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

adventurous dark emotional hopeful lighthearted mysterious reflective medium-paced

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

3.0

I'm amazed this is by two authors, because I spent most of the first half annoyed that the "voices" of the narrators were so similar. This got better in the second half--when more details of how Red and Blue navigated their societies were fleshed out--but I still spent the second half until the end wondering whether the story would commit hard to a

selfcest "two alternate universe versions of the main character fall in love"

ending.

(Although technically you could say

can't chew up the pieces of your time girlfriend to reconstitute her from the ground up without turning Red a little Purple if ya know what i mean ;) But not what I was expecting lol

Not bad, liked some parts very much (the wolf and the above spoilered twist), but didn't completely buy the declarations of love, somehow. Or not to that degree? Made me think "hm" and that might ultimately be because it's very hard to think of the characters as characters instead of representative of their timeline/mission/concept. They're fairly...vague, somehow. Idk, it was fine

Almost permanently DNF years ago, started over and finished this time for a book club.