The Everlasting<\/em>, 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\nUna comes from the archetypal wild-child woman warrior, wielding a magical sword that apparently can\u2019t 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\u2019s returned from that war dead-set on becoming a historian with a particular interest in Una\u2019s 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\u2019s 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 \u2013 but seldom shows in these pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The world that Harrow has created may be the book\u2019s real strength, as it\u2019s 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\u2019s \u2018true\u2019 time and the contemporary vignettes of Owen\u2019s childhood, the war, and the aftermath, along with an unsubtle warning about fascism and people who\u2019ll destroy everything, even time itself, to gain power. (I\u2019d also note that the identity of the villain here is as obvious as a sledgehammer to the forehead.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Everlasting<\/em> 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\u2019s 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\u2019s 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<\/em> way, but enough to lay out an argument that past and future are intertwined in ways beyond the merely physical.<\/p>\n\n\n\n