Scan barcode
A review by vigil
This Is How You Lose the Time War by Max Gladstone, Amal El-Mohtar
adventurous
challenging
emotional
mysterious
tense
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? No
3.5
...it's okay. far better by the end of the book rather than the beginning.
the book was never really bad, but for the first 80ish pages, was awfully repetitive and vague to the novel's detriment, as i feel this was meant to establish the later groove of the novel, but it wasn't until halfway in that the epistolary format convinced me. at the beginning of the book, it doesn't seem to have much to say, or rather it doesn't want to say much yet, so it spends half it's page time saying nothing at all.
but when it kicked off, it really kicked off for me, as red and blue fully carried the momentum of the story in the way the plot was doing yet. the ending is again vague and hurried, but the emotional presence of red and blue carried me through it, so i didn't really mind.
and by nature of being more well-read than when i first came across this book several years ago, i think the prose is just pretty okay. it is well constructed but less impressive than many boast. pretty sentences but its a bit sudden and stiff for me. never bad though, but i do raise an eyebrow whenever we do dramatic poetic love declarations. the flow of the actual prose is kind of uneven, and you can tell that there are parts of this novel that were written to be deliberately quoted. but i think it’s much stronger in its longer sections than the 3 sentences that gets passed around a lot.
tldr; i’d recommend it but it’s not a favorite and i probably wouldn’t pick it up again.
the book was never really bad, but for the first 80ish pages, was awfully repetitive and vague to the novel's detriment, as i feel this was meant to establish the later groove of the novel, but it wasn't until halfway in that the epistolary format convinced me. at the beginning of the book, it doesn't seem to have much to say, or rather it doesn't want to say much yet, so it spends half it's page time saying nothing at all.
but when it kicked off, it really kicked off for me, as red and blue fully carried the momentum of the story in the way the plot was doing yet. the ending is again vague and hurried, but the emotional presence of red and blue carried me through it, so i didn't really mind.
and by nature of being more well-read than when i first came across this book several years ago, i think the prose is just pretty okay. it is well constructed but less impressive than many boast. pretty sentences but its a bit sudden and stiff for me. never bad though, but i do raise an eyebrow whenever we do dramatic poetic love declarations. the flow of the actual prose is kind of uneven, and you can tell that there are parts of this novel that were written to be deliberately quoted. but i think it’s much stronger in its longer sections than the 3 sentences that gets passed around a lot.
tldr; i’d recommend it but it’s not a favorite and i probably wouldn’t pick it up again.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Murder, Violence, and War