First off, I can say that I have really enjoyed Harrow’s other book I have read, The Once and Future Witches and her short story which takes on themes shown in this book too, The Six Deaths of the Saint. The main reason why I gave this 4 stars though is that the first part of this book was slow. I was not really following what was going on and then once things started to click and we get some of the reveals. I do enjoy a good time travel fantasy novel and this one was really strong, just not perfect.
The Everlasting follows Owen Mallory, a failed soldier of the Dominion, now a professor trying to complete a work on Sir Una Everlasting, the best knight ever who was the reason for the Dominion of the present. Owen though starts to wonder at his memories of Una and someone else (whose name stays redacted throughout the book) and then starts realizing that he is somehow able to find his way back to Una’s time over and over again. When Owen realizes that he has to stop what is happening in order to prevent someone from trying to rewrite Dominion’s past and future.
The book unfolds between Owen and Una telling their tales of being apart and coming back to each other over and over again. There’s so much tragedy in their parting and reliving each time they are force apart by death. And though Owen and Una should not remember what has happened, they start to slowly over time.
As I said, the book was a lot of fits and starts when I first started reading it. I was tempted to DNF until someone commented on one of my updates that it does get better. And I am glad that I kept going. But I won’t lie, I can see why so many people listed this as a DNF. The overall plot is confusing at first and the book is slow. You are just reading about a mythical country/kingdom and that throws you off a bit. And of course reading about different peoples/kingdoms, etc. I wish that Harrow had included a little blurb about what was this place prior to Sir Una Everlasting coming in to be the favorite of the Queen.
The setting of this book feels a bit off to me. I think that Harrow should have done more world building. We get a map of the Dominion and the Hintherlands, but I wish we had gotten more history about both countries and not just the works that Una did to bring glory to the Dominion. I felt confused about what lands/countries/kingdoms are nearby in the past and present.
The ending was really strong, but it did remind me a lot of The Six Deaths of the Saint. That ending was abrupt though and this one goes on for a bit so we can see what happens next.
- Bird – symbol of a nation; symbol of resistance; birds of a feather; bird’s eye view; has the name of a bird. I think this fits due to Sir Una Everlasting being seen/used as a symbol of the Dominion.
