This is How You Lose the Time War
Aug. 30th, 2019 11:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethThis is How You Lose the Time War
Max Gladstone
Amal El-Mohtar
I bought this one on my birthday, because I'd seen the cover going around on tumblr and saved it to my To Buy folder several times.
A man and woman writing together created characters who maybe might be both women, but then again might not, depending on need. Time travelling probably post humans do gender differently I guess. But both use 'she' about themselves.
It's a time travel story about agents of two factions from incompatible futures
and that meant I went in very wary
because to me there's only one satisfying ending to that.
And the book doesn't quite get there. So to my mind it seems unfinished. But still right.
And I love the language, the lyricism of how the two talk to each other, even if I did find myself flipping back to earlier letters to try and trace where all that feeling came from. I'm possibly still puzzled, but since I tend to be about feelings that's probably not the book's fault.
I just rated it four stars out of five, but I'm not entirely sure I agree with myself, or in which direction I'd differ.
spoiler cut
It is a love story, and it is a clever time loop, and it is more poetry than not. What the two do is significant for its imagery, not its plot. And when I say clever I mean it, and while I'm pondering here I'm getting more out of the earlier bits for rethinking them, so this might be a book to read twice in quick succession.
But the ending I was waiting for was a synthesis of their two sides, a third way that can stabilise time, and while we get that imagery and the two of them working together, I'm just... I am making a very puzzled face, and I think I got what I wanted in such a way I didn't really recognise it, and now I keep looking at it all sideways and trying to see what they did.
Either it'll click for me at some point or I'll get annoyed with it, I think.
Like the more I think about it the more I feel it did in fact do the only thing I wanted it to, I just didn't see it doing it at the time.
I read someone else who was only part way through say they couldn't tell the characters apart sometimes, and that turns out to be A Clue and therefore clever, but it's also...
If it's a love story then it's a strange way to express it, that they remake themselves to be part way each other. Or start to. I mean, learning each other and building bridges is love, but mixing dna in ones own person is somewhat else.
puzzled face remains.
It is a very inside story but a lot of me is looking for an outside resolution. What would a world they could both live in look like? fish bird much?
but the fish flew, so.
It's very much it's own thing and I feel like I need to read it from another angle.
Also, it's not a time war exactly to my mind, it reads more like the GURPS Infinite Worlds setting, because there's lots of Londons and lots of possible strands and both sides are trying to pull them all together into their own braids. Like there's also time travel, but there seems to be a lot of sideways too? It is a puzzlement.
I quite liked the bit where the one of them got fed up of killing because there's always another shift in time and then they need killing over again. no war so futile as time war.
I shall have to ponder the whole thing more and decide what I thought of it.
Definitely something you need to bring your brain to.
Max Gladstone
Amal El-Mohtar
I bought this one on my birthday, because I'd seen the cover going around on tumblr and saved it to my To Buy folder several times.
A man and woman writing together created characters who maybe might be both women, but then again might not, depending on need. Time travelling probably post humans do gender differently I guess. But both use 'she' about themselves.
It's a time travel story about agents of two factions from incompatible futures
and that meant I went in very wary
because to me there's only one satisfying ending to that.
And the book doesn't quite get there. So to my mind it seems unfinished. But still right.
And I love the language, the lyricism of how the two talk to each other, even if I did find myself flipping back to earlier letters to try and trace where all that feeling came from. I'm possibly still puzzled, but since I tend to be about feelings that's probably not the book's fault.
I just rated it four stars out of five, but I'm not entirely sure I agree with myself, or in which direction I'd differ.
spoiler cut
It is a love story, and it is a clever time loop, and it is more poetry than not. What the two do is significant for its imagery, not its plot. And when I say clever I mean it, and while I'm pondering here I'm getting more out of the earlier bits for rethinking them, so this might be a book to read twice in quick succession.
But the ending I was waiting for was a synthesis of their two sides, a third way that can stabilise time, and while we get that imagery and the two of them working together, I'm just... I am making a very puzzled face, and I think I got what I wanted in such a way I didn't really recognise it, and now I keep looking at it all sideways and trying to see what they did.
Either it'll click for me at some point or I'll get annoyed with it, I think.
Like the more I think about it the more I feel it did in fact do the only thing I wanted it to, I just didn't see it doing it at the time.
I read someone else who was only part way through say they couldn't tell the characters apart sometimes, and that turns out to be A Clue and therefore clever, but it's also...
If it's a love story then it's a strange way to express it, that they remake themselves to be part way each other. Or start to. I mean, learning each other and building bridges is love, but mixing dna in ones own person is somewhat else.
puzzled face remains.
It is a very inside story but a lot of me is looking for an outside resolution. What would a world they could both live in look like? fish bird much?
but the fish flew, so.
It's very much it's own thing and I feel like I need to read it from another angle.
Also, it's not a time war exactly to my mind, it reads more like the GURPS Infinite Worlds setting, because there's lots of Londons and lots of possible strands and both sides are trying to pull them all together into their own braids. Like there's also time travel, but there seems to be a lot of sideways too? It is a puzzlement.
I quite liked the bit where the one of them got fed up of killing because there's always another shift in time and then they need killing over again. no war so futile as time war.
I shall have to ponder the whole thing more and decide what I thought of it.
Definitely something you need to bring your brain to.