Note: I know one of the authors in this anthology socially.
A book club book! This is a collection of stories written by marginalized voices that are inspired by Arthurian myths and characters, divided into three sections: Once, Present and Future. The stories contained in Once take place in ye olde England but either center women or otherwise expand the white, male, straight focus of the characters and myths, while the Present and Future take place in a fairly broad concept of both time periods but also reinvent the stories in ways beyond the setting.
The joy of an anthology is that while you're unlikely to love all of the stories included, you will likely find a number of standouts. And this is one where my feelings on the stories range from "well that was nice!" to "oh I LOVE this," so I'm going to highlight a few of my favorites. One aspect I really enjoyed about the three sections is the opportunity to see how different writers take on the same character across the eras, and my favorites were three stories inspired by the Lady of Shalott, an Arthurian figure I wasn't particularly familiar with prior to reading this anthology. I've always been slightly intimidated by Arthurian myths because there's not just one canon source, so getting to read Passing Fair and Young, Flat White and A Shadow in Amber, three stories which all approach the Lady of Shalott in wildly different ways, made me really understand all of the various ways the myths have all been retold and molded for different eras and with different intentions. It made me want to read more versions of these stories, and then return to this anthology with a deeper grounding in the myths. A really lovely collection.
Grade: A
