There are a few different layers through which to view this book. At the top, there is the story between the knight and the scholar, two people intertwined across time, who are in a loop and keep reliving the same story, with variations, and have a strong connection and love, and whether they can ever break the cycle and get their happy ending.
It is a story about storytelling – something Harrow seems to be more and more interested in with the Spindle Splintered novels exploring the trope of the Sleeping Beauty story, and this novel going deep into the power of story: the myths we tell ourselves, the way the story tellers plays with their characters to elicit the right emotions from the audience (very Supernatural season 15!). Of course Owen is one of the storytellers but he is a novice compared to the person truly driving the story.
Finally, there is also the idea of empire and myth making at a national level. How a story can be used as a political tool and manipulated to justify war, nationalism, white washed to create a morality not founded in history but based on what is politically useful and expedient, to create historical enemies and heroes.
The setting itself is very much a nod to Arthurian legends, which have had their own cycles (older versions apparently don’t have Lancelot) and also played a role in English myth making at points in time. People choose which parts to focus on based on the message or events of current day – from using it as a call for nationalism to exploring ideas of feminism, patriarchy and Christianity (for example through the evolution of the character of Morgaine and how she is treated in contemporary retellings).
To be honest, I didn’t like Owen very much in the first third of the novel, which is our first run through the cycle (though not his, very much not his). I understood why he would so strongly cling to his beliefs but like his academic advisor, I wanted him to see beyond the myth. He so strongly wants to believe in the story of Dominion, to justify what he has done, that he can’t let himself wonder or question, even as Una shows him her despair, the human suffering and reality that the myths are built on (and that we as readers know are used to justify decades and centuries of war and racism and prejudice). Surely it must all be worth it, even as Harrow shows us a nation that has used Una’s sacrifice to build an empire based on violence and conquest.
As the cycle repeats, the decisions and small parts of the story change, but never the ending. It’s in the later loops that Owen, the cowardly scholar, comes into his own, and Una becomes her own person rather than simply the knight of legends.
Like any time travel story, if you start thinking too hard about some of the details, it gets a little confusing but that’s really not the point. As an exploration of themes, it works incredibly well.