This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-MohtarMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
I'll try not to be negative over a book I actually enjoyed.
There are issues to be had of course. Stylistic choices to be argued, a
plot that needs to be flogged, and a length that is fully undeserved.
I'll get to that. I know I'm saying this at the top, but the bottom line
is that you might not enjoy this book. I hate saying 'it's not for
me/you' because good is good no matter who in the hell it was meant for.
But I just wanted to say, at the front, that this is my opinion and not
yours. Your level of enjoyment is yours and yours alone. Otherwise,
stay out it.
To get my joyful noises out of the way first, the prose is insanely good. It can be vague and batshit crazy at times, but that doesn't get in the way of it being good. I really felt for the two characters despite not knowing that much about them. It's the evolution of their interactions that sell the story. Everything else is just a framing device.
I went into this with the impression it was just going to be a series of letters back and forth between enemies. When I saw how short the book is, I felt it confirmed my preconception. To my surprise, there is prose in this book. I understand that writing a book strictly to that concept would have been a daunting task, but life's too short not to fully commit to crazy ideas. While the book is satisfying in its own right, I felt the end product could have been more expansive. There doesn't need to be fifty megatons of world-building like a tome of high fantasy. It's just that everything that happens outside the letters feels like background noise. It's there, but it doesn't matter.
The plot. There isn't one. Well, technically there is, but it's just there to create the reasoning and conflict. As with the theme of this review, the plot doesn't really matter. It's like when a cable repair guy shows up at the beginning of a porno. His ability to fix the cable, or even the state of the cable itself, isn't anyone's concern. It's just the reason why everyone is there. The real story is strictly between Red and Blue.
All that being said, I enjoyed this book. It's well written and non-traditional, which are two things that spark my pretentious flint. My points of critique simply come from an area of respecting art. While I always have venom for garbage and cookie-cut commercialization, I hold art under the strictest banner. And this book is definitely a work of art.
To get my joyful noises out of the way first, the prose is insanely good. It can be vague and batshit crazy at times, but that doesn't get in the way of it being good. I really felt for the two characters despite not knowing that much about them. It's the evolution of their interactions that sell the story. Everything else is just a framing device.
I went into this with the impression it was just going to be a series of letters back and forth between enemies. When I saw how short the book is, I felt it confirmed my preconception. To my surprise, there is prose in this book. I understand that writing a book strictly to that concept would have been a daunting task, but life's too short not to fully commit to crazy ideas. While the book is satisfying in its own right, I felt the end product could have been more expansive. There doesn't need to be fifty megatons of world-building like a tome of high fantasy. It's just that everything that happens outside the letters feels like background noise. It's there, but it doesn't matter.
The plot. There isn't one. Well, technically there is, but it's just there to create the reasoning and conflict. As with the theme of this review, the plot doesn't really matter. It's like when a cable repair guy shows up at the beginning of a porno. His ability to fix the cable, or even the state of the cable itself, isn't anyone's concern. It's just the reason why everyone is there. The real story is strictly between Red and Blue.
All that being said, I enjoyed this book. It's well written and non-traditional, which are two things that spark my pretentious flint. My points of critique simply come from an area of respecting art. While I always have venom for garbage and cookie-cut commercialization, I hold art under the strictest banner. And this book is definitely a work of art.
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