Once & Future Books in Order

The Once & Future series takes the King Arthur legend out of medieval Britain and launches it into a future ruled by a corporation. Written by Amy Rose Capetta and Cory McCarthy, the two-book story begins with Once and Future and continues in Sword in the Stars. It is a funny, fast space opera with magic swords, spaceships, time travel, and a rebellion that has no patience for old ideas about who gets to be a hero.

Ari Helix is a refugee who has spent her life hiding from the Mercer corporation. When she crash-lands on Old Earth and pulls Excalibur from its resting place, she finds out that she is the forty-second reincarnation of King Arthur. The discovery does not come with a neat instruction manual. It comes with a cursed destiny, a galaxy-scale political problem, and Merlin, who has been aging backward for centuries and is now a difficult teenager.

The series uses familiar Arthurian pieces, Arthur, Merlin, Guinevere, knights, Excalibur, Morgana, but it remixes them freely. Ari is a girl, the future is openly queer, and the Round Table becomes a found family of rebels trying to build a life outside Mercer control. The story makes room for romance and jokes even while its characters are dealing with displacement, corporate power, and the repeating patterns that have trapped Arthur through many lives.

Ari is not trying to become a legend. She is trying to make choices that are actually her own.

The first book is a journey across space and back into Arthurian history, as Ari gathers allies and learns what the old curse has done to the people around her. Gwen, Merlin, and the rest of Ari's crew bring their own histories, skills, and reasons for fighting. Their relationships give the adventure its heart, especially when the quest starts testing how much anyone can change the story they were handed.

Sword in the Stars raises the pressure by sending Ari and her Rainbow knights thousands of years into the past for a Holy Grail heist. They have to deal with the original Arthurian world without breaking the timeline or erasing their own future. It is a sequel built for readers who want more of the crew, more jokes from Merlin, and more consequences from every impossible plan.

Start with Once and Future. The books tell one connected story, and the second relies on the relationships, revelations, and hard-won victories of the first.