Review - Once & Future by Amy Rose Capetta and Cori McCarthy

Once & Future by Amy Rose Capetta and Cori McCarthy 

Published 26th March 2019 by Rock the Boat

Star Rating - ****

Goodreads Challenge - 14/50

I was gifted a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. 

Synopsis (from Goodreads)

I’ve been chased my whole life. As a fugitive refugee in the territory controlled by the tyrannical Mercer corporation, I’ve always had to hide who I am. Until I found Excalibur.

Now I’m done hiding.

My name is Ari Helix. I have a magic sword, a cranky wizard, and a revolution to start.

When Ari crash-lands on Old Earth and pulls a magic sword from its ancient resting place, she is revealed to be the newest reincarnation of King Arthur. Then she meets Merlin, who has aged backward over the centuries into a teenager, and together they must break the curse that keeps Arthur coming back. Their quest? Defeat the cruel, oppressive government and bring peace and equality to all humankind.

My Thoughts

I was lucky enough to receive a copy of this from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. I was super excited to pick this one up as I'm quite a fan of the Legend of King Arthur and a gender bent retelling set in space seemed right up my street and, I can honestly say I enjoyed reading this one however, there were a few things that bothered me. 

As I just said this book is described as a gender bent retelling of the Legend of King Arthur and I loved that premise. It was a super fun story with some great twists and turns along the way. There were definitely a couple of shock moments where I literally found myself gasping out loud. There was also a lot humour in this book which I really enjoyed. The humour didn't feel forced or cheesy and I genuinely found myself chuckling to myself at times. It was definitely a very diverse read with lot's of LGBTQIAP+ characters. It also took the current refugee crisis and put a unique spin on it within the story which I thought was really interesting. 

The writing itself was super fast paced. A lot happened all of the time and although this made for quite a quick read I do think it was a little bit too fast paced at times. The plot had a tendency to jump around a bit and we went from one action scene to another without much of an idea of how we got there. I found myself getting a bit confused at times. I will just say however, that I read the proof of this book and the authors have said that there are several changes in the final copy so I hope they might have addressed some of this. 

One thing I really did love though were all of the characters. We had m/m romances, f/f romances, bisexual and pan-sexual characters as well as a whole host of others and I loved them all! They were all completely individual and strong in their own ways but also worked so well together. They were a great band of friends who were completely realistic, they supported and looked out for one another but also fell out with each other and disagreed at times because that's what friends do. I enjoyed all of the romances, I thought they were all really sweet but I do think that Ari and Gwen's may have been a bit rushed. 

Overall I really enjoyed this book. I loved the premise and I loved the diverse cast of characters. It was a shame the pacing was a bit off and I hope this has been rectified in the final book as I think if this was the case this would be close to a five star read for me.

Overall Rating