Lex Croucher is having quite the summer. Having released their first adult fantasy The Unmagical Life of Briar Jones back in June, they hit the shelves again in August with Bridget & Gabe Are Not Okay, the second book to follow a lovable gang of regal teens as they romp through a pseudo-Arthurian take on medieval England.
Croucher’s seven novels have, on paper, flitted between romcom, fantasy and YA. Regardless of how they’re marketed, there’s always guaranteed to be sparkling banter between characters, relationships with a meaningful pay-off, and a real care given to how characters grow and handle their issues and the drama that’s thrown their way. Most importantly, everyone is extremely queer.
The first book of the duology — Gwen and Art are Not in Love — instantly became my favourite of Croucher’s on first reading, mostly because it’s so damn funny. Set in an alternate medieval England, Gwendoline is a somewhat grumpy princess of the realm, reluctantly engaged to the foppish lordling Arthur Delacey, both of them bemoaning being forced to spend time with each other as their seemingly unavoidable wedding approaches.
Fortunately, they quickly clock how enormously gay they both are and resolve to be each other’s beards, meaning Gwen can gaze longingly at dashing lady knight Bridget Leclair, and Art can pursue Gwen’s bookish brother (and heir to the throne), Prince Gabriel. Gwen and Art’s resentment gives way to a strong and rather touching friendship that becomes all the more important as they work together to stop various plots to overthrow the throne.
The pair’s nominative similarity to Guinevere and Arthur is not for nothing — in this version of England, the Arthurian legends are “real” and there’s a massive cult devoted to keeping the legends alive, sometimes with rather too much fervour. These books aren’t retellings of the Arthurian myths, but in a rather neat trick, Croucher plunders various aspects of the legends, often for laughs, but also to make some more serious points about the dangers of those who insist on clinging to idealised versions of a country that probably never existed.
I won’t spoil the plot of Gwen and Art too much here, but for those of you who are yet to read it, there are two important things to know: firstly, that Bridget and Gabe doesn’t set out to work standalone, so do treat yourself to reading these books as a pair. Secondly, Gwen and Art ends with a large-scale, violent conflict that has wide-ranging implications for the whole cast of characters.
At the start of this second novel, we’re a few months on from that cataclysmic conclusion, and the characters are coping (or not) in very different ways.
Gabriel, recently crowned King, has decided the best way to handle his new responsibilities (and the panic attacks they provoke) is to hide in cupboards and push away those closest to him, even a broken-hearted Art. Despite a firm grasp of the minutiae of the kingdom, Gabe lacks any kind of confidence or charisma when it comes to selling his agenda, which is particularly hazardous as one of his first decrees was legalising relationships between same-sex couples (based on some unearthed letters showing how gay Arthur and Lancelot were for each other).
Meanwhile, Bridget is struggling in what should have been her happy place: the jousting arena. As a trailblazing knight who has spent her whole life striving to be the perfect warrior (inadvertently making her lesbian catnip to a whole legion of female fans, not least Princess Gwen), she’s suddenly bombing out of competitions for reasons she can’t comprehend or explain. While her long-distance relationship with Gwen remains technically intact, her inability to open up about what’s going on leaves it hanging by a thread.
When it feels like the country’s against you and you’re constantly spiralling, what’s a young king to do? According to Gabe’s advisors, the only way to win over the people is to get out there on a PR tour around the nation with your finest knights beside you! Gabe thusly gathers Art, Gwen, Bridget plus assorted others, ensuring they are forced to spend several months gallivanting about the country with each other. Anyone that’s been on holiday at a critical juncture in their relationship will recognise this can go one of two ways.
The gang sets out with two goals: connect with the lords and commoners to get them onside and check up on reported sightings of all sorts of legendary beasties to appease the Arthurian lunatic fringe.
Their roadshow brings encounters with everything from giant feral cats a to very hippyish Lady of the Lake; handfuls of the public, tentatively warming up to the progressive kind of country that Gabe wants to build; and sections that are vocally and violently not.
Along the way, this is a quest for our young royals to find themselves and their way back to each other. I think this is one of the strengths of the book: taking multiple well-drawn characters to a sequel allows for the exploration of complex traumas in a way that’s more nuanced than we see in a lot of YA and definitely in traditional fantasy, where characters often lurch from battle to battle with barely a breath and little thought for personal consequence.
The central quartet are all processing in different but overlapping ways, and the historical setting means although we can map their responses to modern terms (be it anxiety, or PTSD, or addiction), there’s no quick identity buckets to drop anyone into. They’ve got to learn the hard way how to wrap their head around their issues and handle when their baggage starts leaking into their relationships.
In each of their recent books, it also feels like Croucher is probing more around the misuse and limits of power. In Not for the Faint of Heart we discover Robin Hood’s Merry Men don’t have quite the heroic intentions you’d think; in Briar Jones, the tentacles of a shadowy magical school parallel the unstoppable influence of certain institutions on British public life; in Bridget and Gabe, even the King of England can’t live openly with the man he loves when up against a populist wave that detests their very existence.
Importantly, all of the wit and humour of Gwen and Art remains fully intact in this sequel. Art in particular, even though we don’t hear from his perspective this time around, can be guaranteed to add one last zinger to every conversation. The balance between seriousness and humour is always delicately poised, and spot on in my view.
I think bookish queers of a certain age often think wistfully about the books they wish they’d had as kids. As someone whose weekends as a child were either spent being dragged around National Trust properties or building Lego castles, I have no doubt these two books would have blown my tiny queer mind. Equally, coming to them later I have found such depth and charm that I would say if you haven’t already read Croucher’s work, now is an excellent time to start.
