This book is PHENOMENAL! I cannot remember the last time I cared so deeply about a cast of YA characters. Everyone in this book is relatable, inspiring, flawed in deeply moving and human ways, and /strong/ in the face of adversity. The retelling of the classic fairytale is smart and fresh, every substitution matters/has merit. The dialogue is witty. The plot is a flawlessly woven combination of action and tenderness. The power of friendship represented is just as moving as the moments of budding romance. And the author's style in her prose keeps you in the moment, makes you feel sentimental or alert, plays to your senses and imagination the same way a symphony does. A truly stunning and beautiful book.

I'm not sure how to look at this book... It stars children, but is not a children's book, anymore than Logan was a movie meant for children just because it had superkids in it... But if not a children's book, then what? Is this a modern gothic horror story? A parody of the revenge genre? A parable? I can't tell if the author wants me to feel afraid, disgusted, or exultant by the end of the book.

It had wonderful storytelling for 95% of the book. Sometimes the stream-of-consciousness style was confusing for me, but it was artful and purposeful, and there were many passages which stood out as beautiful/universal to me.

But the end happens so swiftly, and almost unexpectedly, that it changed my opinion of the book as a whole. With everything that happens right at the finale... it almost feels like the author is saying, "But see, the bad guys were right!" That's unsettling, the idea that the author actually sides with his villains, and this story is somehow a morality tale?

It's a piece which can be talked about and analyzed, for sure, it's not an ending which makes the story worthless. It's just... hard to process. Confusing.

Stunning!!!!! So many themes, each taking its turn to be heard, like parts in a symphony: What is love and what would we do for love; How do we define ourselves, and can we redefine ourselves; Fate vs freewill; Faith vs. Science; Industrialization vs. Nature; What is "true strength", or "honor" for that matter, is it obeying your duty or following your heart?... Such a sweeping, exhilarating, moving look at what makes us /human/. All wrapped up in a gorgeous political revolution. Yes!!! Read this book!!!! Read it!!!

CHARMING! That is the magic word for this book: charming. Maybe I'm a sucker for British-isms, and I know here and there were some usual rom-com tropes, but the author has finesse with her writing, and the characters were full and lovable. If Gilmore Girls were a ghost story it would be this book. Absolutely adored it <3.

A good sequel, but for some reason not as engrossing as the first? I admit that could entirely be a Me thing. But I found that the descriptions of dinosaur-rider combat were new and exciting in the first book, and tedious repetition in this one. I found Melodia to not be treated seriously enough, for the whole book to be more vulgar than the first... Nitpicky things. And I found the central conflict to be too derivative of Game of Thrones. Can we say "White Walkers"?

I feel bad that this book is SO profoundly bad, because the authors are doing amazing work for literacy and the LGBTQ community. Sadly, having an idea, and executing it with art and finesse, are two different things. Imagine if a kid in middle school/high school were reading the "Twilight" series for fun and "The Once and Future King" for school... had a dream about what they had read... And then wrote it all down in a dream journal. That is this book. It started as an odd choice (literally bringing the characters from The Once and Future King into space with a group of woke, queer teens), but as the book progressed it got laughably bad, confusing, and even infuriating. Where do I even begin...

1) Trying to show positive, queer relationships/characters in mainstream YA... while falling into the the cliche representation of "all queer people are raunchy, flirty, slutty, makeup-and-makeover obsessed clothes-horses." Seriously, in a moment when Merlin is despairing and ashamed because he got someone killed... a hot guy takes his shirt off, cuts Merlin's hair, and gives him a pair of tight jeans, and that makes Merlin feel all better. :/

2) Too much in one book. Space is big, turns out. And weird! It should take AGES for ships to sail between planets. Time should be experienced differently between sailors and locals. Each planet should have its own topographical and atmospheric difficulties to overcome. The ships alone should require some kind of fueling, repairing, something, to keep them zipping all over the place. Inventing and accounting for these details alone in a story is a HUGE responsibility, and why Sci-Fi has its own genre. But the authors ignored all of those details which might put a wrinkle in the action, and instead had the team zipping here and there and breathing all the air, and lasting a year without water, and having an endless pantry full of snacks!... Being flippant about the space setting was bad enough, but then the literal cast of "The Once and Future King" enters the narrative, and Merlin gives us the five point plan for raising an Arthurian legend: Find Arthur, train Arthur, nudge him onto a throne, defeat a Big Bad, unite humanity... Those five points could have EACH been a book. Instead, the first FOUR got squashed into this book. And again, literally. The Arthur wasn't nudged onto a galactic counsel somewhere, a metaphorical seat of power. They were literally crowned after a joust on a Medieval Tourist Attraction Planet.

3) Oh yeah, every planet has one function. I hate this trope, this book is not the first to do this. But think of how much diversity is on our planet, is in one country, one city, one neighborhood! But in space, for some reason, we have Prison Planet, Medieval Tourist Attraction Planet, Nature Preserve Planet, and Mall Planet. Why.

4) Tonal whiplash. Remember I mentioned before how Merlin's shame was cured by abs? The entire book is insensitive like that. Another character is murdered in a mall, and the team should be grief-stricken, but instead they make a joke about how the dead person will at least be surrounded by snacks....

5) The characters are not real. They have physical descriptions, and gender identities, and sexual preferences. But they are not real. Their motivations make no sense. Their gullibility makes no sense. Examples: Everyone in-universe accepts the premise that the main character is Arthur the Last Airbender, and immediately helps Merlin to achieve his 5 Point Plan. Nobody calls Merlin crazy. Nobody has scant knowledge of the Arthurian legend because /centuries/ have passed since it was written down by T.H. White. Nobody tries to find a "logical" explanation for why Merlin is able to do magic, or for why Merlin's "prophecy" seems to take shape. Nobody fights the "we're doomed to repeat the same narrative as Arthurs passed". And Merlin's two biggest foils aren't even the Big Bad, they are two classic characters - Morgana and Nimue - who thwart Merlin...because... reasons? It is never properly explained what these women get in return for foiling Merlin. But I think the biggest grievance for me was right at the end, when two characters who have been imprisoned for years, exposed to the plague, nearly frozen to death, turned to stone, captured and tortured and watched their family murdered before their eyes...are cooing about becoming grandparents to baby Mordred... It just doesn't seem like a genuine reaction, after everything they've been through.

6) Literally Arthur. I'm sorry, I just didn't get this gimmick at all. It's a retelling of the Arthurian legend, with a bisexual (?) girl Arthur this time. In space! Great!!! That's a lot of meat, I want to bite into that story... It's going to have literal Merlin, Morgana and Nimue, all of whom are responsible for doing terrible things... Hard to cheer for them, but okay, complicated characters, cool! Keep going. There is literally a Medieval planet, where they attempt to maintain period accuracy not just in their tourist attractions, but in their politics, forcing their world leader to marry at a young age whomever wins a joust... Odd... Not sure what this has to do with the space quest... And Lamarack literally has one hand (not a cyborg hand, just missing a hand, even though cyborgs exist), Kay is literally an oaf brawler brother who eats a lot, the queen is literally named Guinevere and she literally gets pregnant (sub-note 6a, Romanticizing pregnant teens in YA fiction! No! Pregnancy is hard! Birthing a baby is hard! Raising a baby is hard! And teen pregnancies are dangerous for both the baby and the mom. It's not cute, funny, quirky, honorable, romantic, or whatever other lie fiction tells impressionable readers.), there are LITERAL dragons!... This book would have been so strong if the elements of the Arthur legend were reincarnated into space-age avatars. If the dragon were a battleship, if the joust were between two racing hovercrafts, if the queen were a member of a galactic council where all the representatives were called kings and queens, if the galactic council were the round table!... So many little /parallels/ would have made this book smart and great. But by literally transplanting known characters, and their known story, into a setting that doesn't matter, and just...making them constantly horny... the book just reminds the reader of how much richer the /original/ story was.

It's hard to say what I want to about this book. The characters are all still real and lovable. The author has amazing finesse with her prose. But it shocked me that this book was unique, in that it didn't follow the POV characters of the first book, instead highlighting two new points of view. I love this as a concept <3. But in execution... the two new protagonists are SO honor-bound and Lawful Good that they stagnate for a lot of the book, afraid to take risks or address/resolve conflicts. Having the main characters just... /allow/ the book to happen to/around them is not as compelling as characters who take actions. It reminded me of some classic fiction, like Wuthering Heights or Great Expectations, and had me yelling-in-the-margins at the characters for being so self-denying. There is a payoff, but it takes about 95% of the book to get there :/. So while the first book was 5 stars from me, this sequel only gets a 4.