This is not what I was expecting.
From the publisher: “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, and finally tell a different story, they’ll have to rewrite history itself – and change their lives in the process.”
The author herself has summarised this book as about “a big sad lady knight stuck in a time loop and the anxious historian trying to save her.”
To be honest I think I was rather expecting more of a chivalric romance, perhaps a female-centred version of the King Arthur tale, perhaps, (It’s no coincidence that Owen’s surname is Sir Thomas Malory – one of the most famous tellers of the story of King Arthur) or something more like V L Bovalino’s The Second Death of Locke (recently reviewed here.)
The story focusses on Owen and Una, told mainly from the point of view of Owen, as he tries to maintain both the myth of Una Everlasting and Una, the real living person.
As the book progresses, the relationship between the two becomes ever more intense and complicated. Owen is torn by the fact that he knows how Una will meet her death, and yet has to try and avoid telling her. Una is battle-scarred and weary, ready to give up the fight just before she meets Owen, something a million miles away from the image history portrays herself to be.
This is a darker, a more slippery, more nuanced, and possibly more complex tale than I was expecting. The author herself has said that “it’s not YA… it’s not sapphic… it’s not strictly romantasy, although it is romantic.” I can’t disagree with any of that. It’s also remarkably low on the use of magic, although there is one unexplained story mechanism that may be seen as such. Towards the end it even borders on science fiction, but to say why and how would spoil things.
Where The Everlasting scores most for me is in the characterisation. The characterisation is so good that there were moments in this where I genuinely felt for the protagonists. (As a former academic historian herself, I did feel Alix was portraying Owen with some sympathy here.) For me this culminated in the fact that despite having a key scene involve one of my pet-hate-cliches, (and no, I’m not going to say what it is, as it is a BIG spoiler) the scene where it happened was genuinely emotional – something that rarely happens to me when reading these days.
But as well as that, The Everlasting is not only a character study, but also an exploration of heroes, and the myths that can be created around them. There is everything that you might expect with such a tale – love, honour, sacrifice, duty, the need for providing a service, and even death, repeatedly. But Harrow also looks at the role of storytelling and how stories make myths, the value of myths, if you like, of using heroes from the past in the present to meet other ends, such as maintaining power.
It also shows us how that, in the wrong hands, hero-worship can be subverted and used as propaganda for ulterior motives – how such positive ideals can become something else. Imagine what could happen if a politician could use something like the legend of King Arthur to generate populist fervour and nationalistic pride, which could be used to their own purpose? Although this is Fantasy, it can speak truth to reality.
In short, this book exceeded my initial expectations. The Everlasting is a Fantasy adventure story, yes, but also one that makes you think, with characters that resonate and a clever plot that never fails to engage.
© 2025 Mark Yon
Paperback | Tor Books
THE EVERLASTING by Alix E Harrow
October 2025 | 320 pages
ISBN: 978 152 906 1178
