The Everlasting

This romantasy (romance + fantasy) is the story of a young man who finds himself cursed to return from a dystopian "present" to a medieval era where he is forced to write and rewrite (and himself get sucked into) the heroic legend of a fearsome Joan-of-Arc-like female knight. The romance is innovative (how can you resist a sexy story where the lovers bond as he repeatedly accompanies her to her death? Takes BDSM and dominance/submission to a whole new level, including the happy ending where she has to die that one last time), and it's got all the good fantasy touches as well (magical places, dragons, blood and guts, a great villain, and the redemption of cosmic destiny).

Gorgeous. What a joy to read something that truly defies your expectations. This book kept me guessing for its entire length, and despite the precarity of the balancing act it was attempting, managed to stick the landing.

I really enjoyed this book. The love story was beautiful and heartbreaking.

The Everlasting might be the most intellectually ambitious fantasy novel I have read in a long time. Alix E. Harrow takes familiar pieces of King Arthur, gives us Sir Una Everlasting as the legendary knight whose sacrifice built a nation, and sends historian Owen Mallory backward through time to preserve her story. Then she starts pulling apart the very idea of history through a gender bending romance that spans centuries. Owen has spent his life studying Una and the heroic death that helped shape Dominion’s national identity. Meeting the real woman behind the legend reveals something much messier. Her life has been polished, rewritten, and weaponized for generations. Owen and Una become trapped in repeated versions of her tale while searching for a future where Una does not have to die. Harrow’s creativity here is wild. The book pulls from Arthurian legend, The Odyssey, Shakespeare, wartime history, folklore, and other pieces of cultural memory. Those references are not just little Easter eggs. Owen and Una deliberately write themselves into other stories and moments in history to make the truth harder for Vivian to follow. Harrow then uses the same idea in the structure of the novel itself. Familiar legends become hiding places for Owen and Una’s rewritten history. This changed how I viewed some of Harrow’s stranger stylistic choices. The second person narration, concealed names, ciphers, and shifting versions of history stop feeling random once you understand what Harrow is trying to do. Owen's resistance has basically escaped the plot and entered the construction of the book. We are not simply reading about manipulated history. We are reading the version of history Una and Owen manage to leave behind. The Arthurian connections fascinated me. Una carries pieces of the knightly legends we already know while Harrow flips the traditional gender roles. Then the Vivian’s identity becomes another layer of that mythology. Harrow keeps asking who gets turned into a legend, who benefits from that legend, and how much of the real person disappears once a nation decides what version of them it wants to remember. Dominion has built its patriotism, military recruitment, and national identity around a heroic story that barely resembles reality. Una stops being treated like a person and becomes a symbol powerful people can use. The Everlasting becomes a commentary for the old adage, "Victors write history." I understand why this book gets such mixed reactions. A lot of what makes it so clever depends on recognizing the literature and legends Harrow is playing with. You can follow Owen and Una without catching every reference, but so much of the book’s brilliance lives underneath the surface. I buddy read it with friends who read plenty of fantasy, dystopian, and romantasy. Several of the things that impressed me did not register for them at all. That is where I struggle with my rating. The Everlasting is incredibly smart, but intelligence does not automatically make a book accessible. Harrow’s writing is beautiful. I highlighted passage after passage just because I loved the language. It is also dense making some sections tedious. Those expecting a more traditional romantasy may not enjoy how much attention this story gives to mythology, historiography, nationalism, and the construction of legends. I admire how much thought went into nearly every sentence. I also understand why some might reach the final page without seeing everything Harrow was doing beneath Owen and Una’s romance. I do not think that means those readers missed the point. I think The Everlasting just asks a lot from its audience. I loved figuring out how all the pieces fit together once I understood what Harrow was doing. I want to discuss this book more than I want to recommend it to everyone. Pick this up if you enjoy literary fantasy, mythology, metafiction, and stories about who gets to write history.

I went into The Everlasting expecting an epic, sweeping, time-bending saga with a legendary knight, a scholar, and some emotional devastation that would leave me staring at a wall in a thoughtful way for at least 48 hours.



What I got was… boredom. Deep, lingering, “I could reorganize my spice cabinet mid-chapter and not miss anything” boredom.

Sir Una Everlasting is built up as this towering legend, and I wanted to be invested. I really did. But the story kept feeling like it was circling its own myth instead of actually doing anything with it. Meanwhile, Owen Mallory is technically present, though emotionally he felt like he was drifting through the narrative apologizing (and crying) for his existence.

Also, we need to talk about the persistent trend of confusing “making the female character strong” with “making every male character mildly pathetic, spiritually useless, or narratively kneecapped.” Because empowerment doesn’t require flattening everyone else into cardboard cutouts. It’s possible to write strength without turning the supporting cast into cautionary tales in poor posture.

By the halfway point, I wasn’t questioning fate or history or legend—I was questioning my ability to stay awake. The time loop energy was strong, though, because it really did feel like I was reading the same emotional beat over and over again, just in slightly different medieval lighting.

It wanted to be mythic and moving. It mostly felt like a long, beautifully written sigh that forgot to go anywhere.

One star. Mostly for effort. And for my own endurance, which should honestly qualify as a side quest achievement.