(no subject)

[skygiants]

A year and a half later, I have finally read Sword in the Stars, the sequel to Amy Rose Capetta and Cori McCarthy's wild YA space opera Arthuriana Once & Future.

This was an interesting reading experience for me because, on the one hand, I disagreed with many more of the specific plot and thematic choices than in the first book, making it a much more complicated level of enjoyment than the joyous roller coaster of the first book, and on the other hand I still have such a tremendous respect for the authors' delightfully devil-may-care attitude towards throwing a whole bunch of Arthurian canon at the wall and then joyously re-shuffling it around in whatever way they feel like. Kay is Lancelot is Arthur is teen protagonist Ari whose brother is Kay: SURE! Merlin is simultaneously aging backwards and forwards and apprenticing himself to himself: WHY NOT! Guinevere is insistent that her baby is NOT Mordred and everyone else is like 'well we don't see any OTHER Mordred candidates around here' and Guinevere is like 'MORDRED IS NEVER GWEN'S BABY IN ANY VERSION OF THE ARTHURIAN CANON, LEAVE ME ALONE' so who is Guinevere's baby? The Answer May Surprise You! Merlin being simultaneously Arthur/Ari & Gwen & Kaycelot's kid AND Arthur's mentor AND in at least one incarnation Arthur's boyfriend (a bit of weirdness that is never actually addressed, but hey, the incest vibes are baked into the canon and at least this is a new way to get at them) is SUCH a hilarious twist. BRAVE NEW WORLDS. I love feeling like I'm in the hands of writers who know and love the legend and are really enjoying taking it apart and putting it back together again in ways that consistently made me shriek.

Some stuff I personally did not like so much:
- I love an enthusiastically queer retelling as much as the next person and I'm sure a lot of the choices in here will make many people feel really validated and that's so lovely, but an unironic "that planet was hella problematic" (direct quote!) re: Earth from one of the few survivors of a current and ongoing future space genocide campaign pushes all the way to the farthest reaches of my own personal present-day-spacetime-exceptionalism secondhand embarrassment filter
- "the Arthurian cycle is a neverending tragedy perpetual motion machine propelled onwards by the spark of hope in a better future" great! wonderful! "created because one person was driven mad by the patriarchy, and the way to fix it is to give that one person a second chance and also make sure good people are in charge of the big overpowered global corporation now" well now I have to admit you're losing me a little
- ok back to the secondhand embarrassment: love intertextuality, fully covering my face at the fact that the book takes a whole page of the epilogue to have Merlin explain the term 'queerbaiting' to his Future Boyfriend just in order to rag on the TV show Merlin (2008). Just keep telling myself that Someone Who Is Not Me Feels Very Seen By This.
- after all of the affectionately weird Kay plot in the last book, the pendulum swings all the way back at me and in this book Original Kay is uncomplicatedly bad and the only knight to get kicked out of the Round Table >:(( dislike >:((( lay off my horrible fave >:((((

I know there have been at least three or four other Teen Arthurs published over the past year or two and I keep meaning to keep track of them and then forgetting, so please do remind me what they are so I can add them to the Collection!

Comments

[aria]

Hnngh the full page of Merlin explaining queerbaiting DOES in fact make me recoil in sheer embarrassed horror, if I ever read these I will Prepare Myself.

I have to confess that your reviews of these books don't necessarily make me want to read these books, specifically, but they do make me feel like I desperately need to spend several months just wading through all the written Arthuriana (and maybe some of the filmed stuff, but not, like, all of Merlin) that I can get my hot little hands on.

[skygiants]

RIGHT ARI THAT'S THE THING like it just makes me want to quit my job and spend the next 5-10 years compiling a Full Compendium of All Written Arthurian Content, with annotated throughlines and diagrams showing the explosion of characterization trends. Surely someone will pay me to do this???

[graycardinal]

Actually, you might pitch that as a series concept to Tor.com....

[starlady]

Not a Teen Arthur, but have you read Once and Future by Kieron Gillen and Dan Mora? It's a very different project but there is a similar level of "I know these stories inside and out and I am doing exactly as I please with them."

[skygiants]

I have not but I definitely feel like I should! It's a comic, right?

[starlady]

Yeah! Currently four trades, it's all about Brexit and what if stories are dangerous and bad, actually? I've been enjoying it a lot and the art is great.

[sovay]

Some stuff I personally did not like so much

This section suggests to me that I would not enjoy this book especially, so is it still possible to read the wild roller coaster of the first book without continuing to the point where I feel weird about the sequel's deployment of genocide and defensive of original flavor Kay?

[skygiants]

Yeah I think so! Like it definitely ends on a cliffhanger but less in a nailbitey way than an 'lolololol this is going to be WILD' way. (though fwiw the genocide is a major part of the protagonist's backstory throughout)

[copperfyre]

…this makes me want to dive back into my Arthuriana obsession so badly. Like you I don’t think I would agree with all the choices but I love the level of loving tearing it apart retelling!

[skygiants]

My Arthuriana obsession is never dead, only ever lying very lightly dormant. >.>

[copperfyre]

If I don’t make eye contact with my Arthuriana obsession I am safe, but as soon as I glance over at it I am doomed and lost to it…

[osprey_archer]

Merlin explaining queerbaiting in the epilogue is just killing me. Not only does this page-long digression Exist, but it's been put in perhaps the worst possible place! If it was anywhere else in the book perhaps the reader could get distracted by Baby Not!Mordred or what have you and forget about it, but putting it in the epilogue all but ensures that THIS is going to be the very last impression that the book leaves.

[skygiants]

To be fair I can't remember if 'Merlin takes his boyfriend through a lovingly described full tour of his Library of Arthurian Media' is technically the last scene or the second-to-last scene but EITHER WAY IT VERY MUCH LINGERS WITH YOU.

[osprey_archer]

I am all for authors following their bliss and I can think of no reason for such a scene to exist EXCEPT that the authors had followed their bliss right over a cliff... but there are Limits and also a Time and a Place and perhaps the time and place for this should not have been the epilogue!

[obopolsk]

I have not been able to bring myself to read this installment, so I appreciate this recap. I too would have trouble with the created because one person was driven mad by the patriarchy, and the way to fix it is to give that one person a second chance and also make sure good people are in charge of the big overpowered global corporation now aspect.