Wars are to be won, not avoided

[bloodygranuaile]

 The book we chose for the next BSpec book club was the highly hyped novella from Max Gladstone and Amal El-Mohtar, This Is How You Lose the Time War. An epistolary novella about agents on opposite sides of an epic "time war" who begin a forbidden correspondence, it was one of the most hotly anticipated new releases at Readercon, and I was unable to pick up a copy because they sold out so fast. I did get to attend the discussion on "How We Wrote This Is How You Lose the Time War," which was absolutely delightful. Since everyone seemed to agree that the book was also delightful and I felt I was in need of something nice and light to read, I lobbied hard for it at book club selection.

 

Somehow my brain did not put together "romance" and "epistolary novel" properly, and I did not realize until after I started reading it that the book is composed mostly of love letters. So while the book is indeed nice and funny and full of epic violence and incomprehensible timey-wimey stuff and generally the sort of thing I like, reading it also means reading a bunch of other people's love letters, which is, honestly, something I tend to find very boring. Love letters are, as a genre, overwritten, full of dreadful pet names and daydreaming, and generally unreadable, as far as I'm concerned. Objectively, it's better written than most regular assholes' attempts at love letters, but a lot of it is still the same basic type of writing that I simply cannot get into. Big chunks of it remind me of reading Oscar Wilde's prose poems -- and while Oscar Wilde is undoubtedly one of my favorite writers, this isn't a compliment, because I still have no idea what the actual fuck is the point of a prose poem or why anyone would be expected to either write or read one. 

 

Apart from the long strings of cutesy pet names and sappy daydreaming about spending time together, there is a hell of a story in Time War, featuring some absolutely remarkable worldbuilding. Blue and Red, our alternating viewpoint characters, are both highly skilled special agents in their respective sides of the Time War, civilizations that function totally differently--one is a highly technological cyberpunk sort of deal, called the Agency, all coding and body-mod and sleek sharp futuristic nonsense. The other, where Blue is from, is called the Garden, and is a sort of vaguely mystical plant-based consciousness. The story follows the back-and-forth of their missions in the Time War, and their increasing complicity in pulling their punches so as not to actually eliminate the other party. By the time the plot hits its climax, Red and Blue have done such wild things to time that Red has to basically tear it apart to prevent Blue from being killed before they can even meet. This is the high-concept sci-fi stuff that I actually understand the appeal of, and it was fantastic. 

 

I think we'll have a fun time discussing it at book club, even if I am going to be the cranky aromantic one complaining about how it didn't feel tight enough because all the letters were full of fluff.