The Once and Future Queen

The King Arthur legend gets a gender swap in a middling outing from the creators of Amelia Cole. Visiting England for a meet, teenage chess prodigy Rani Arturus stumbles upon an enchanted cave and pulls a sword from a stone. In short order, she learns that she’s the true King Arthur and her friends Gwen and Lance are—well, their names are kind of a giveaway. The story hurries through narrative checkpoints, barely pausing to let readers absorb key developments like the prophecies of Merlin (a character lifted more or less unaltered from T.H. White’s time-displaced version in The Once and Future King), the scheming of Morgana and the Fae, or the new Round Table’s sword tattoos and sweet bikes. This modernized version of Arthurian myth doesn’t change the fundamental formula, although it has some fun with modern possibilities like averting the tragic Arthur-Guinevere-Lancelot love triangle via a sensible polyamorous arrangement. The clean, bright artwork helps sell what is, under the progressive polish, a conventional teen fantasy adventure of modest ambition. (Nov.)