I’m almost halfway through The Everlasting by Alix E Harrow and I’ve been absolutely loving it, it’s everything I love and look for in fantasy (especially when it comes to lady knights) so I was wondering if anybody had any recs with similar elements?
I love how Una feels multi dimensional and is more of a deconstructed hero. She loves strongly and is fiercely loyal while also still being this rugged, strong knight with battle wounds. Her character feels so effortlessly cool without it coming off like those cringey “badass fmc” archetypes where the fmc is just "feisty" and goes around saying sassy one liners.
For Owen, I love how he's absolutely nothing like those dominating big broody mmc's we tend to see a lot of nowadays. He's a fearful, nerdy, self proclaimed coward who has issues with self confidence and cries a lot; then there's the added element of him being a traumatized war vet. I'm only like 45% through but based of what I already know about how he feels about himself, I know he's going to grow and eventually learn to love himself more which I look forward to. Both of the characters have a personality outside of their love for each other and it's awesome. Some other elements I've been liking:
– It's a book involving a lady knight and we get to actually read about her being a knight and wielding a sword instead of it just being a thing for aesthetics
– The first few chapters of the book aren't just info-dumps where the author uses them for "world building" purposes
– The politics and political commentary
– Loooooooove that Una is taller and stronger than Owen (and he likes it), I'm a sucker for anything that goes against traditional gender roles
I already plan on reading The Six Deaths of the Saint next since that’s one I’ve heard get recommended a lot and I also already read The Second Death of Locke, though I was quite disappointed with it. So if anyone has any recs based off all that I'd greatly appreciate it!
by Glittering_Turnip505