Reviews with content warning for Child abuse - This Is How You Lose the Time War

Reviews tagging 'Child abuse'

This Is How You Lose the Time War by Max Gladstone, Amal El-Mohtar

4 reviews

monstrouscosmos's review against another edition

adventurous challenging emotional fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

Characters: 10/10
Relationships: 10/10
Atmosphere/Setting: 9.5/10
Writing Style: 9/10
Plot/Intrigue: 9.5/10
Internal Logic: 10/10
Entertainment: 10/10
Overall: 68/70, 5*

I love epistolary novels, quantum time travel plots, and messy star crossed sapphic romances, so I figured from the get that I'd be really into this. and I was! I especially loved the ways the characters spoke with one another across timelines, and gave context for themselves as individuals, within their respective collective experiences, and within their shared relationship over time(s). the writing about writing was also really fun! there are definitely moments that delve into disturbing themes and events, but for the most part I found the tone stayed hopeful in belief for better circumstances.

it's definitely something I need to relisten to (I feel like I missed a lot in my first run thru due to the narrative bouncing around quite a lot), but I'm so excited to revisit it!

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mobymaize's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional funny mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

Holy shit this book rocks my socks off. I genuinely love sci-fi that doesn’t need need a complete explanation or description of super complicated politics. I just need my time & space lesbians and I’m happy :)

Also romance through letters and missives is incredible. Especially when it’s queer.

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hoiyan's review

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adventurous challenging emotional mysterious reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

"If we're to be at war, we might as well entertain one another. Why else did you taunt me at the start?"

each sentence i read i felt my brain melting off chunk by chunk in the best way possible. that was so viscerally beautiful and intriguing and and and WHAT DID I JUST READ???

i found myself struggling to ease into the VERY poetic prose, but i found it easier to digest as i kept going (either understanding or giving up? no one knows). despite not exactly processing everything fully, i really enjoyed reading this. the words were so raw and emotional and it was one part confusing, one part "wait, why are there real tears in my eyes right now?"

the world-building! the amazing descriptions of the two agents travelling through time, space, and... strands. time in this novella is both important and unimportant considering it's not exactly moving in a linear way here. at times, i found myself getting launched into one plot point after another right away, but it all made sense (and added so much more to the story) when you realize it may be to mimic red and blue's strand-jumping. at least that's how i'm choosing to interpret it.
the moments in-between feel like five seconds, but in reality (or one of the many realities), an entire decade has passed. red and blue spent seconds, then minutes, then hours, years, decades, centuries together in the seemingly brief moment they got to know each other.

"I want to say, now, before you can beat me to it—Red, when I think of this seed in your mouth I imagine having placed it there myself, my fingers on your lips."

i've read others' reviews and the main criticism seems to be the two falling in love too quickly, or the readers failing to pick up why or how they came to love each other.
i took note of some important details when looking at this specific issue — the two, with red explicitly mentioning and blue being implied, have been fighting this (time) war for thousands of years. (spoiler) red having confessed she came into the war to die. she has no one. she has no attachments, no single person who understands her, nothing to lose in this millennia-long war. red's defaulted to an autopilot command up until her encounter with blue's first letter. it's like the world's most weird and twisted meet-cute of some kind...

"I want to meet you in every place I have loved."

adding onto that, the time between each letter spans months and years. readers fortunately get the luxury of instant gratification, but red and blue breathed and lived so many hours leading up to the next letter from one another. taking red's background into consideration, these letters (most likely) became something for her to live for (also in classic sapphic fashion, they OBVIOUSLY fall in love instantly. i mean what– i mean just kidding– i mean not).
the brief imagery we were given about their younger selves, red being "alone, vulnerable, so impossibly fragile and small," and the small details of blue's

"girlmonster" form.

i thought those were pretty important to consider regardless if it amounted to anything in the end.

adding on, i think it was a really nuanced detail for el-mohtar and gladstone to force the two to communicate via written letters in a world with lush technological advancements. they've got bionic body parts, shape-shifting abilities, immortality, and yet they go back to probably one of the oldeset form of human communication—writing letters.

"But they have sprinkled bits of themselves through time. Ink and ingenuity, flakes of skin on paper, bits of pollen, blood, oil, down, a goose's heart."

the straight up poetry inside the letters made me feel as if my 20 yrs of speaking english meant nothing, but the experience was truly worth it. there's a lot of praise for the awfully romantic prose in the letters, but i wanted to draw attention to the descriptions of each location in between the letters. it painted an amazing atmosphere with rich history from known historical (in their world) locations. i wish the authors had delved more into where each region politically sided with, but i think it would've been an entirely different story. i think it would have added some more depth and reason for this mysterious time war, or maybe that paralleled red and blue's apathy towards the conflict in the first place? or it could've helped ground the setting and subplot (read: the war) a little more outside of the letter exchanges.

"...knotting grass to grackle scold, the smell of leaf mold to sun's azimuth—a tree swallow swoops near, scissors her peripheral vision, severs her from trancing reverie with its dissonance."

all in all, i really enjoyed reading this even if i was taking psychic damage for 70% of it. it took me a while to get through. it's not a book you can sit down for 4 hours and fully digest, i think. lots of great prose and quotes to pull from here, and each sentence you read is just as heartwrenching as the previous as you continue. and the title drop

being the complete opposite to the ending... ough. or is it?

maybe this was a tale to learn from? maybe this wasn't the love story we all interpretted it to be? maybe it can mean whatever you want it to mean.

"But maybe this is how we win, Red. You and me. This is how we win.

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brnineworms's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional reflective sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.5

If you like this book (and I know a lot of people really do), don’t take my disappointment as an indication that you’re wrong to feel the way you do. I’m glad you enjoyed it, but I just didn’t.

Red and Blue make purple, and this prose sure is purple. Every. Single. Sentence. Is trying so hard to be poetic and deep. Metaphors are great and all but this is just too saturated with them to make any real sense. The characters and their relationship didn't feel especially substantive to me. I like the combination of spirituality and science fiction and there’s some neat imagery here and there, but for the most part I found This Is How You Lose the Time War to be a confusing mess and nothing more.

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