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A review by emoverhere
This is How You Lose the Time War by Max Gladstone, Amal El-Mohtar
emotional
mysterious
reflective
fast-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
5.0
I’m entirely speechless. I don’t know how i can say anything about this book that does its staggering brilliance justice, but here goes my attempt at that:
This is How You Lose The Time War has been on my shelf for nearly a year now, I have heard so much about its poetic language, the confusion readers go through when they first start because you get thrown into the world without any building or explanation for how it works, and that, for the most part is true, but the more I read the more I realized that the point of the book isn’t the world, it’s not the commandant or garden or the strands or the repetitive and purposeful crumbling of history, it’s red and blue and their fierce, tender, beautiful love story, the joining of two souls through letters across time and space, up and down the endless potential of history.
At multiple points, and I mean multiple, I found myself stopping and putting the book down because I was so overwhelmed by the beauty of the letters that I genuinely couldn’t form coherent thoughts. The way their relationship turned from rivalry to playful banter to friendship to unrelenting love was fascinating to watch, the realization of just how intertwined their lives were from the very beginning had me doing a double take at each reveal, the way the world itself slowly unfolded with each page was masterful, and I found myself enjoying reading the little details about the world that were provided by both women as they went about their missions.
Red and Blue themselves were fascinating characters, the bravery it took to initiate that first contact, and the boldness it took to respond to it, the slow realization of the pointlessness of this war and the brutality of both factions, the abandonment of their homes for another home within each other, the sheer stakes and risks they put themselves through for this one glimpse of possible happiness, far away and never guaranteed. brilliant brilliant brilliant.
I especially loved the love confessions, i think i have both letters highlighted from start to finish (RIP to my pink highlighter, it died on a good book), there’s also the last letters blue sent to red before her “death”, and the deeper letter red left to her beneath the poison. I think those letter fundamentally changed parts of me, and I’m okay with that.
Also, since we’re on the topic of letters, the line “I’ll be all the poets, I’ll kill them all and take each one’s place in turn, and every time love’s written in all the strands it will be to you.” will never be topped in terms of raw romantic feelings.
So yeah, I truly, wholeheartedly loved This Is How You Lose The Time War, it’s one of those books that left me with that bittersweet realization that I’ve just finished an experience, not just a book, and that I’ll never really be able to go through it for the first time again. Unless… well, Red and Blue, if you want to tamper with my timeline for the specific reason of getting me to read this book for the first time again, then please, be my guests.
This is How You Lose The Time War has been on my shelf for nearly a year now, I have heard so much about its poetic language, the confusion readers go through when they first start because you get thrown into the world without any building or explanation for how it works, and that, for the most part is true, but the more I read the more I realized that the point of the book isn’t the world, it’s not the commandant or garden or the strands or the repetitive and purposeful crumbling of history, it’s red and blue and their fierce, tender, beautiful love story, the joining of two souls through letters across time and space, up and down the endless potential of history.
At multiple points, and I mean multiple, I found myself stopping and putting the book down because I was so overwhelmed by the beauty of the letters that I genuinely couldn’t form coherent thoughts. The way their relationship turned from rivalry to playful banter to friendship to unrelenting love was fascinating to watch, the realization of just how intertwined their lives were from the very beginning had me doing a double take at each reveal, the way the world itself slowly unfolded with each page was masterful, and I found myself enjoying reading the little details about the world that were provided by both women as they went about their missions.
Red and Blue themselves were fascinating characters, the bravery it took to initiate that first contact, and the boldness it took to respond to it, the slow realization of the pointlessness of this war and the brutality of both factions, the abandonment of their homes for another home within each other, the sheer stakes and risks they put themselves through for this one glimpse of possible happiness, far away and never guaranteed. brilliant brilliant brilliant.
I especially loved the love confessions, i think i have both letters highlighted from start to finish (RIP to my pink highlighter, it died on a good book), there’s also the last letters blue sent to red before her “death”, and the deeper letter red left to her beneath the poison. I think those letter fundamentally changed parts of me, and I’m okay with that.
Also, since we’re on the topic of letters, the line “I’ll be all the poets, I’ll kill them all and take each one’s place in turn, and every time love’s written in all the strands it will be to you.” will never be topped in terms of raw romantic feelings.
So yeah, I truly, wholeheartedly loved This Is How You Lose The Time War, it’s one of those books that left me with that bittersweet realization that I’ve just finished an experience, not just a book, and that I’ll never really be able to go through it for the first time again. Unless… well, Red and Blue, if you want to tamper with my timeline for the specific reason of getting me to read this book for the first time again, then please, be my guests.