Cowritten by partners Amy Rose Capetta (Echo After Echo) and Cori McCarthy (You Were Here), Once & Future is dually narrated by Ari Helix, a pansexual Arab-descended fugitive who is traipsing across the galaxy with her adoptive brother in search of their mothers, and Merlin (of Camelot fame), who has de-aged to teenager-hood thanks to his curse, which keeps him growing younger and younger until he trains the latest incarnation of King Arthur and beats fate at its own game.
Obviously, Ari is his latest King Arthur, and she's not quite game for it.
She's got other things to worry about, after all.
Her planet has been barricaded since she was a child, trapping her on the outside of the barrier while the mystery of what happened to her birth parents and her people plague her to this day, fueling her determination and stubbornness.
It's that very stubbornness that, when faced with a teen Merlin desperately trying to convince her to "battle all that is evil in this world", she walks away.
However, after a deadly face-off with Morgana, she agrees, dragging Merlin to meet her "knights".
Enter the wayward heroes of her youth, childhood friends from Knight Camp on a planet inspired by the age of heroes and princesses, led by the frustratingly (in Ari's mind) beautiful Queen Gwen.

It's a high-paced adventure spanning galaxies, filled to the brim with richly diverse characters and stories, peppered with pop culture references and well-timed humor, and absolutely a must-read for any LGBTQA+ people who've longed to see themselves not in a "coming out" story, but in a "kicking butt" story.

When I was younger, I loved the book and movie Avalon High (by Meg Cabot of Princess Diaries fame, and starring Britt Robertson), so the idea of a retelling of the classic King Arthur but with a girl as the famous King really drew me in. I didn't even know it was LGBTQA+ until I had gotten it as a book recommendation from a favorite blogger of mine, which only made me even more excited to read this book.
I ended up blowing through it in three hours and loving every second it. Barely a couple pages in, and I was already hooked on Ari's snark and Merlin's pop culture references that no one else got. It's an exciting merge of science fiction and fantasy, written in such a way that it presents the story both classically and contemporarily.
I give it five stars, and I absolutely cannot wait for the sequel.