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auroracloudAs I'm slowly crawling my way back towards health (damn this bug has been persistent! but I have a little bit more energy each day), LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT A BOOK I READ RECENTLY. Because it's wonderful.
When I first heard about Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone's novella This is How You Lose the Time War, I knew I had to read it once it came out. Time travel! Two (female) time agents on opposing sides, exchanging letters! And f/f love! I was sold on those points alone.
Yet I wasn't prepared for how good it would be, and how unusual.
Here's the cover blurb: Among the ashes of a dying world, an agent of the Commandant finds a letter. It reads: Burn before reading.
And thus begins an unlikely correspondence between two rival agents hellbent on securing the best possible future for their warring factions. Now, what began as a taunt, a battlefield boast, grows into something more.
Except discovery of their bond would be death for each of them. There’s still a war going on, after all. And someone has to win that war. That’s how war works. Right?
I'll try to avoid spoilers as I describe my experience, though if you don't want to know anything about a book you probably should skip the rest of the post. But oh, I loved it. I loved the exquisite poetry of the letters Red and Blue leave for each other across time streams. I loved the poetry of the increasingly impossible ways in which those letters were delivered. I loved the development of their relationship, and gradually learning to know their strange worlds through their letters, and how the book left much unexplained, for the reader to guess, or dream. I loved all the myriad time streams and the careful ways in which each side wove their own patterns in time and just, I don't know, everything. Including the multitudes of names Red and Blue call each other.
The book stole my heart and did exquisite things to it. I can't get Red and Blue and their world and their times out of my mind. And that's a good thing.
I hesitate to say more. Except, perhaps, that if you only want straightforward books which don't leave anything unexplained and do not enjoy poetic language at all, then this book may not be for you. But then again, it would be worth it to try, anyway. Maybe you'll discover that it is for you after all. But if you have any level of tolerance for the poetic and the unsaid and the inexplicable, I recommend this. Especially if you want awesome female characters and time travel and beautiful (f/f) romance, or at least some of those items. This a novella, so it won't take long to read. And it's so, so worth trying.
It came out in July 2019, so very very recent! I was lucky enough to get it from our library's e-books this soon, but I know I'll have to own it.
If you need to know more spoilery things before reading, or if you've read this and want to discuss it, drop me a comment or something! I can DM you or set up a spoilers-allowed post, whatever seems the most convenient.
When I first heard about Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone's novella This is How You Lose the Time War, I knew I had to read it once it came out. Time travel! Two (female) time agents on opposing sides, exchanging letters! And f/f love! I was sold on those points alone.
Yet I wasn't prepared for how good it would be, and how unusual.
Here's the cover blurb: Among the ashes of a dying world, an agent of the Commandant finds a letter. It reads: Burn before reading.
And thus begins an unlikely correspondence between two rival agents hellbent on securing the best possible future for their warring factions. Now, what began as a taunt, a battlefield boast, grows into something more.
Except discovery of their bond would be death for each of them. There’s still a war going on, after all. And someone has to win that war. That’s how war works. Right?
I'll try to avoid spoilers as I describe my experience, though if you don't want to know anything about a book you probably should skip the rest of the post. But oh, I loved it. I loved the exquisite poetry of the letters Red and Blue leave for each other across time streams. I loved the poetry of the increasingly impossible ways in which those letters were delivered. I loved the development of their relationship, and gradually learning to know their strange worlds through their letters, and how the book left much unexplained, for the reader to guess, or dream. I loved all the myriad time streams and the careful ways in which each side wove their own patterns in time and just, I don't know, everything. Including the multitudes of names Red and Blue call each other.
The book stole my heart and did exquisite things to it. I can't get Red and Blue and their world and their times out of my mind. And that's a good thing.
I hesitate to say more. Except, perhaps, that if you only want straightforward books which don't leave anything unexplained and do not enjoy poetic language at all, then this book may not be for you. But then again, it would be worth it to try, anyway. Maybe you'll discover that it is for you after all. But if you have any level of tolerance for the poetic and the unsaid and the inexplicable, I recommend this. Especially if you want awesome female characters and time travel and beautiful (f/f) romance, or at least some of those items. This a novella, so it won't take long to read. And it's so, so worth trying.
It came out in July 2019, so very very recent! I was lucky enough to get it from our library's e-books this soon, but I know I'll have to own it.
If you need to know more spoilery things before reading, or if you've read this and want to discuss it, drop me a comment or something! I can DM you or set up a spoilers-allowed post, whatever seems the most convenient.
no subject
Date: 2019-08-31 08:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-08-31 10:38 am (UTC)