Reviews with content warning for Misogyny - Sword in the Stars

Reviews tagging 'Misogyny'

Sword in the Stars by Cory McCarthy, A.R. Capetta

7 reviews

just_one_more_paige's review

adventurous emotional lighthearted tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

Wrapping up my back-to-back reading of this (King) Arthur in space duology and living my best queer YA literature life. Like, just give me all the queer Arthur retellings. Please and thank you.

Sword in the Sky picks up exactly where Once & Future leaves us, with Merlin and Ari et al jumping into the past, to the original King Arthur's time, to find and steal the chalice (yes, they do mean that grail) gifted to Arthur by Avalon, with the hopes that it will help them bring down Mercer for good. Of course, as with all time travel, it's important not to mess with the timeline and change the course of history. Except the group is separated during their journey through time and things take some dramatic and *very* interfering turns. Plus, there's still the ever-present meddling from Nin, all the misogyny and social challenges of living in the past, and the fact that Merlin's (older) past self is more of an impediment than a help...at every turn. Can the group not mess up the past too much, stop the cycle of Arthur's deaths and Merlin's backwards aging, and make it back to the future all together to save their own time/world?

So, I want to get the big elephant in the room out of the way first (or at least, what I felt like the big elephant was). I was really hesitant about this second book because of the going back in time thing. Like, so many things could go wrong (as far as how the story unfolded, and how much I would "believe" and/or like it) and I was pretty invested in the sci-fi future world we had started with, so I wasn't sure the sudden shift wouldn't feel too jarring for me. Plus, time travel itself is a tough nut to crack, as a story-teller, doing it well and "right" and without too many holes or cheesy stuff or squiggly parts. And I am thrilled to report that, while the jury remained out for the first third, or so, of the book, I ended up totally buying into it. The weaving together of the "future" with the "past" and the crossover of some of the characters (and the shake-up in some of their roles), along with the way it all played into and built the cycle that Nin had created and Merlin continuously looping through it, was honestly really well done. Now, were there perhaps some question marks and weirdness and corny things and perhaps one too many deus ex machina moments? Yes. But by the end, they were very much outweighed by the overall story developing, for me. And there was at least one self-aware moment that was really cheeky and I enjoyed it being there. Ha!

I was also a bit creeped out by the Merlin aging backwards thing. It felt weird and I was nervous about how it would play out too. Honestly, it turned out better than I'd expected too. (Overall really, the writing in this second book was a step up from the first. I think the joint authorship grew a lot between the two installations. But back to Merlin, it was cool to see him get a second chance to go back to his "old" self's decisions with his current self's growth and try to be better. It did take a really weird turn, relationally (no spoilers, promise!), but I'll allow it, I suppose. And I did really like the turn that the social commentary made in this one. It was still very present, but felt less spelled out, like the authors trusted the readers more, in this second book, and I was glad for that. Plus it was more dynamically interesting to see the present and future interpretations of the past (like from Gwen's Middle Ages planet, Lionel) coming face-to-face with the (sometimes deeply hypocritical and definitely not idealistic variations of) the history that actually inspired them. It's an important lesson, to learn that the things we honor and celebrate from the past were, in all likelihood, not as perfect as we'd like them to believe (or as they've been repurposed in the present). Relatedly, the very clear calling out of the whitewashing of history, the way that even Merlin, who lived it, remembered it incorrectly due to racist revisioning, was both a great point (about queer and BIPOC people having always been there) and unexpectedly (as in, I wasn't expecting it to be addressed in the way it was) joyful to read. Thank you to the authors, for gifting readers with that.

Finally...ugh, that was a deeply satisfying ending. It was sweet and bittersweet and a really positive wrap-up of righting past wrongs to create a better future (loved the way Nin's story was presented and given closure, plus all the found family love remained central and a major highlight). It was very clean, very, but the general parable about how cycles of pain/loss/loneliness that one can get trapped it can be broken out of, with help, and are worth the effort to do so, in pursuit of that shining, happy ending. It was the right way for this fantastical folklore-y retelling to finish.

“People have used many hateful weapons over time. Forced forgetting is a powerful one.”

“That’s what men do. That’s what men have always done. They kill and burn and take, and they stuff their ears against the screams, but at the end of the day the want to be remembered as good. So they write stories about their shining deeds and all are made to watch and listen and love them.”

“Her heroic moment would never be met with parades or universe-wise celebration, but most heroic moments weren’t. Each was a single drop in the great flow of time, but every drop mattered. And the right one, at the right moment, could change the water’s direction entirely.”

“He’d heard the arguments. That they were just stories. But he knew, from deep personal experience playing a role in one of the most enduring legends in Western history, that stories were never just a string of pretty words on a page or attractive strangers on a screen. They climbed inside your head, reordered things. Tore up parts of you by the roots and planted new ideas. Magic, really. And not always the sparkly kind.”

“…time was fleeting. A river that could only ever sweep them away. They’d have this night and then their lives would keep moving, changing. But wherever they went – wherever hope went – new legends would draw mighty swords and fight for better futures.”

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aseel_reads's review

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adventurous funny medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

i was living for this, i devoured the audiobook in just over 24 hours, i loved the whole circle/time loop thing of the plot, i love the characters, and all the gender/race diversity, a big fan

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