Reviews tagging 'Adult/minor relationship'

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

2 reviews

jasminawithab's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging emotional slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.75

might bump it up to a 5 star on a reread

i actively do not like time travel and sci fi as a whole isnt something i gravitate towards, but oh gods did i adore this book. my most prevalent annotation was just "AAAA". im not joking, i probably wrote it at least 20 times.

the twist at the end was admittedly one i saw coming (i guessed it by the second letter) but i could not figure out how it worked so it was still interesting and shocking when it did get revealed.

 per my adult/minor relationship cw:
one of the main characters (Red; an adult) travels back in time and kisses the other main character (Blue) who was a child at the time with romantic intent and for other more spoilery reasons. this comes at the end of the novella after the two have already fallen in love and confessed when they are adults. while Blue was fine with it in the future/present when she realizes it was Red, she did not consent or know what was happening when she was a child. i added the cw because this made me feel a bit iffy and i felt like it could have been resolved another way. it was literally only a paragraph or two though


fav quotes:
"[i am] yours as i review your words by their sequence, their sound, smell, taste, taking care no one memory of them becomes too worn"

"i want to meet you in every place i have loved"

"there was, i am sure, a time i did not know you. or did i dream that me, as i've so often dreamed of you?"

"i'll be all the poets, i'll kill them all and take each ones place in turn, and every time love's written in all the strands it will be to you"


Expand filter menu Content Warnings

brnineworms's review against another edition

Go to review page

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.
Expand filter menu Content Warnings
More...