Review by Kelly Jarvis: The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow

Alix E. Harrow, author of the Ten Thousand Doors of January and A Spindle Splintered, returns with an Arthurian-style time travel novel sure to delight her fans. The Everlasting tells the story of Sir Una Everlasting, an orphan turned knight turned legend, and Owen Mallory, a scholarly historian obsessed with her story. Owen believes Una has saved his life on multiple occasions. Her story provided him with solace to his loneliness as a child and inspired him to join his country’s war against the Hinterlands when he came of age. As the book begins, he is a wounded veteran and a struggling part-time professor in the Cantford College Department of History. He receives a parcel in the mail which contains a book carved from heartwood. The book, a tremendous scholarly discover which may win Owen a prestigious position, is the lost story of the Death of Una Everlasting. Owen soon finds himself thrust backward in time, living as a scribe tasked with telling Una’s story.

Harrow immediately sucks the reader into a medieval world while also retaining the tone and humor of a contemporary setting and characters. Owen explains his academic advisor is “like a liege lord, except instead of beheading you she can make you rewrite your thesis chapters,” and notes “a journey which takes only a few paragraphs in a book takes considerably longer on horseback.” Comments like these remind the reader that Owen and Una’s fantastical story is a reflection of the real world we live in, and this lays the groundwork for a compelling contemplation of storytelling. Questions of narrative authority and cultural legacy sit side by side with questions about the nature of bravery and cowardice. Beneath it all is a love story that repeats and spans across generations.

Although I sometimes felt lost in the time-loops, I loved Harrow’s beautiful and poetic presentation about the everlasting nature of love and the way a story can feel like home. Her presentation of a brave, sword-wielding female knight and a mousy, cowardly man is refreshing, and her combination of hope and tragedy will leave emotional readers in tatters. This book is for fans of fantasy, time travel, and all those who enjoy the power of a well-told love story. It is a book to be both enjoyed and studied, and I’m sure to return to its pages again. You can find it here.

Thank you to NetGalley for a free copy of the book in exchange for a fair review.

Kelly Jarvis works as the Contributing Writer for The Fairy Tale Magazine and teaches writing and literature at Central Connecticut State University. Her work has been featured in A Moon of One’s Own, Blue Heron Review, Corvid Queen, Eternal Haunted Summer, Mermaids Monthly, The Chamber Magazine, The Magic of Us, and Mothers of Enchantment: New Tales of Fairy Godmothers. Her debut novella, Selkie Moon, was released in 2025. You can connect with her on Facebook (Kelly Jarvis, Author) or Instagram (@kellyjarviswriter) or find her at https://kellyjarviswriter.com/