A review by flying_monkey
Or What You Will by Jo Walton

3.0

I was so looking forward to this book after Lent, which was my joint-favourite novel of 2019. However, I have to confess to disappointment. Or What You Will is not on that level. It's a hugely ambitious book, but ultimately unsatisfying. How it reads is several different discarded ideas, research notebooks from Lent (and time spent on Florence), and observations about SFF writing life and fandom, all mixed together and bound by the central plot of the meta-character who wants to escape from books and to save his author from death at the same time. In a further twist the world to which he wants to escape is itself a creation of the author, a version of Firenze that exists in an eternal Rennaisssance, but where characters from Shakespeare are as real as the historical protoganists of that time, a world of magic, but without progress and where death has been defeated (these things all appear to be strongly connected). As usual with Jo Walton, the book is packed with detailed observations and philosophical ideas. There are memorable characters. The misinterpretations about what can be seen in the crossover between worlds are sometimes very funny. However it just doesn't hang together. Part of this is because the meta-character is, well, simply boring - it's difficult to write a character who has no fundamental character, maybe impossible - and because of this, one's attention is drawn towards the disaparity of the ingredients rather than the overall recipe.