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A review by rubeusbeaky
Once & Future by A.R. Capetta, Cory McCarthy
1.0
I feel bad that this book is SO profoundly bad, because the authors are doing amazing work for literacy and the LGBTQ community. Sadly, having an idea, and executing it with art and finesse, are two different things. Imagine if a kid in middle school/high school were reading the "Twilight" series for fun and "The Once and Future King" for school... had a dream about what they had read... And then wrote it all down in a dream journal. That is this book. It started as an odd choice (literally bringing the characters from The Once and Future King into space with a group of woke, queer teens), but as the book progressed it got laughably bad, confusing, and even infuriating. Where do I even begin...
1) Trying to show positive, queer relationships/characters in mainstream YA... while falling into the the cliche representation of "all queer people are raunchy, flirty, slutty, makeup-and-makeover obsessed clothes-horses." Seriously, in a moment when Merlin is despairing and ashamed because he got someone killed... a hot guy takes his shirt off, cuts Merlin's hair, and gives him a pair of tight jeans, and that makes Merlin feel all better. :/
2) Too much in one book. Space is big, turns out. And weird! It should take AGES for ships to sail between planets. Time should be experienced differently between sailors and locals. Each planet should have its own topographical and atmospheric difficulties to overcome. The ships alone should require some kind of fueling, repairing, something, to keep them zipping all over the place. Inventing and accounting for these details alone in a story is a HUGE responsibility, and why Sci-Fi has its own genre. But the authors ignored all of those details which might put a wrinkle in the action, and instead had the team zipping here and there and breathing all the air, and lasting a year without water, and having an endless pantry full of snacks!... Being flippant about the space setting was bad enough, but then the literal cast of "The Once and Future King" enters the narrative, and Merlin gives us the five point plan for raising an Arthurian legend: Find Arthur, train Arthur, nudge him onto a throne, defeat a Big Bad, unite humanity... Those five points could have EACH been a book. Instead, the first FOUR got squashed into this book. And again, literally. The Arthur wasn't nudged onto a galactic counsel somewhere, a metaphorical seat of power. They were literally crowned after a joust on a Medieval Tourist Attraction Planet.
3) Oh yeah, every planet has one function. I hate this trope, this book is not the first to do this. But think of how much diversity is on our planet, is in one country, one city, one neighborhood! But in space, for some reason, we have Prison Planet, Medieval Tourist Attraction Planet, Nature Preserve Planet, and Mall Planet. Why.
4) Tonal whiplash. Remember I mentioned before how Merlin's shame was cured by abs? The entire book is insensitive like that. Another character is murdered in a mall, and the team should be grief-stricken, but instead they make a joke about how the dead person will at least be surrounded by snacks....
5) The characters are not real. They have physical descriptions, and gender identities, and sexual preferences. But they are not real. Their motivations make no sense. Their gullibility makes no sense. Examples: Everyone in-universe accepts the premise that the main character is Arthur the Last Airbender, and immediately helps Merlin to achieve his 5 Point Plan. Nobody calls Merlin crazy. Nobody has scant knowledge of the Arthurian legend because /centuries/ have passed since it was written down by T.H. White. Nobody tries to find a "logical" explanation for why Merlin is able to do magic, or for why Merlin's "prophecy" seems to take shape. Nobody fights the "we're doomed to repeat the same narrative as Arthurs passed". And Merlin's two biggest foils aren't even the Big Bad, they are two classic characters - Morgana and Nimue - who thwart Merlin...because... reasons? It is never properly explained what these women get in return for foiling Merlin. But I think the biggest grievance for me was right at the end, when two characters who have been imprisoned for years, exposed to the plague, nearly frozen to death, turned to stone, captured and tortured and watched their family murdered before their eyes...are cooing about becoming grandparents to baby Mordred... It just doesn't seem like a genuine reaction, after everything they've been through.
6) Literally Arthur. I'm sorry, I just didn't get this gimmick at all. It's a retelling of the Arthurian legend, with a bisexual (?) girl Arthur this time. In space! Great!!! That's a lot of meat, I want to bite into that story... It's going to have literal Merlin, Morgana and Nimue, all of whom are responsible for doing terrible things... Hard to cheer for them, but okay, complicated characters, cool! Keep going. There is literally a Medieval planet, where they attempt to maintain period accuracy not just in their tourist attractions, but in their politics, forcing their world leader to marry at a young age whomever wins a joust... Odd... Not sure what this has to do with the space quest... And Lamarack literally has one hand (not a cyborg hand, just missing a hand, even though cyborgs exist), Kay is literally an oaf brawler brother who eats a lot, the queen is literally named Guinevere and she literally gets pregnant (sub-note 6a, Romanticizing pregnant teens in YA fiction! No! Pregnancy is hard! Birthing a baby is hard! Raising a baby is hard! And teen pregnancies are dangerous for both the baby and the mom. It's not cute, funny, quirky, honorable, romantic, or whatever other lie fiction tells impressionable readers.), there are LITERAL dragons!... This book would have been so strong if the elements of the Arthur legend were reincarnated into space-age avatars. If the dragon were a battleship, if the joust were between two racing hovercrafts, if the queen were a member of a galactic council where all the representatives were called kings and queens, if the galactic council were the round table!... So many little /parallels/ would have made this book smart and great. But by literally transplanting known characters, and their known story, into a setting that doesn't matter, and just...making them constantly horny... the book just reminds the reader of how much richer the /original/ story was.
1) Trying to show positive, queer relationships/characters in mainstream YA... while falling into the the cliche representation of "all queer people are raunchy, flirty, slutty, makeup-and-makeover obsessed clothes-horses." Seriously, in a moment when Merlin is despairing and ashamed because he got someone killed... a hot guy takes his shirt off, cuts Merlin's hair, and gives him a pair of tight jeans, and that makes Merlin feel all better. :/
2) Too much in one book. Space is big, turns out. And weird! It should take AGES for ships to sail between planets. Time should be experienced differently between sailors and locals. Each planet should have its own topographical and atmospheric difficulties to overcome. The ships alone should require some kind of fueling, repairing, something, to keep them zipping all over the place. Inventing and accounting for these details alone in a story is a HUGE responsibility, and why Sci-Fi has its own genre. But the authors ignored all of those details which might put a wrinkle in the action, and instead had the team zipping here and there and breathing all the air, and lasting a year without water, and having an endless pantry full of snacks!... Being flippant about the space setting was bad enough, but then the literal cast of "The Once and Future King" enters the narrative, and Merlin gives us the five point plan for raising an Arthurian legend: Find Arthur, train Arthur, nudge him onto a throne, defeat a Big Bad, unite humanity... Those five points could have EACH been a book. Instead, the first FOUR got squashed into this book. And again, literally. The Arthur wasn't nudged onto a galactic counsel somewhere, a metaphorical seat of power. They were literally crowned after a joust on a Medieval Tourist Attraction Planet.
3) Oh yeah, every planet has one function. I hate this trope, this book is not the first to do this. But think of how much diversity is on our planet, is in one country, one city, one neighborhood! But in space, for some reason, we have Prison Planet, Medieval Tourist Attraction Planet, Nature Preserve Planet, and Mall Planet. Why.
4) Tonal whiplash. Remember I mentioned before how Merlin's shame was cured by abs? The entire book is insensitive like that. Another character is murdered in a mall, and the team should be grief-stricken, but instead they make a joke about how the dead person will at least be surrounded by snacks....
5) The characters are not real. They have physical descriptions, and gender identities, and sexual preferences. But they are not real. Their motivations make no sense. Their gullibility makes no sense. Examples: Everyone in-universe accepts the premise that the main character is Arthur the Last Airbender, and immediately helps Merlin to achieve his 5 Point Plan. Nobody calls Merlin crazy. Nobody has scant knowledge of the Arthurian legend because /centuries/ have passed since it was written down by T.H. White. Nobody tries to find a "logical" explanation for why Merlin is able to do magic, or for why Merlin's "prophecy" seems to take shape. Nobody fights the "we're doomed to repeat the same narrative as Arthurs passed". And Merlin's two biggest foils aren't even the Big Bad, they are two classic characters - Morgana and Nimue - who thwart Merlin...because... reasons? It is never properly explained what these women get in return for foiling Merlin. But I think the biggest grievance for me was right at the end, when two characters who have been imprisoned for years, exposed to the plague, nearly frozen to death, turned to stone, captured and tortured and watched their family murdered before their eyes...are cooing about becoming grandparents to baby Mordred... It just doesn't seem like a genuine reaction, after everything they've been through.
6) Literally Arthur. I'm sorry, I just didn't get this gimmick at all. It's a retelling of the Arthurian legend, with a bisexual (?) girl Arthur this time. In space! Great!!! That's a lot of meat, I want to bite into that story... It's going to have literal Merlin, Morgana and Nimue, all of whom are responsible for doing terrible things... Hard to cheer for them, but okay, complicated characters, cool! Keep going. There is literally a Medieval planet, where they attempt to maintain period accuracy not just in their tourist attractions, but in their politics, forcing their world leader to marry at a young age whomever wins a joust... Odd... Not sure what this has to do with the space quest... And Lamarack literally has one hand (not a cyborg hand, just missing a hand, even though cyborgs exist), Kay is literally an oaf brawler brother who eats a lot, the queen is literally named Guinevere and she literally gets pregnant (sub-note 6a, Romanticizing pregnant teens in YA fiction! No! Pregnancy is hard! Birthing a baby is hard! Raising a baby is hard! And teen pregnancies are dangerous for both the baby and the mom. It's not cute, funny, quirky, honorable, romantic, or whatever other lie fiction tells impressionable readers.), there are LITERAL dragons!... This book would have been so strong if the elements of the Arthur legend were reincarnated into space-age avatars. If the dragon were a battleship, if the joust were between two racing hovercrafts, if the queen were a member of a galactic council where all the representatives were called kings and queens, if the galactic council were the round table!... So many little /parallels/ would have made this book smart and great. But by literally transplanting known characters, and their known story, into a setting that doesn't matter, and just...making them constantly horny... the book just reminds the reader of how much richer the /original/ story was.