“The Everlasting” by Alix E. Harrow

The theme of this book, if I had to pick one, is that what makes a nation a nation is the story the people tell themselves. This is very topical; in many ways, the ongoing political conflict in the US is the same argument over the story of America that’s been being fought since at least the Civil War. Or look at the No Kings protestors this weekend: many of them were carrying signs explicitly casting themselves as the continuation of the story of the American Revolution.

Every nation has their own story, often contentious, always changing with the passage of time, and often bearing only a passing resemblance to the actual truth. And politicians, one and all, try to use this story to further their own ends.

But what if a politician had the ability shape the narrative at the source? To change both the events of the distant past and how they’re remembered? That’s what The Everlasting is all about.

It starts with Owen Mallory, who served his country (only referred to as the Dominion) in their latest wars as a corporal, got discharged with scars and a medal he’s quite certain he did not deserve, and started a new career as a historian. His research is into the legendary lady knight Sir Una Everlasting, a pivotal figure in the founding of the Dominion. So imagine his surprise and delight when he receives, with no explanation, a mysterious copy of a legendary text describing her life and death. Events lead him to the office of the Dominion’s Minister of War Vivian Rolfe, who tells him his country needs him: not to translate and publish the text, as he had thought, but to write it in the first place. 

And then she sends him back in time a thousand years or so, where he meets Sir Una herself setting out on the legendary final quest she dies to fulfill. He comes along as her chronicler (to her annoyance) and sees her succeed, and sees her fall. And Vivian Rolfe reappears, gives him some - let’s call it “editorial direction” - and he writes the new, updated chronicle of Sir Una, and goes home. To a Dominion that has been changed by the national myth he started.

And then Vivian Rolfe starts the process over again, as the needs of the Dominion change.

Time travel stories are always tricky to pull off; time loops aren’t really any better as far as I can tell. But the story Alix Harrow spins here, of Owen and Una as they are pulled and manipulated into being what the country they both serve thinks it needs them to be, is a good one. This isn’t an easy book to read; Harrow isn’t sparing of the reader’s feelings. We have to watch people we care about deeply die again and again and again; we have to watch other people in the story who we also care about, cope with those deaths again and again and again. Hell, the sections of the book (spoiling the table of contents here) are titled “the First Death of Una Everlasting,” “the Second Death of Una Everlasting,” “the Third Death of Una Everlasting” etc.

So read it, cry over it, and appreciate the writing of one of the best writers of fantasy out there today.