The Everlasting.

Mousy academic and erstwhile war hero Owen Mallory uncovers a mythical manuscript about the folk hero Una the Everlasting, only to learn that the book is actually a time machine – and that he needs to go back in history to make sure that the real Una does what she’s supposed to do according to the myth. The two fall in love, however, which makes completing her legend a bit complicated, since it ends in her death. And so Owen goes back in time again, and again, egged on by the War Minister of his country, Dominion, to try to set the story straight, until he eventually discovers that someone else is writing their story, too.

Alix Harrow’s The Everlasting won the Hugo Award for Best Novel this year, quite handily according to the voting, and the Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel, while acquiring what appears to be a dedicated fan base online for its sweeping romance, a love story that literally knows no bounds of time. The time-travel bits don’t add up here; you have to suspend your disbelief early and go with the flow, pun intended. That’s not a serious flaw when the time-travel aspect comes in service of a larger goal, and in The Everlasting, a story about power and loyalty and courage, that goal is evident. Where the story falls short, however, is in its two characters, and the weak chemistry between them that undermines much of the love story.

Una comes from the archetypal wild-child woman warrior, wielding a magical sword that apparently can’t be broken or destroyed, often living by her wits and her hunting prowess, feared by many of the peasants of her time but revered in hindsight by the Dominion of the present day. Dominion has just recently fought a bruising war that resembles our World War I in some ways, and Owen, still a coward, turned out to be a crack shot, dispatching enemy soldiers until he was nearly decapitated in a battle that became a massacre. He’s returned from that war dead-set on becoming a historian with a particular interest in Una’s legend, so finding and translating an original manuscript of her story, or any of the artifacts associated with her, would make his academic career. When the book arrives, of course he dives in, and he remains devoted to the task until he notices several details that make him question the nature of everything, from the righteousness of his cause to his own free will. Yet he’s much more of a Nick Jenkins here, observing, noticing, more involved in the action than Jenkins typically was but still on the outside of most of it, and as such ends up a blander character whose primary attribute is the cowardice that he tells us about – but seldom shows in these pages.

The world that Harrow has created may be the book’s real strength, as it’s recognizable and, other than the time travel, plausible, while allowing her to play around with setting and style. There are subtle shifts in the prose and tone between the more medieval settings of Una’s ‘true’ time and the contemporary vignettes of Owen’s childhood, the war, and the aftermath, along with an unsubtle warning about fascism and people who’ll destroy everything, even time itself, to gain power. (I’d also note that the identity of the villain here is as obvious as a sledgehammer to the forehead.)

The Everlasting is also an exploration of the gap between myth and reality, and the way that history, especially oral history, can change over time while also changing those who follow and hear it. Una’s legend turns out to be very far from the truth, and Owen, who grew up hearing some of the folk tales and believes he may have met Una under a yew tree when he was a child, has to grapple with the difference between the Una of the page and the one he’s traveling with, and whose mission he must protect to save Dominion. As he changes the story, however, the future changes as well, not quite in an A Sound of Thunder way, but enough to lay out an argument that past and future are intertwined in ways beyond the merely physical.

I read The Everlasting expecting to be sucked into the characters and their romance, but for the most part, I didn’t buy it. (There is one very well-written sex scene, however, especially shocking for a genre that produces some of the cringiest sex scenes put to paper.) I found the political and historical narrative much more compelling, which is enough for me to recommend the book, but also left me knowing I didn’t get what many readers seem to have gotten, and feeling like maybe I just missed something. Instead there’s some padding here and there on the duo’s repeated quests that was probably part of how Harrow tried to build their chemistry, and without that foundation, those parts dragged.

I’ve only read three of the six Hugo nominees this year, but I’d put this behind The Incandescent and ahead of Death of the Author. A Drop of Corruption is on my to-read shelf right now.

Next up: Tattoo by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán.