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

[lightreads]

This Is How You Lose the Time War

3/5. Novella of an epistolary romance between lady time travel agents of warring powers who try to edit each other's rise out of the timeline.

This is full of things I like – not just lesbians, but epistolary lesbians! Epistolary is my jam. It's honestly embarrassing how much I've written it myself. Anyway, the letters here are lovely, but the style of the whole thing is just so *gestures* so . . . styling. So we-write-letters-and-embed-them-in-seeds-for-the-other-to-sensually-consume-in-a-meaningful-fashion. Don't get me wrong, it's well executed style, all working towards a goal of engendering hunger (it's a metaphor, you guys) in people whose notions of self and of satisfaction have been eroded. And of course there are time travel shenanigans. But the stylism is just . . . so. So very. And it kept me from really engaging with this on an emotional level.

Comments

[readerjane]

I wonder if that's why I can't get into Pratchett. His style just doesn't work for me. He's unendingly flippant, and I think of flippancy as a spice: wonderful on occasion, but terribly tedious as a steady diet.

It's frustrating when there's a story whose elements you're prepared to love, but the style just overwhelms them.

I will try Gladstone at some point, just in case his style is one I like, or even one that's unobtrusive enough to me, to allow me to enjoy the rest.

[lightreads]

I think I'm swearing off Gladstone, but I don't have enough information on El-Mohtar yet.

the thing about Pratchett is that at his best, he turns towards the sincere at a critical moment. You always could tell he meant it more because, well, it's not his usual mode. But he didn't always remember to do that, and yeah, the books that are flip all the way through just don't stick with me. The Hatful of Sky books are better about that than most of Discworld.