bookheaven | This Is How You Lose the Time War

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

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This was one I was so looking forward to because I like the authors and it sounded interesting and if I'm honest, if it didn't fit prompts for two reading challenges, I would have DNFed it. It has praise from so many big names in SF that it surely doesn't need me but I was left wondering what I missed. To me it felt like I could hear the authors whispering how very clever they were with all of this.

In a nutshell Red comes from a dystopic technopolis and Blue comes from the organic Garden, both factions waging a time war through time, braid and unbraiding history to edge the time lines toward their polar opposite goals.

Out of the blue (pun intended) Blue leaves a letter for Red, something that could get them branded traitors and dealt with accordingly. They begin a correspondence that becomes something more throughout time.

And yeah, that's pretty much it. There isn't any real worldbuilding in this other than we have two opposite groups going through time. How a war like this could ever be won or how its accomplished isn't told and I suppose not really necessary. We get to know the two women through their letters and that's all we're going to get out of this. I didn't find the poetry others raved about. I'm not going to think about this book down the road. It just didn't make much of an impact on me other than 'what am I not seeing that everyone else is?'

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