Once & Future
Oct. 20th, 2019 10:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethby Amy Rose Capetta & Cori McCarthy
I picked this up because King Arthur gets reincarnated as a woman. And having read it, that is indeed enough reason. Arthur and Gwen being both women this time is enough to make this book worth reading. But then there's also a future where there's five mentioned generally accepted categories of gender and Merlin gets told off for assuming a they is a he and immediately apologises all embarrassed. Merlin is a gay guy who currently looks like a teenager, because ageing backwards. The knights have a pretty diverse range of characteristics. And if running around fighting with swords and cybernetic horses and spaceships sounds like fun to you, it is fun.
I was only a bit frustrated because the setup didn't seem like the kind of thing Arthur could just turn up and fix. Evil corporate empire strip mining Earth and holding people's water supplies hostage until they sign up to buy more things vs small band of plucky heroes with magic and Excalibur. Terrible odds. Really dark dark bits, many deaths, plague and poison and all sorts. And the supply chain problems aren't going to be insta fixed by any set piece battle. But that turns out to be the point, and the setup for the sequel, so full marks there.
I did keep wanting to apply science solutions to problems, but the characters inability to do so is also part of how the corporation has screwed them over, so. Fair enough.
And the entire rules of space travel being skipped by the pov character thinking she doesn't understand space travel? Elegant solution, why the hell not. Not that kind of story anyway.
So I liked it and will buy the next book.
I picked this up because King Arthur gets reincarnated as a woman. And having read it, that is indeed enough reason. Arthur and Gwen being both women this time is enough to make this book worth reading. But then there's also a future where there's five mentioned generally accepted categories of gender and Merlin gets told off for assuming a they is a he and immediately apologises all embarrassed. Merlin is a gay guy who currently looks like a teenager, because ageing backwards. The knights have a pretty diverse range of characteristics. And if running around fighting with swords and cybernetic horses and spaceships sounds like fun to you, it is fun.
I was only a bit frustrated because the setup didn't seem like the kind of thing Arthur could just turn up and fix. Evil corporate empire strip mining Earth and holding people's water supplies hostage until they sign up to buy more things vs small band of plucky heroes with magic and Excalibur. Terrible odds. Really dark dark bits, many deaths, plague and poison and all sorts. And the supply chain problems aren't going to be insta fixed by any set piece battle. But that turns out to be the point, and the setup for the sequel, so full marks there.
I did keep wanting to apply science solutions to problems, but the characters inability to do so is also part of how the corporation has screwed them over, so. Fair enough.
And the entire rules of space travel being skipped by the pov character thinking she doesn't understand space travel? Elegant solution, why the hell not. Not that kind of story anyway.
So I liked it and will buy the next book.