Aug 10
I veer rhapsodic; my prose purples.
from "This Is How You Lose the Time War" By Amal Al-Mohtar and Max Gladstone
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I veer rhapsodic; my prose purples.
from "This Is How You Lose the Time War" By Amal Al-Mohtar and Max Gladstone
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
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Red and Blue are opposing agents in a war that traverses time and the multiverse. When boastful flirting turns to love, these rivals must engage in a new level of subterfuge or risk the consequences of having their relationship discovered.
This is a novel that’s likely to have something of a niche following because of the two genres it seeks to straddle. On the one hand, the premise is somewhat sci-fi. Its protagonists travel through time, manipulating history from its earliest beginnings to divergent far flung futures. On the other hand, it’s also a romance story told through lengthy love letters that easily make up more than half the book.
If that in itself isn’t an unusual niche, hard-core sci-fi lovers may find the lack of details about how things happen in this world to be frustrating. This book is very much in the realm of technology is magic. And how this magic happens is simply assumed rather than explained.
On the flip side, some romance readers (at least based on a skim of Goodreads), found the time travel/multiverse explanations confusing. I suspect unless you are good at visualizing what’s being described when they talk about moving upthread and downthread, then yes, the time travel bit could be confusing.
With all that in mind, if you approach this as a romance set in a sci-fantasy setting, you’ll be able to enjoy the book. The back and forth of the time war plays out in the background, and primarily serves as context for the evolution of the relationship between Red and Blue.
In the end, I feel it found the right balance between the romantic letters, and the unfolding story of Red and Blue seeking love amidst a war being fought everywhere and at all times.
Overall I enjoyed this novella. It was a quick read, and once I adjusted to the fact it wasn’t as much of a sci-fi as I’d expected, I was able to make peace with the longer letters and how they changed the pacing of the story.
If you’re a sci-fantasy fan open to trying a romance story, this book might work for you. If you’re a romance reader and prepared to treat the time travel as a form of magic, this might also be a book you enjoy.
Overall a great little story. (p.s. deviated from my usual black and white kindle shots for this book because the two birds on the cover lose so much of their meaning if you don't see them in color.)
Red may be mad, but to die for madness is to die for something.
— ‘This Is How You Lose the Time War’ (Max Gladstone & Amal El-Mohtar)
Desire. Longing, this longing to possess, to become, to break like a wave on a rock and reform, and break again, and wash away.
I have been birds and branches. I have been bees and wolves. I have been ether flooding the void between stars, tangling their breath into networks of song. I have been fish and plankton and humus, and all these have been me. But while I’ve been enmeshed in this wholeness—they are not the whole of me.
— ‘This Is How You Lose the Time War’ (Max Gladstone & Amal El-Mohtar)
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
I have observed friendship as one observes high holy days: breathtakingly short, whirlwinds of intimate endeavour, frenzied carousing, the sharing of food, of wine, of honey.
— ‘This Is How You Lose the Time War’ (Max Gladstone & Amal El-Mohtar)
“Hope may be a dream. But she will fight to make it real.”
Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone,
This Is How You Lose The Time War
If you like incredibly poetic prose, through-lines out the wazoo, historical references, a BIPOC heroine, tragic romance and yuri so strong it literally rewrites the fabric of time and space, This Is How You Lose The Time War is the book for you!!!!!