10 Great Jo Walton Books That Display Her Incredible Range

All families of Victorian era England must deal with matters of love, inheritance, and business. At the center of Jo Walton's Tooth and Claw is a family with a lot of problems. After the death of their father, the eldest son goes to court to fight for his inheritance, one of his daughters is torn between her duty at home and her work with the abolitionist movement, and another daughter is prepared to sacrifice everything for her husband. It all sounds like your typical Anthony Trollope novel. 

The twist? All of the characters are dragons, and in this society, society's elite wield control by killing and eating the weaker children. But there is still time for tea and crumpets.

He has been too many things to count. He has been a dragon, a scholar, a warrior, a lover, and a thief. He has been a god. But “he” is in fact nothing more than a spark of idea in the mind of Sylvia Harrison, a beloved author who has been writing books for over four decades. He has played a part in most of her novels, remaining a constant in her brain and an excellent companion. But Sylvia is getting older, and once she dies, so will he. As she writes her new novel, a fantasy inspired by a series she wrote many years before, he starts to plan his escape into the real world. But he has to convince his beloved creator first.

Morwenna Phelps was raised in the countryside of Wales by a half-mad mother and found solitude among the spirits. She and her twin sister grew up in two worlds, one of our own and another of spirits who live among the industrial ruins of the old human world. When her mother tries to bend the spirits for her own means, the results threaten to tear apart everything Mori has tried to protect. To come to terms with her strange new futures, she must come to terms with her family's legacy.

Amid a bout of boredom, the goddess Athene decides to conduct an experiment. She will build the Republic as written about by Plato and see if this philosophical experiment works in real life. She finds an island and populates it with hundreds of Plato devotees from across history as well as ten thousand children, plus a few helper robots, and lets them enact the ultimate theoretical dream. 

The student Simmea, born an Egyptian farmer's daughter sometime between 500 and 1000 A.D, finds solace in this new time but wonders about her origins. Maia is a young Victorian lady who preyed to Athene for this exact thing. The god Apollo, troubled by his lack of understanding of mortal emotions, has decided to live hidden as a human among this new Republic. Utopia is in their grasp, but humans and gods are far messier than the writings of fantasy.

Twenty years have elapsed since the events of The Just City. The City has split into five factions. Apollo, still living a human life as Pythias, is now married and the father of several children. But a tragic loss causes him to become consumed with the desire for revenge. His daughter Arete wants to find a better solution to the problem. She, Pythias/Apollo, and her brothers join a group of volunteers to sail across the Mediterranean in search of answers, and possibly vengeance.  but what lies beyond the coastlines of their beloved Republic?

More than 65 years ago, Pallas Athena founded the Just City. It was meant to be an experiment with an end-date. But after Zeus caught wind of its existence, he offered it a chance to continue, in a life beyond Earth and to the edges of the solar system, on Pluto. Since then, a generation has passed, and the various Cities have united to flourish on their own planet. Pytheas dies and returns to godhood as Apollo. On the same day that happens, a spaceship from Earth arrives in the Republic's orbit.

Sulien ap Gwien was 17 years old when the Jarnish raiders came and tried to dominate her. It took six warriors to take her down. She'll never forgive them for that. Thus begins her story. she rises through the ranks to lead the troops of the legendary King Urdo, who is fighting to unite the various squabbling nobles of the land to restore the King's Peace. together, Urdo and Sulien, the greatest hope of the land and its greatest warrior, will join forces to fight for a bright future in the face in seemingly unsurmountable injustice.

The warrior Sulien ap Gwien and her lord King Urdo have finally united the land of Tir Tanagiri. It is now one land, ruled by justice with a single code of law. The future looks bright for them all. But there are seeds of discord being sown among certain corners. There are those who believe that Urdo is a tyrant and that the only way to change things is through civil war. Sulien ap Gwien must take up arms once more, but this time against some of her own loved ones and former comrades. She believes in Urdo's grand dream for her homeland, and she'll do anything to preserve it.

When a friendly competition leads to the death of a beloved horse and incurs the wrath of the Horse Goddess, the kingdoms of the island of Tir Isarnagiri face a crushing curse. Determined to break said curse, four friends—Conal, Emer, Darag, and Ferdia—prepare for battle. But the follies of humanity are far messier than those of the gods. Conal and Ferdia are rivals for the High Kingship of the island, and Emer is torn between love for Conal and duty roowards her homeland.

As well as being one of the best SFF writers of her generation, Jo Walton is a voracious reader of the genre and a chronic re-reader of her favorites. In 2008, Tor.com asked Walton to blog regularly about her re-reading, so she delved into some of the classics of the genre, as well as the undiscovered gems and guilty pleasures she loved so much. These posts have been compiled into this book to offer readers old and new to discover something unexpected about SFF. Walton's many subjects include C.J. Cherryh, Ursula K. LeGuin, Salman Rushdie, and Robert A. Heinlein, among many others you may not have even heard of!