The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow

“Sir Una Everlasting- you- had never run from anything. You hadn’t disappeared from the world- you had burned your name into its surface, carved it so deeply into the stone of history that it was still legible a thousand years later. You had died, yes, but only because you had found something worth dying for. You had been poor, but no one had ever called you a poor thing.”

The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow

The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow has utterly shattered and destroyed me in the best possible way. I still remember the feeling I had when I read The Ten Thousand Doors of January, her short story, Mr. Death. These stories had me in tears, weeping for the characters and the emotion packed into every page. She is a writer who writes with her entire heart. She knows how to build worlds and characters that tug at a reader’s heartstring and gives them a story that is so enrapturing, you forget where you are for awhile.

The Everlasting is gorgeous and it is my new favorite book by this author (which is saying a lot because I absolutely adore everything she has written).

Sir Una Everlasting is a knight who has served her queen, Yvanne in expanding the Dominion. Una has done everything ever asked of her. She has gone on dangerous quests, led wars, slain enemies and dragons and she sets out for a final quest- to obtain the holy grail that can restore the queen’s health and bring her back from death.

Hundreds of years in the future, Owen Mallory has dedicated his life to studying Una Everlasting. He has read every book and seen every painting of her. After surviving the war, Owen has dedicated his life to further study of Una. One day, a strange book is delivered to him. Written in an old tongue, he begins to translate it, discovering the story of Una Everlasting in a way that he has never read before.

But what he hoped would just be a scholarly pursuit turns into something more. Owen is sent back through time to make sure Una carries out her final quest and meets her fate. Yet as Owen and Una travel together and learn more about one another, they realize their fate is not so simple. Saving the world is not so easy. And not falling in love is impossible.

This novel is impossible to put down. It’s steeped with myth, lore, love and time travel. It is everything you could ever want in a knight’s tale. It is everything you could ever want in a love story. This is one of the most beautiful books I have ever read, and I can’t recommend it enough.

“I’m not sure which I prefer: To be taken for something I am not, or to fail at being what I am.”

The Everlasting