I was sad that this wasn't the Hild sequel (which is out now anyway), until I found out it was queer gender-swapped Percival in a Welsh-tilted setting! For the most part, it was delightful. Griffith is so good at sense of place, and all the little details of daily life, and ways people see each other. I loved Percival, how her backstory wove into Celtic folklore, and her attempts to join the court. Of course, this being Griffith, the court was also pretty queer, and often non white, and it was really fun to see the slight twists to the lore to make things fit together here. A couple characters I usually like got to be the antagonists, but someone's fave always gets that in these retellings, so fair enough.

I'm slightly more ambivalent about the ending. I liked Percival and how coming into her own worked with chivalric power fantasies and the bildungsroman genres, which hit a perfect balance of satisfying to my soul and having a lot of fun with the setting and mythos. However, the final choice felt like an overreach. Essentially, Griffith gave the hero so many powers that she then had to explain away why unavoidable things about the Matter of Britian end up happening, and I was not satisfied with how she sliced it. And I did feel like having spent two doorstoppers on Saxon Britain, Griffith just couldn't commit to them being the bad guys here, so the the coherence of the world faltered at the end.

I'd totally read another book in this setting, I just wish this one had stuck the landing.