My rating: 5 of 5 stars

There’s a wickedly sharp little moment, earlier on in this, when I knew that I was getting the good stuff. It concerns a storyteller and a comment on a character’s agency and when I read it, I squeaked and I settled in because Greenberg is good and a feminist YA spin on Arthurian legends is pretty much everything and it was.

I have enjoyed Greenberg ever since her wild and spectral Glass Town and when I was in another library (not my normal one), I spotted this and picked it up with alacrity. And also my hands.

There’s something special here in a book which tells its own story and points out what others have lacked and what others could do if they so tried (or even admitted that women were present in these stories of old) and I was just on board for it entirely. It’s always difficult to adapt and work with a story that is so familiar to so many people in so many ways and yet Greenberg finds a neat, delicate, and often wickedly funny way into it. There’s a whimsical edge here too, a kind of delicious blurring of the edges of where things make sense and an understanding that they might make sense somewhere else as well and why not go there in the scene, in the moment. It’s lovely. It’s brave and bold and so, so smart.

I loved this. I am here for things that go big or go home, that kind of go “look this is what I am doing and you really should come along for the ride” and “we might go some sticky places but we might go some awesome places to” and “you know what, this will be fun” because you should and we do and it is. It always is with Greenberg. Sign me up.

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