The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow Review

From Alix E. Harrow, the New York Times bestselling author of Starling House, comes a moving and genre-defying quest about the lady-knight whose legend built a nation, and the cowardly historian sent back through time to make sure she plays her part–even if it breaks his heart.
 

Sir Una Everlasting was Dominion’s greatest hero: the orphaned girl who became a knight, who died for queen and country. Her legend lives on in songs and stories, in children’s books and recruiting posters―but her life as it truly happened has been forgotten.
 

Centuries later, Owen Mallory―failed soldier, struggling scholar―falls in love with the tale of Una Everlasting. Her story takes him to war, to the archives―and then into the past itself. Una and Owen are tangled together in time, bound to retell the same story over and over again, no matter what it costs.
 

But that story always ends the same way. If they want to rewrite Una’s legend―if they want to tell a different story--they’ll have to rewrite history itself.

A sweeping love story across time, Alix Harrow’s the Everlasting is a wildly ambitious fantasy story about freedom of choice, the making of legends, and ever-changing nature and distortion of history by written records. Utilizing time-travel concepts applied to the high fantasy genre, the resulting book is a masterfully crafted reworking of how a knight’s origin story literally affects a nation’s future. Featuring a complex plot, nuanced themes, outstanding character work presented through an elegant prose, the Everlasting is an impressive story that is unlike any other fantasy romance book out there.

While Lady knights are having a bit of a moment this year, this book is much more complex than its scholar x knight premise would suggest. Set thousands of years apart, the Everlasting tells the story of an anxious and dispirited historian Owen Mallory who is sent to chronicle the legend of the famed historical icon Sir Una Everlasting. The loyal beast of a knight to the first Queen, with her famed adventures and conquests in the name of the cross, it is her ultimate demise that cements her figure as the martyr and inspiration for all of Dominion. Or so how history has told it. Enraptured and in love with Una’s image and figure that has guided and even saved him throughout his life and in a time of political unrest, Owen is tasked by the first Minister of War with ensuring Una’s legend is accurately recorded.

“In order to have a future worth fighting for, you must have a past worth remembering.”
-Vivian Rolfe, Minister of War

Across the board, the Everlasting is a book that just exudes class. This review is purposely written vaguely to avoid spoilers as the plot twists and surprises are an integral part of the book’s reading experience. That said, what I will say is that the story is excellent. Time-travel within fantasy books are relatively uncommon compared to the scifi or speculative fiction genres, but the Everlasting takes the concept and runs with it. On paper, Harrow’s approach to time travel is something of a cross between the Butterfly Effect crossed with This Is How You Lose the Time War given the story’s cause and effect nature where there’s no clear start or end. The scope of the story is expansive across time and space, channeling the style of traditional fantasy adventure stories but with the gravity and implications of a speculative fiction tragedy. The book is loosely divided into set parts and pardon my lack of finesse, but when I hit the 100 page mark, I slammed the book shut with an audible “holy shit”. Time-travel is one of my favorite topics, yet it’s also a premise that is so often mishandled or poorly executed due to the level of detail and planning necessary to pull it off. Harrow does so with style and beauty.

For those that are familiar with Harrow’s past works, you’ll know that the writing will be beautifully atmospheric, have engaging storytelling, and filled with thoughtful and poignant reflections. This book features all of Harrow’s signature strengths but notably feels like a very distinctive and different book in a good way. Presented from dual perspectives though the majority of the book is told from Owen’s point of view, the Everlasting is instantly distinctive thanks to Harrow’s ambitious choice to write the book almost entirely in the second person perspective. But instead of using the approach to break the fourth wall with the reader, Owen’s chapters are written as if he’s reminiscing and retelling the story to Una, and the opposite occurs when she’s narrating the story, filling in the gaps with more context and variation. Second person is a very difficult narration style to maintain without the limitation of adverbs and tenses from becoming repetitive. But here, Harrow utilizes the approach to maximum effect in a manner that is possibly even more touching and immersive than the first-person perspective; some scenes and moments could not work if written in any other way. As Owen and Una traverse through time and history starts folding over onto itself, the narration and reflective recollections perfectly match the character development, the result leaving me in awe. The tone of this book is also very varied, at times hilariously dry (courtesy of Owen), other times grave or wistful. Marketed and intended as Harrow’s adult novel debut, the style of writing, maturity, and content is also aged up from her past books cohesively; this is not merely a YA book redressed with added spice or profanity like so many other fantasy “adult” novels.

Excellent plotting and storytelling aside, Harrow’s characters and development is what takes the book from great to outstanding. Owen Mallory’s character, tone of narration, and personality is one of my favorites of all the fantasy books I’ve read the last few years and perfectly contrasts Una’s on both a surface level first impression as well as their deeper personal values and fears. While the story starts with Owen already enamored by the legend of Una Everlasting, over time his love shifts from a mere infatuation and attachment to the image of what she stands for to her as a living and real person, physically marred, flawed and all. On the other hand, it is through Owen that Una rediscovers her purpose and reason to live in the darkest of moments made all the more emotional given her inevitable and necessary death per written history. While this book is heavily based around love across time and space, it is notably not a romantasy book either in terms of tone as well as content. It is certainly a romantic fantasy story involving love, fate, and their future, but this book does not feature any of the common romantasy tropes and certainly does not rely on that type of spice. A first for Harrow, this book does contain adult sexual content but it’s not particularly gratuitous nor do lusty gazes interrupt the flow or mythic tale. Instead, the romance is one of yearning, tenderness, devotion, and of course, heartbreak.

Throughout its ill-fated love story, this book also incorporates and features many compelling themes that are very well developed. Though the romance is often the hook for this book, the story’s heavy focus on the perceived nationalism, war, and conflict are also timely given the current state and political climate. The themes are not merely explored on a nation-wide macro level, but also on a more micro level looking at how it changes individual people and the trajectory of their lives and their aspirations. Not only a story revolving around love, it’s also one of two lonely and broken individuals scared by the violence and implications of war, and how temporary and fragile any sense of peace achieved can be. Themes of sexism and the inequality of women vs men in both status and image is referenced everywhere throughout the story. Yet not all the themes are as culturally charged or politically relevant. The recurring theme of family, particularly those that are unorthodox or diverge from the perceived norm is more subtle. Despite mostly playing a supporting role in the book as part of Owen’s character growth and devotion to Una, the dramatic yet very gradual shift in Owen’s opinion of his drunken and grassroot protesting father is one that’s unexpectedly poignant, as is his relationship with academic mentor Professor Sawbridge. These developments are only possible thanks to the book’s time-traveling plot mechanism, but they’re not only done very well, but are also utilized in a clever way to help break up the book’s repetition during recurring events, a common problem of many stories featuring time-loop sequences.

Featuring an ambitiously crafted plot, a romance across time, poetic writing, and very strong character work, the Everlasting is a wonderfully solid all-arounder. Between its time-traveling mechanic and its fantasy romance story that does all it can to separate itself from the usual trends of the romantasy genre, this book easily has the potential to be a new classic. While I enjoyed the ideas and writing style of Harrow’s previous book Starling House, the angsty teenage narrator wasn’t quite my taste and the underused fantasy elements left something to be desired. Here however, Harrow successfully delivers all the strong and impressive narrative material the book’s premise sets up. The back half of the book noticeably slows down the pacing and shifts gears to a more personal level which may not necessarily be every reader’s cup of tea, but for the vast majority of readers, the Everlasting will likely be an amazing and highly recommended read!