So This Is Ever After

About So This Is Ever After

So This Is Ever After is a young adult fantasy novel by F.T. Lukens, published in 2022 by Margaret K. McElderry Books (Simon & Schuster). The premise takes a classic fantasy structure — the hero fulfills the prophecy, defeats the evil ruler, rescues the princess — and immediately dismantles it.

Arek has done exactly what the prophecy required. He and his companions have toppled the kingdom's oppressive ruler, and by every story logic, they should now hand the crown to the princess locked in a tower and ride off into a happy ending. The problem: the princess has been dead for some time. The throne is vacant. And the ancient magic that governs succession requires Arek to take the crown himself — which means he must find a bride before his eighteenth birthday or, according to that same magic, wither and die.

The Joke the Plot Is Built On

The comedy of the novel's setup is that none of Arek's female companions are interested in marrying him, that he has no desire to marry a stranger, and that his romantic feelings — the ones that have been quietly building through all the danger and adventure and surviving together — are entirely for Matt: his best friend, aspiring wizard, and the person who has been at his side through everything.

Lukens uses the magical deadline to build a genuinely funny and genuinely romantic story about what happens after the heroic narrative ends. The "ever after" part, it turns out, requires more courage than the dragon-slaying: it requires being honest about who you love, with someone you cannot afford to lose. Arek is brave in battles. Being brave about Matt is harder.

Queerness and the Fantasy Genre

So This Is Ever After belongs to a recent tradition in YA fantasy that places queer characters at the center of classic genre structures — the prophecy, the quest, the magical kingdom — without treating their queerness as the defining conflict. Arek's love for Matt is not treated as tragic or complicated by the world around them. The complication is the magical deadline and the political situation, and those are solvable problems.

That choice — to make the external world accepting while keeping the emotional stakes of being honest about love very real — is characteristic of Lukens's approach. The fantasy world is the setting; the relationship is the story.

Why So This Is Ever After Has Been Banned

The novel has been banned pending investigation in Norwalk Community School District in Iowa. Like all of Lukens's titles targeted in school library reviews, the challenge is consistent with the broader pattern of removing books with LGBTQ+ central characters or relationships. A fantasy novel in which two male characters fall in love is, for these review processes, sufficient grounds for removal.

For students who love fantasy and who are queer, the removal of books like this from school library shelves is not a neutral act. It is a communication about which readers are welcome in their school's story collection and which are not.