Book review: This is how you lose the time war

Earlier this year, I obeyed the internet gods and purchased a copy of This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone (who, I will note in case anyone else is also confused, is not Malcolm Gladwell).

After a series of stressful weeks, I thought this book would help to ease me back into normalcy. I started off slowly, reading a chapter or two a day after work in order to get back into bookish habits.

This was the wrong approach.

I suppose this is blasphemy, but because I started this book off so slowly, reading a chapter here, and a chapter there, I never quite figured out who was Blue and who was Red; who was in Garden and who from...the other side. I chucked myself out of the author's attempt to ground me in this galaxy by sheer exhaustion. Surprise, fighting through the edges of burnout gets you nowhere.

But then, I took this book on vacation. I spent a lovely week in a bright, quiet Wisconsin campground alternating between swimming in a lake, reading this book, and napping. And I blazed through it within hours. I couldn't put it down for the entire latter half.

I'm an avid romance reader, and I can't think of another book that had me so twisted up at the pining and the passion in the letters. This book is a master class on feelings.

And I can't wait to read it again.

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