Reviews with content warning for Gore - Once & Future

King Arthur and his knights are reincarnated every so often. The 42nd King Arthur is Ari Helix, an illegal immigrant from a blocked-off planet currently on the run with her adopted brother after their mothers were arrested and imprisoned for not turning Ari in. They're on the run from the Mercer Corporation, the galaxy-wide monopoly on everything that blocked off Ari's planet for saying that monopolies were bad, actually, and basically are the government because if the government does something they don't like they can just stop delivering food and water until the government changes their mind.

Ari herself is hard-headed, stubborn, devoted to those close to her, and deeply passionate about truth. She is almost physically incapable of telling a lie, hates lies by omission just as much, and once ended a relationship because she felt like her girlfriend not telling her every single thing about herself immediately up front was tantamount to being lied to. Not only did that make her an interesting character, but it functioned as both a positive thing and a character flaw depending on the situation.

Merlin was a point-of-view character, cursed to age backwards so a couple millenia after helping the original King Arthur he's somewhere around seventeen. It's his job to mentor each reincarnation of Arthur, train him (or her, in the case of Ari), and accomplish a series of steps that the Lady of the Lake set out to end the cycle of reincarnation. Forty-one Arthurs before Ari have died without completing the steps, and Merlin carries the guilt of every single one. He is also incredibly gay, and completely adorable falling for one of Ari's "knights."

All of the characters in this book are stellar (pun intended). From Ari herself to her love interest Gwen (regal, pragmatic, and literally queen of a planet); Merlin (terrified of de-aging out of existence and not sure what to do about teenage hormones) and Morgana (not quite a physical being and fairly terrifying); Ari's knights, including her relentlessly practical brother and a nonbinary friend who uses they/them pronouns; and the director of the Mercer Corporation who gives the faceless evil company a hateable and very punchable face
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I've seen criticisms of this book saying the pacing is all over the place, and I can absolutely understand not liking this. But personally, I found it a delightful sort of chaotic. This book gets really dark at times, from relationship betrayals to literal genocide, and fits a lot of really intense emotions into less than 400 pages, but it's balanced somewhat by witty quips and bordering-on-absurd situations. It's one of those books where looking back some of it was a little ridiculous, but in the moment it was a great read.

Considering the end of this book, I'm not sure I want to read book two - the ending wasn't bad, but it was setting up what sounds like a vastly different type of adventure, and I don't know if that's really what I want out of these characters and this concept. But this book was absolutely worth the read.

Content Warnings

booksthatburn's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional lighthearted sad tense fast-paced

Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

The pace at the start of the book is so fast it was almost dizzying, like running while crying and laughing. I got a good sense of who the MC is and her dynamic with her brother, and I liked how the worldbuilding stopped just shy of infodumping by making a bunch of things happen so they could narrate to the reader as they ran. It’s genre-savvy and pretty self-aware, knowing how ridiculous everything looks doesn’t lessen the stakes when they’re often life-or-death. It’s a fun kind of darkness, the kind that “futuristic Arthurian retelling in spaaaaaace” invokes, one with queens, cosplay, corporations, kinship, spaceships, magic, and quests. It introduces more serious and tragic elements lightly at first, later returning to them to dwell in their plot significance, then doubles down in the second half of the book as things go from “frustrating but maybe solvable” to “a lot of people have died and more people will die if we don't fix this”.

The way Merlin kept thinking or talking about where characters fit in the cycle was helpful, especially early on, since I have a little familiarity with the Arthurian canon but not enough to know where all the players fit in a retelling unless the narrative gives me some help. It also grounded his perspective on them, establishing him as much as it introduced them.

The main frustrating thing for me was that a character comes out as ace in a "we could have avoided all this tragedy if you'd ever asked anything about me" way, and it made it feel like their identity was a plot point to help misdirect other drama. The other queer rep in the book felt really good and the whole thing adds up to an almost entirely queer cast with just the canon rep, so having that character's identity only come up one time to explain someone else's issue was disappointing.

This is part one of a longer saga, and it does a good job of setting up who these versions of the characters are. The ending is a "to be continued" situation, but enough of this volume's plot wrapped up for me to be satisfied. I'll definitely be checking out the sequel, this is a cool and weird world and I want to know where it goes next.

Content Warnings

thebookadvocate's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional funny inspiring mysterious sad tense fast-paced

Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

I laughed. I screamed. I screamed more. I texted my friends screaming. I loved this book. Give me all the queers in space with old legends/myths and ALL OF THE GAYS AND ALL OF THE GAY TWISTS.

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