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Max Gladstone, Amal El-Mohtar: This Is How You Lose the Time War (Hardcover, 2019, Simon and Schuster) 4 stars

Two time-traveling agents from warring futures, working their way through the past, begin to exchange …

Sweet love letters travelling through space and time

5 stars

Can love persist through multiple timelines; against devastating forces of all-powerful empires at war? Unlikely, but that doesn’t stop Red and Blue from trying. Each part of the opposite side, working as an agent killing, destroying, shifting timelines and hunting the other. They connect through secret letters, smuggled in the most innocuous ways. So their relationship blooms, but could it ever last?

The story in this novella is very beautiful, but also bittersweet. There are many references to literature and events of our planet, but also many constructed worlds through which our heroines travel. The only downside is that they’re never polished at all, but maybe that’s for the better? This way, the Red-Blue relationship and their struggles is always in the spotlight.

Overall I had an amazing time with the book, even if the language is a bit difficult and the references quite obscure.

replied to zeerooth's status

@zeerooth all the references to shakespear and other classic works completely went over my head; I will say it makes me excited, though, as this is a book I want to come back to, and approaching it in the context from which it emerges showing new sides of the story sounds wonderful