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A review by sleepywhippetbookclub
This Is How You Lose the Time War by Max Gladstone, Amal El-Mohtar
1.0
Urgh. I wanted to love this, I really did. I've had it on my TBR for years at this point but when I realised how short it was I thought I'd finally jump in.
The premise is that there's a sci-fi war being thought by time agents, held throughout history and in different timelines. Two agents, one from each side, begin writing letters to each other, first to gode and then of love.
It's one of those books which doesn't tell you much about her wider world/why's of what's going on. Normally, you're left wanting to know more, drawn in by the mystery of it but this went so far with this that rather than mysterious world building, it just didn't bother world building at all. Just none. So when it came to this, I just... Didn't care.
It was the same with the characters. It felt easy to lose track of who was who and through their voices, hard to work out what was actually going on. They were just too similar. Maybe this was the point? Maybe that's a way of saying how silly the war is but if it was that, it's never expanded with the length of the book so it just falls flat. So again, I just couldn't find a reason to care about what was going to happen to them.
We read their story from letter to letter, often with decades between. The letters are purposely written lyrically, in flowery prose. Maybe at this point, I just wasn't feeling it. When there's confusing personality free characters and no world building, these letters could have been a lifeline. You guessed it, they weren't. The romance is just confusing? They've never met and have sent what, a couple of vague letters? If we never get to know Red and Blue through these letters, how could they get to know each other?
I don't know. It's ⭐ for me. I would have said two but I would have loved to see more young adult saphhic romance when I was younger. This said, I also would have loved those romances to be good and surely we've come far enough today for this to have been better than it is?
The premise is that there's a sci-fi war being thought by time agents, held throughout history and in different timelines. Two agents, one from each side, begin writing letters to each other, first to gode and then of love.
It's one of those books which doesn't tell you much about her wider world/why's of what's going on. Normally, you're left wanting to know more, drawn in by the mystery of it but this went so far with this that rather than mysterious world building, it just didn't bother world building at all. Just none. So when it came to this, I just... Didn't care.
It was the same with the characters. It felt easy to lose track of who was who and through their voices, hard to work out what was actually going on. They were just too similar. Maybe this was the point? Maybe that's a way of saying how silly the war is but if it was that, it's never expanded with the length of the book so it just falls flat. So again, I just couldn't find a reason to care about what was going to happen to them.
We read their story from letter to letter, often with decades between. The letters are purposely written lyrically, in flowery prose. Maybe at this point, I just wasn't feeling it. When there's confusing personality free characters and no world building, these letters could have been a lifeline. You guessed it, they weren't. The romance is just confusing? They've never met and have sent what, a couple of vague letters? If we never get to know Red and Blue through these letters, how could they get to know each other?
I don't know. It's ⭐ for me. I would have said two but I would have loved to see more young adult saphhic romance when I was younger. This said, I also would have loved those romances to be good and surely we've come far enough today for this to have been better than it is?