakespeare’s two plays, As You Like It and Twelfth Night. Imagine that world as a fantasy series by a contemporary author, determined to finish the series before she dies of cancer. Imagine the narrator being her muse, the solace of her wretched childhood, now determined to save her life by transforming her into a character in her own world, where death comes about only by an act of will. That’s a very rough description of this ground-breaking novel, liberally sprinkled with fascinating forays into the Renaissance – its artists, architects, and thinkers. Illyria, the creation of the author, Sylvia, is an idealized Renaissance Florence frozen in time, set apart from “Progress.”
Effortless prose, nuanced layering of past, present, and the world of the imagination, add up to a rich and complex reading experience. If only Sylvia’s “Illyria” books were real, we’d all get to run away there.
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