I Can’t Wait For…The Winter Knight by Jes Battis
Can’t-Wait Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted over at Wishful Endings to spotlight and discuss the books we’re excited about but haven’t yet read. Most of the time they’re books that have yet to be released, but not always. It’s based on the Waiting on Wednesday meme, which was originally hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine.
This week my Can’t-Wait-For Book is The Winter Knight by Jes Battis!
The Winter Knight by Jes Battis Genres: Fantasy, Contemporary or Urban Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Queer, trans, autistic rep
Published on: 4th April 2023
Goodreads
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Arthurian legends are reborn in this upbeat queer urban fantasy with a mystery at its heart
The knights of the round table are alive in Vancouver, but when one winds up dead, it’s clear the familiar stories have taken a left turn. Hildie, a Valkyrie and the investigator assigned to the case, wants to find the killer — and maybe figure her life out while she’s at it. On her short list of suspects is Wayne, an autistic college student and the reincarnation of Sir Gawain, who these days is just trying to survive in a world that wasn’t made for him. After finding himself at the scene of the crime, Wayne is pulled deeper into his medieval family history while trying to navigate a new relationship with the dean’s charming assistant, Burt — who also happens to be a prime murder suspect. To figure out the truth, Wayne and Hildie have to connect with dangerous forces: fallen knights, tricky runesmiths, the Wyrd Sisters of Gastown. And a hungry beast that stalks Wayne’s dreams.
The Winter Knight is a propulsive urban fairy tale and detective story with queer and trans heroes that asks what it means to be a myth, who gets to star in these tales, and ultimately, how we make our stories our own.
I was lucky enough to receive an ARC of The Winter Knight this very day, so it seems like a good moment to go into why I’m so excited for it!
There are a few reasons the King Arthur mythos has never felt like it was for me: I’m half-Irish and half-Welsh, which immediately complicates any attempt at a relationship to such an Intensely English story (England’s history with Ireland and Wales is – let’s call it fraught); when I was younger I thought I was a girl, and I now know I’m nonbinary, and neither one of those is particularly welcome at King Arthur’s court; and I dread to think how poorly an autist would do surrounded by all that pageantry and codes of honour and many, many things that Must Not Be Questioned.
Um.
The Winter Knight is far from the first retelling/reimagining to create a more inclusive King Arthur story – I passionately endorse Laure Eve’s Blackheart Knights, to say nothing of Nicola Griffith’s fabulous Spear – but it is the first one (that I’m aware of; please feel free to toss recs in the comments if you know of others!) to take on a modern setting, neurodiversity and queerness. Especially nonbinary-queerness! So while Blackheart Knights and Spear are both stunning books, Winter Knight very much feels like it’s holding open arms out to me specifically, not so much a welcome home as a ‘this one’s for you’.
Which is a really, really great feeling.
Also? Distancing the King Arthur story from England – by setting it in Vancouver! – and bringing in Valkyries, aka, pulling from very not-English mythologies? Are choices that aren’t just wildly intriguing (which they are); they very much help divorce King Arthur from that exclusionary mindset/vibe I mentioned above.
So, the TL;DR version? I can’t wait to dive into this one!
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