Monday, May 6, 2019

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Once & Future by A. R. Capetta and Cory McCarthy




Once & Future is a YA gender-flipped* and queer version of the King Arthur story in a Sci-Fi world co-written by authors A. R. Capetta and Cory McCarthy.  I've actually read a YA book from A. R. Capetta, "The Brilliant Death" (Review Here), which I really really liked (it was on my Hugo Ballot for the YA award) - a really really well done queer fantasy tale featuring magic and two non-binary protagonists.  So I was excited to hear about this novel coming out, even if the King Arthur stories aren't really of much interest to me.

*Is a story really gender-flipped if the original gendered version of the story in question actually happened as part of the story's background?  If not, then I guess this doesn't qualify.  But you get the point from my usage of the word, so if you have any objections, deal with it.  

And to my pleasure, Once & Future mostly justifies my excitement.  It's not a particularly deep story, but it's a fun queer gender-flipped (our Arthur is a girl, our main romances are F-F and M-M, with genderfluid and asexual characters in the main cast) take on King Arthur in an interesting science fiction setting with some very solid characters to follow, particularly in its leads.  And while the story does get a bit silly at points, the book is totally self-aware of this problem and makes up for it with genuinely interesting and surprising story choices.

More after the Jump:

--------------------------------------------------Plot Summary------------------------------------------------------
17 Year old Ari and her adopted brother Kay have been on the run from the powerful Mercer Company, which more or less controls the galaxy, for the past three years.  It was indeed 3 years ago that Ari's adopted parents (and Kay's real parents) were arrested for trying to help Ari get back to her home planet of Ketch: a planet which was sealed off by a barrier created by Mercer for daring to rebel against Mercer's rule, and they have been hunted ever since.

And then, stopping on Old Earth for a quick hideout, Ari pulls out a sword from the ground.  And suddenly things change.

Merlin has gone through 41 versions of King Arthur over the centuries, the King destined to unite humanity and defeat evil for good - but who has always failed, to Merlin's dismay.  But he knows time is running out, as each time he's awakened when Excalibur was pulled by Arthur's latest reincarnation, he finds himself younger and younger....and this time, he's a freaking teenager.  But Arthur 42 - Ari - seems to have little interest in Merlin's ideals and just wants to save her family and find a way to fight Mercer....and seems likely to get herself killed impulsively.  And if she doesn't get herself killed, Morgana - also awakened with Excalibur - might do the deed for him.

To survive, and to save the galaxy and possibly break the cycle, Ari and Merlin will have to cooperate, gather friends and allies, and find a way to defeat a corporation that controls everything - through politics, commerce, and propaganda.  But perhaps Ari can be the one to stop the cycle of Arthurian failures....assuming her friends and loved ones don't drive her to distraction like prior Arthurs all those centuries ago.
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King Arthur stories are not exactly what one would consider fresh and new, with seemingly at least one King Arthur movie and god knows how many books coming out per year.  Once & Future is well aware of that and smartly is very self-referential about the idea: Ari and her friends are vaguely familiar with the King Arthur legend and Merlin references the original legend and characters, who most of our cast are essentially reincarnations of, quite frequently.  But the book - which alternates chapters between Ari and Merlin's points of view - does something rather refreshing: it doesn't use the most well known versions of the old characters even before twisting them into their new forms in Ari's friends in this dystopian future.

The result is a cast that's both believable and rarely skin-deep - outside of the main villain - not to mention diverse.  We have Ari, our lead, who really feels like a 17 year old, sometimes acting young and impulsive while sometimes acting experienced, who feels emotions like a real teen would and yet somehow manages to act heroically even in her most impulsive moments....and passionately.  I should point out she's also a queer WoC heroine instead of your typical white guy in case i haven't already and the whole package makes for a really strong lead.  Merlin, our second lead is also really strong - driven by guilt over his past failures, but uncertainty over this strange new 42nd Arthur he finds in Ari, not to mention the hormones he's now feeling as a young teen for the first time (and yes, he's gay so his love interest is another boy).  And then there's the rest of the cast which is terrific, from Ari's brother Kay to her love interest Gwen....heck, even secondary villain Morgana works really well and is a surprisingly deep well rounded character.

It's these well built characters that allow the plot and setting to shine, with the plot taking many twists and turns that i rarely expected.  But with the characters so well developed, all of these twists work rather well - for example, the book teases an event straight out of Arthurian legend recurring to the heroes' detriment, which I could not quite figure out how they'd pull off without ruining a character and it's pulled off in a surprising way that stayed truthful to these characters.  The book makes good use of its scifi setting, going from planet to planet to moon, and the result is just a lot of fun.

The book isn't perfect alas.  The main villain is a monopolistic corporation called "Mercer" which works, but it's individual personification - the "Administrator" is just cartoonishly evil which can occasionally feel kind of silly.  Still it mainly works, and the methods of evil - particularly how Mercer uses propaganda and economic control is kind of chilling.  A little more silly is the planet that essentially runs on a permanent Ren Faire theme, which feels very much like the only spot where the authors were trying a bit too hard on the King Arthur theme.  And while the ending has some satisfying elements, it is a bit too cliffhangery for my tastes, leading directly into the next book in this duology, which I think comes out next year.

Still, it's a really fun ride, that I couldn't put down once I started, finishing in a single day.  Definitely recommended and I'll be back for the final half of this duology.
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