Rant Review: Once and Future by Amy Rose Capetta and Cori McCarthy

Buy it on Amazon

(But, like.... probably don't?)

"Don't judge a book by its cover," they say. And that's usually meant to make you less judgmental, right? Like, "Don't assume the worst based on how someone looks"? At least, that's how I usually take it.

Well, in the case of the YA Sci-Fi Once & Future, it's the opposite. Don't be fooled by the gorgeous, irresistible, intriguing cover of this book. Don't be sucked in by the promising synopsis, which is basically girl-Arthur in Space! (I know, I know, HOW WAS THIS BAD?!)

But it was.

It was so, so, bad.

The book starts off fine. We jump right into the action with our main character, Ari, and her brother Kay, running from emissaries of the Big Bad, a giant corporation/government called Mercer. They hide out down on Earth, which is a burnt out nothing mostly seen as a tourist novelty, and Ari finds Excalibur buried in a tree and pulls it out. Merlin awakens. You know, standard King Arthur stuff.

I started feeling uncomfortable with the writing around page 18ish, when Ari refers to a stranger in a club as "the pretty fluid." I don't really like this terminology, or her blasé assumption of this individual's gender and/or presentation. If you're giving me a beautiful, diverse, universe with representation and acceptance for all gender presentations and identities, there has to be ambiguity built in. How does she know this individual is "a fluid?" Also, are the authors aware that "a fluid" is like, a liquid thing? And that in a book about space I was fully picturing an alien made of liquid and was somewhat disappointed to find out it was a regular old gender-nonconforming human? I don't know, my dudes, it just felt weird to me. A couple of sentences later, she's hauling this person against a wall and kissing them for Plot Reasons. No consent, no introduction, no quick explanation or apology, just, all of a sudden making out with this stranger and getting weirdly vivid with the description of how, err, enjoyable Ari finds the experience. 

A couple of sentences after that, Ari's pulling the exact same move on Merlin, and the unnamed fluid is skulking off down the corridor, never to be storied again. Almost as if they served no story purpose at all, except to introduce the concept of being agender/gender fluid/whatever ill-defined concept the authors are trying to get across. Which is dumb, because another fluid character, Lamarack, shows up like 6 pages later and does a WAY better job of... being a character.

Look, I make no bones about being a Liberal. I stan Bernie Sanders. I'm down for all of y'all, whatever you want to do or wear or whoever you love(BOCTOE). But I don't condone bad writing just because it's saying something I agree with. And I think most of the good reviews of this book are letting it get away with the nonsense it pulls because to criticize it would seem like we're putting down a book that's actually inclusive for once. But it doesn't work like that, friendos. We don't give something a pass just because it has one good aspect.

And is this even good representation? Every character in the book pretty much introduces themselves with their gender presentation and sexuality, all tied up with a neat bow. Also they spend 50% of the book making out. Like, the plot is frequently derailed and occasionally disappears altogether, to make more room for the making out. And it's not even making out you care about. Everyone pretty much knows who they have their eye on from the get-go, and they all get together kind of quickly, in my opinion. There's no longing, man. No tension. No build-up. Gwenivere is introduced on page, like, 80. By page 90, they're fake-married. By page 97, they're real-banging. Forgive my lack of enthusiasm but like, what? Am I supposed to be rooting for them JUST because they're in a lesbian relationship? Because that's not how this works.

Oh, and after all the emphasis on how the cycle repeats itself, and Merlin's so worried about Gwen betraying Ari and breaking her heart, she just kind of... doesn't. And it's because this cycle's Lancelot, who honestly I've already forgotten her name, it might be Jordan, is ace. And that's her WHOLE character. She's this blonde girl who just hangs around... bein' ace. Am I honestly supposed to cheer for this character and love the relationship, which only doesn't go down in flames because someone else doesn't want to bang?

Honestly even the fact that 75% of my review about GIRL ARTHUR IN FUTURE-SPACE has to do with who's doing the zero-G hokey-pokey is my biggest problem with the book. I can't even really critique the plot, because there kind of wasn't one. It was flimsy and at times absent altogether, which is frankly tragic. Because this wasn't just a book about Arthur in space. It was Gay Female Arthur Critiques Capitalism With Gay Friends For 300 Pages. Hey, I hate mercenary greed as much as the next guy, but when you have a five-year-old character in flashback thinking the phrase "the cancer of unchecked capitalism," you've just flipping LOST me. You can't just write literal propaganda and call it a novel, EVEN IF I agree with your agenda. It's gross and unappealing.

And for heaven's sake, let characters be more than their sexuality! If sexuality and gender really are as widely accepted as your characters claim they are (see the cringey shaming of Merlin accidentally using the wrong pronoun), then it really wouldn't be a big deal. Mis-gendering someone isn't hateful in a universe where the whole spectrum is accepted, embraced, and normalized, ya doinks. It's just an awkward mistake. And every person is not going to introduce themselves by announcing their sexual preferences. They just wouldn't do that because people don't work like that. And just because a character is gay doesn’t mean they're going around making out with any/every available member of their preferred gender, because people don't work like that. And just because two people are each other's preferred gender doesn't mean they'll always be attracted to each other because (and I'll say this again in case you missed it) PEOPLE DON'T WORK LIKE THAT.

Side note: if you're creating a Utopian universe where all genders and expressions are equally embraced and it's understood that gender norms are nothing and you can be a girl who expresses more masculine, or a boy in a girl's body, or fluid, or a super-flamboyant beautiful woman, or whatever the hell you want to be, in what way do traditional labels of sexuality even apply anymore? How can anyone label themselves as "gay" when there's no longer any set definition of what a "man" is? I feel like you either have to double down on gender being objective, or sexuality has to be thrown out as an archaic concept and it's on a case-by-case basis with everyone, which honestly would be cool as liquid nitrogen to see in Sci-Fi.

All in all, this book reads like a first draft that somebody tripped over their own feet to publish in order to prove how progressive they are. The concept alone deserved a book deal, but this story was cheated by being rushed to print before it was done incubating.

0 out of 5 stars. Don't read it, unless there's a copy at your local library or you want to borrow mine, or you really enjoy being aggravated.