subverts

This post is sponsored by When Lavie Tidhar set out to write his own Arthurian legend, he wanted to cut through the nationalistic myth-making into the bone of the original stories. “It’s supposed to be about chivalry and honor, and it’s . . . it’s not!” He told Clarkesworld. “Everyone else was doing the story the way we’re told it goes, not the way it actually goes.” The way it goes, in Tidhar’s By Force Alone, is as a bloody, bawdy gangster story where heroes are con men and England isn’t worth fighting for. Some of the ideas he uses appear in the…