The Everlasting

by Alix E. Harrow ★★★★★

Regular readers of Barlin's Books will be well-familiar with Alix E. Harrow, who has a #1 Book of the Year (The Ten Thousand Doors of January) to her credit, as well as a Top 10 finish for Starling House (#8 in 2023). Across her novels, she has consistently written stories that feature strong female lead characters, blending in elements of fantasy (with a particular penchant for having her characters to travel to other realms or dimensions) while remaining grounded in something that resembles a low-tech version of modern society. The Everlasting is on-brand in those respects.

In the opening lines of the novel, we're introduced to the greatest hero of the land of Dominion, Una the Everlasting, "a nameless child who became a knight; a knight who went to war and became a champion; a champion who slew the last dragon and found the lost grail and became a legend." We're also introduced, in a way, to her chronicler:

"Most legends are lies, pretty stories to keep the children quiet on long winter evenings. But I, who rode so many miles at her side and slept so many nights at her feet—I, who was her shadow while she lived and her echo ever after—am no liar."

Fast-forward to the "present" day, which feels roughly like the 1940s or 1950s, a thousand years after the life of Una the Everlasting. Owen Mallory, a professor at the Cantford College Department of History, receives a book in the mail. It is, against all odds, the first-hand account of Una's life that no one believed still existed. "I was holding in my hands the single greatest discovery of the century, or possibly the millennium." Mallory isn't just any historian; he's had a near-obsession with Una his entire life. The only child of a single father, Mallory was fascinated as a young boy by Una's legend, inspired as a young man to go to war by her courage, and catapulted into his career as a historian after the war by a desire to learn even more about her. While there is no was no return address on the book, Mallory can't help but feel that it was destiny that he receive it.

Prior to receiving the book, Mallory had fancied scenarios where he'd discover the book on an archeological adventure, but Indiana Jones he is not. "I had never flourished in a crisis. I was one of God's natural ditherers, much given to the wringing of hands and the writing of unhelpful lists. Since the war, I had fits of weeping and melancholic stupors, and every now and then a wave of confused and violent memory that left me curled in a corner, shaking." He is, in many ways, quite different on the surface from Una, who is everything a prototypical hero and legend should be. Mallory begins to translate the book, but before long he returns from a trip out to find the book stolen. In its place is a crisp white card bearing only an address, and everything changes.

What follows is a mind-bending trip through time—part A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, part Sliding Doors, part butterfly effect—and Harrow expertly peels back bits of obfuscation until the full nature of what is going on is revealed. Among her previous books, The Everlasting most closely resembles The Ten Thousand Doors of January, and just like with that story, Harrow takes a concept that initial feels confusing and makes it fully accessible to the reader over the course of the novel. It's also not without some smart societal commentary. Much of the book centers around how incomplete history can be, and how a widely accepted account of an event may only contain small kernels of truth. "History is written by the victors" is definitely a central theme, and Harrow makes a point to highlight the unaccounted perspectives of the vanquished. It is also, somewhat unexpectedly, a surprisingly stirring treatise on the horrors of war and how everyone ends up losing, even the so-called victors.

And it's really good! Once I figured out what the heck was going on, I was hooked, and Harrow keeps readers on their toes all the way through the satisfying conclusion. Fans of Harrow (and especially The Ten Thousand Doors of January) will certainly like this one, and for those that haven't read her before, this is a great place to start.