just WOW what a good read. Reasonably short but absolutely full to the brim with story, the descriptions were intricate and poetic, the letters were so fun it was really like reading correspondence between two soldiers/lovers, I've never been one for time travel story with how confusing things can get but I feel like the time travel aspect was handled quite smoothly. Red and Blue's relationship was sooo goood they way they were intricately woven into eachothers lives ;;w;;

The dystopian aspect of their respective lives was also so interesting, Garden made me think of the eco cult in Margaret Atwoods Oryx and Crake series and Commandment made me think of big brother in 1984, it was interesting to see how they contrasted and yet were quite similar.

I just feel like the whole book was reading a work of poetry. Anyways totally a 5/5

- Original article on my blog -

Two rival agents, Red and Blue, travel through time, space, possible realities; they manipulate events and threads of causality in order to ensure the best possible outcome for their warring factions.

They belong to extremely advanced civilizations; distant offshoots of humanity, but evolved and transcended to the point they could as well be alien species.

They are both skilled, efficient, ruthless.

They are both pawns in a conflict much greater than themselves.

The two women strike up a correspondence; it starts as a taunt, as yet another attempt to sabotage the opposing faction, but it develops in unexpected ways: stranded in all sorts of hostile worlds and in a perpetual conflict, they find in each other a kindred spirit; they open up to their rival, in a way they could not dare with their comrades; they confess their inner lives, they reveal much more depth than their role should afford. In the least convenient way possible, they end up falling in love.

Scenes from the war alternate with their epistolary exchange. We see glimpses of different ages and historical events, the subtle alteration of chains of causes and effects; just sketches, hinting to a much more complex tapestry we can only imagine.

Soon enough, however, the focus shifts: our attemption is more and more captivated by the messages exchanged by Red and Blue, by their audacity and trepidation, so much that the time war feels like an afterthought. Thus, our attention is guided to reflect the psyche of the protagonists, who are increasingly caught up by their mutual fascination.

This is how you lose the time war is a short and enchanting novella. First and foremost, it’s remarkable for the sheer beauty of its writing. Its poetic and imaginative style isn’t just an exercise in virtuosity, instead it breathes life and truth into characters even so distant from our experience, and turns the portrayal of their inner life into a moving and captivating narration.

Despite the sci-fi setting, the focus of the novella is on introspection, not on action or technology, which may be disappointing to anyone who approached it expecting swashbuckling adventures in space or an in-depth analysis of time paradoxes.

Nevertheless, I believe This is how you lose the time war has its own unique merits as a sci-fi work as well.

It’s tru

Hello, everybody!

I am looking hard for a hardcover version of This Is How You Lose The Time War by Amal El-Mohtar, Max Gladstone.

While there are paperbacks galore, I just… can’t find a reasonable hardcover for the life of me. If someone has it, please let me know. USA based. Thank you so much.

The poll has ended and This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone for our Features a Bird on the Cover!

Come join us! If anyone is interested in being the discussion leader I am taking volunteers.

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

>Among the ashes of a dying world, an agent of the Commandant finds a letter. It reads: Burn before reading. Thus begins an unlikely correspondence between two rival agents hellbent on securing the best possible future for their warring factions. Now, what began as a taunt, a battlefield boast, grows into something more. Something epic. Something romantic. Something that could change the past and the future.
>
>Except the discovery of their bond would mean death for each of them. There's still a war going on, after all. And someone has to win that war.

Bingo Squares - I will update on April 1st!

I will link to each of these discussions on Reddit on the r/Fantasy Goodreads Group and in the monthly book club hub thread (see the Megathread for a link) so if you read the book later in the month, or you miss the day we post the topics, you can find them easily (and each post will also link to the others for the month).

If you are not a member of our r/Fantasy Goodreads Group, you can join. Added advantage of joining? You can connect with more r/Fantasy members and check out what they are reading! (Stop by the Introduce yourself post to see who is who.)

So, who's planning on joining in?

Have any questions about it? Ask here!

Have you read it already and want to convince others to read it? Leave a comment to help sway those undecideds! Also, leave a comment to help me with Bingo squares, please.

Happy Reading!

Midway Discussion - April 12th. This book is pretty short (< 200 pages) so we will be somewhere in the middle.

Final Discussion - April 26th.

Nominations for May will be April 19th!

As a twenty-eight year-old male, I’ve found myself living with more than a small amount of toxic masculinity. I grew up scoffing at rom-coms, love songs and anything that would jeopardize the all-important man card. As a result, even in my reading, I gravitated towards action-filled heroic stories where even the “strong female characters” were super badass. It was the way.

Imagine my surprise then, upon reading The Cybernetic Tea Shop last year, that I absolutely loved a gentle, comforting romance. I won’t lie and say that I’m now some kind of connoisseur of romantic media, but I’m much more open-minded than I once was. I’ll take that.

This is How You Lose the Time War fits into a similar category. I will freely admit that I went in expecting some kind of time travelling insanity but became enraptured by the budding romance that I found instead.

The worldbuilding was excellent in a way that is best compared to a “soft magic system.” That is to say, it doesn’t outline the detailed economic systems and inner workings of a society so much as it gives you the impression of how things go. The agents spend each new chapter in a different setting, sometimes exotic and imaginative and other times familiar and tame.

These agents are on opposing sides of a time war, each trying to influence strands of time to work out such that the future favors their outcome. The two sides serve as excellent juxtaposed enemies that paint a picture of the two futures of humanity. The Commandant represents technological advancement, a shining example of science fiction and wonder, while the Garden is a more natural, wilderness-driven world that is completely free of the destruction humanity causes, as frightening and lethal as that can be.

As these two sides wrestle for control of their desired future, Red and Blue become locked in a back and forth of strike-counterstrike interactions punctuated by taunting letters. The letters transition slowly from banter to friendship and more as the respective sides become suspicious of the forbidden love.

This book captures love in one of the most perfect ways. By naming the two leads Red and Blue, those two colors become constant reminders of each other as they navigate the war. Every maple leaf, every drop of clear blue water becomes a subtle diversion that leads one to the other. It is a wonderful reflection of reality: a million little things that all lead to one place.

Time-travel is a notoriously difficult plot device to

I am a little over a third of the way through this novella and so far there only three characters.

Two are adversaries on opposing sides who begin secretly corrosponding and the third is a mysterious person who gathers the destroyed remnants of that correspondence.

The chapters are short, and each ends with the gradually growing notes each leaves the other.

I anticipate a meeting between the two and possibly a romance... only time will tell.

Intro

First year doing the /r/Fantasy bingo (after looking at it many times last year and thinking "huh that would be good if only I had the time") - and hoping I haven't bitten off more than I can chew. Decided to jump straight in at the deep end with hard mode, hero mode, no substitutions and no rereads, and no books written by men - I started out with "all books written by women" but quickly ran into a few I wanted to read by non-binary authors, so I ended up rephrasing. Usually my bookshelf skews male a bit, so I'm making a deliberate effort to push the dial the other way.

Spoilers for the book are tagged accordingly, but I've tried to keep them to a minimum.

About

• Title: This Is How You Lose The Time War
• Genre(s): Sci-Fi, Romance, Epistolary
• Author(s): Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone
• Published: 2019
• Format: eBook (Google Play)

Goodreads Summary

>Among the ashes of a dying world, an agent of the Commandant finds a letter. It reads: Burn before reading. Thus begins an unlikely correspondence between two rival agents hellbent on securing the best possible future for their warring factions. Now, what began as a taunt, a battlefield boast, grows into something more. Something epic. Something romantic. Something that could change the past and the future.
>
>Except the discovery of their bond would mean death for each of them. There's still a war going on, after all. And someone has to win that war.

What did I like?

I've only ever read one other book using the epistolary format (C.S. Lewis' The Screwtape Letters) - it's not exactly common. For what it's worth, I think Amal and Max have knocked it out of the park. Having two authors definitely helped ensure Red and Blue had their own distinct voices, and somehow they managed to get me really emotionally invested in the characters despite having very few ways to do so.

I also loved the different scenarios in each chapter. A surprisingly broad range of missions, targets and goals (from making spoopy noises at ancient pilgrims to stealing the sacred iMac from the cyber-temple), and increasingly elaborate ways to convey messages to each other. My personal favourite was actually very early on in the book, where the pilgrim Red was meant to inspire with bone wind-chimes had in fact been turned into said bone wind-chimes before she even got there.

Totally blindsided by the reveal that the seeker was >!future Red!< - I had spent the entire ti

This Is How You Lose the Time War is a short yet delightful read about love letters.

Imagine Spy vs Spy but with blue and red colour codes, representing Blue (of the biopunk Garden) and Red (of cyberpunk Agency). The two individuals have been fighting and deploying subterfuges throughout different strands of parallel universe, tweaking the courses of events to each organisation's plan while exchanging cheeky letters to brag each's achievements. As more correspondences are exchanged, the letters grow more honest and more intimate, revealing each sender's insecurities and invulnerability. The methods of delivery also grow more elaborate (at some point they involve tea leaves and tree rings) as each of them tries to impress and court her counterpart.

This book is definitely a genre bender; blending sci-fi, fantasy, romance, new weird, and literary fiction into an intimate and precious dialogue between opposing rivals. I could easily imagine Max Gladstone and Amal El-Mohtar having a blast while writing this book, unleashing each's arsenal of historical trivia and turns of phrases (naturally, since Red and Blue blends into Purple prose). Added with crazy science fantasy elements and jumps between settings, this book reads a bit like an anthology of short stories in some ways. Obviously these factors result in a quite niche and acquired taste, but for people who dig those elements, it's a rewarding read.

In meta level, the dialogue between Red and Blue can also be read as the dialogue between Gladstone and El-Mohtar. Both author prove to possess strong authorial voice that reflects the mindscape of the characters. Red (Gladstone's) sections are more mercurial and imaginative, featuring crazy worlds and forceful changes. Blue (El-Mohtar's) sections are more quiet and thoughtful, featuring introspective reflection and grounded meditations.

Conclusion
This Is How You Lose the Time War is a delightful and intimate genre bender about love letters. While the jumpy settings, crazy science fantasy elements, and purple prose may turn some readers off; it can be an extremely rewarding read for those who dig aforementioned elements

4.75/5

---

Bingo Cards

• SFF Novella
• SFF Novel by Local to You Author - Gladstone: Cambridge and Massachusetts, US; El-Mothar: Ottawa, Canada and Glasgow, UK
• SFF Novel Featuring An Ocean Setting - fair

It was definitely the most heartbreakingly beautiful book I have read so far this year. The writing was beautiful and intense. At certain parts it devastated me, made me ugly cry and at other parts made me feel hopeful. Barely 130 pages long and within that small time I felt like I knew the characters inside out, as if I've lived both their lives; felt their love, transformation, revelations, fears, fury, loss, gain everything. I've rarely ever felt so attached to any other character in any book as much as I've done to these two. The setting, mechanisms of this world and the time travelling aspect was unlike anything I've ever read before and it was perfectly executed. There are certain stories that hit you in a completely different way and take the special place in your heart that's above any criticism, character analysis, any of those things. This one's that book for me. One word: Spellbound.

I was late for work because of this book. I won't say I wasn't tempted to call out sick; but as it was, I finished it during my lunch break.

There are literally only three characters in this novella: Red, Blue, and the mysterious Seeker. Red and Blue are powerful agents of opposing sides in a multiverse fighting for dominance. Each short chapter ends with a bit of correspondence from one agent to the other, and the seeker shows up to consume the destroyed remnants of each missive.

I can't say more without spoilers, hah. But know this: I will be rereading this very soon, I found it that good and compelling.

A war is raging through all of time and space, spanning an infinite number of universes. Two great powers - the Commandant and the Garden - are clashing, their agents fighting one another in the stone age and a distant future of galaxy-spanning empires. Two agents, Red and Blue, clash again and again without ever exchanging a single word...until the day they decide to start writing letters.

This is How You Lose the Time War is a novella depicting a war fought through time between two implacable forces, each represented by one of their agents. It's a short book, at under 200 pages, and also an interesting one structurally, mixing traditional third-person narratives with the letters the two rival agents exchange on a regular basis. It's not quite an epistolary novella, more of a mix between it and more traditional narration, but the letters form an integral part of the story.

Although short, the novella covers a lot of ground. Multiple settings, from deep space in the far future to a sinking Atlantis to contemporary cities, are used as battlegrounds by the warring sides, and we see both the hard end of their fighting and meet the vast and almost staggering forces leading the wars. That said, there isn't a lot of exposition in the book. The reasons for the war - given that billions, if not trillions, of branching timelines exist for the two factions to coexist in - are never really given and it's unclear who is winning and losing (although both Red and Blue are prone to boasting of their side's achievements, at least early in their relationship). To be honest, it's not really important. More important is how alone and isolated both agents feel, and the only person they can relate to is their opposite number, doing the same thing and feeling the same feelings, just in a different cause.

The writing is poetic, with both agents keen to use creative language in their letters, which start off as verbal fencing matches but later become more flirtatious and intellectually challenging. There is humour in the book but also an air of bitter-sweetness. There's also tension: agents from the two forces are forbidden from communicating with one another out of fear of corruption, and it's not always clear it the agents are genuinely becoming enamoured of one another or each is trying to trap the other in an unexpected reversal. It feels a bit like Spy vs. Spy with added romantic tension, all set in the middle of Doctor Who's Time War.

*This is How You Lose the T

ARC received from the publisher (Saga Press) on Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Whoa. Just…whoa. Another candidate for “best of 2019” for me. It’s like someone distilled almost everything I like into one book – exquisite prose, a high dose of weirdness, a queer relationship, a more literary feel, experimental structure – and the end result is breathtaking. Brilliant in a way I’m not sure a review can illustrate. It has to be read to be believed.

> I feel almost invincible in our battles’ wake: a kind of Achilles, fleet footed and light of touch. Only in this nonexistent place our letters weave do I feel weak. How I love to have no armor here.

^(Footnote for fans of the romance genre: for the sake of proper expectations, this is a love story but is not romance genre-wise – if anyone rec’d it as such…🤦)

The plot is so simple it’s almost not worth describing: two rival agents from the opposite sides of the time war start exchanging letters in secret. A tale as old as time (heh). You can probably guess the broad strokes of where it goes from there and you’d probably be correct, too. But I don’t think reducing it like this does it justice. Not even close. It’s two lives circling around each other but never quite touching. It’s loneliness and longing and finding solace in each other, the war be damned. Technology and nature. It’s heady and strange, a book to be savoured rather than devoured.

The prose is ridiculously good. Absolutely on the stained glass side – poetic, reminiscent of Samatar’s The Winged Histories, and practically begging to be read out loud. I could drown in it; I don’t know how to give it higher praise than that. Another thing that reminds me of The Winged Histories is that the war itself, which would be front and centre in most books, is merely a background detail, context for the characters and their interactions (the true main focus) but largely glossed over. The alternation between letters and chapters describing where they find them adds to the disconnect. To be clear, it’s nowhere near a bad thing – just different. Unconventional.

And it’s weird in terms of setting, too. Profoundly, gloriously weird. It’s a world where poetry is the answer to math riddles, where letters are written in seeds and water and poison and hidden behind eyes, where everything including time is fluid and seemingly anything goes. After all, all is fair in love and war. And that’s the beauty of it. Relax, enjoy the wild ride.

I just finished This Is How You Lose the Time War earlier today, and thought I'd post a quick review while it's fresh in my mind.

I'll start by saying that I absolutely adored this book. It is a love story following a semi-epistolary narrative structure. It chronicles the relationship built between two exemplary agents of two diametrically opposed time-spanning organisations, whose goal it is to comb the skeins of time into threads more favourable to their own causes. The main theme is love, pure and simple.

I praise it for its depiction of two non-heteronormative females. The meaning of gender is blurred to the point of being meaningless, and I feel the main theme of the novel shines all the stronger for it. It is a refreshing depiction of two fully realised women with agency; they are neither pretty princesses waiting in a tower, nor reactionary bad-asses with more scars and swear-words and spitting than personality.

A somewhat valid criticism I've heard of this book is that the prose veers quite purple at points. I would personally describe the prose as esoteric, verging on abstruse, and oscillating between whimsical and empirical. However, given the nature of love and the difficulty in encapsulating it with pen and paper, I find this style lends itself to sudden, stunning, unexpected flashes of insight, where more prosaic work might capture the letter, but not the spirit, of this theme. The "almost grasped and never quite seen" prose begins to layer a multitudinous, infinite, literary Venn diagram with the ideal of love as the "shown but never told" centre. This style may not be for you, but I would assert that it’s the right tool, used in the right way, for the right job. It is by no means incomprehensible, and, if anything, merely lends itself to rereading in the same way one craves more of a newly discovered favourite meal, while being too full to eat any more of it in one sitting.

For those that may be turned off by the time travel aspect to the novel, let me assure you that it is less a plot device and more a setting for the story. It frames the story but doesn’t necessarily drive it.

I would be extremely interested to hear other’s opinions of this. For me it was easily a 5/5. I would highly, highly recommend this to anyone who enjoys a good “new-fashioned” love story (and doesn’t mind crying in their car on break at work while reading).

My favourite quote: “I love you. I love you. I love you. I'll write it in waves. In skies. In my heart.

About 20 minutes in, and nothing makes sense, yet it is very beautiful and atmospheric. Any wise words from those who have read/listened to this beauty? It seems to me as a very literary scifi which needs a lot of mental processing.

I want to chase you, find you, I want to be eluded and teased and adored; I want to be defeated and victorious—I want you to cut me, sharpen me.”

Hello, friends, and welcome to my review of 2019’s novella This is How you Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone. Also known as the review where my bad opinions are made manifest because apparently everyone loved this book except for me!

So What’s It About? (from Goodreads)

Among the ashes of a dying world, an agent of the Commandant finds a letter. It reads: Burn before reading.

Thus begins an unlikely correspondence between two rival agents hellbent on securing the best possible future for their warring factions. Now, what began as a taunt, a battlefield boast, grows into something more. Something epic. Something romantic. Something that could change the past and the future.

Except the discovery of their bond would mean death for each of them. There’s still a war going on, after all. And someone has to win that war. That’s how war works. Right?

What I Thought

A enemies-to-lovers f/f romance between time-traveling assassins is just about the coolest premise for a novella that I can think of. I was 100% ready to be blown away! Instead I left this book mostly irritated, and I’ve been thinking a lot about why since then.

Maybe this is a piping hot take, but my main complaint is that I honestly struggled to tell a difference between Red and Blue whatsoever. They were both just ruthless, clever agents who sure loved their similes and metaphors.  When I mentioned this on Goodreads I was met with mixed emotions, so I don’t know if this is a legitimate concern for most readers. It certainly was for me, though. Someone mentioned that they could tell a difference in the way that they delivered their letters, but to me there was no especially visible pattern, and I’d argue that most of their stories are conveyed in letters that are nearly identical in their writing style and expression. It was difficult to care about either of them when I felt like they were more or less exactly the same person.

Speaking to the writing style and expression I mentioned earlier…I really struggled with the prose in this one. And it’s not that I’m in any way opposed to convoluted, flowery, elaborate language. You’re looking at the girl who spent most of her high school years reading nothing but Victorian lit, after all! When I think about whether elaborate prose feels effective to me or not, it’s

Initial Rating: Highly Recommended  (How I Rate Books)

• Reviewer's Note: This is the best book I've read so far this year. It'll probably top my 'Best of 2019' list too.

Goodreads

Website

Genres: Sci Fi, Time Travel, LGBT, Fantasy, Romance, Adult, Novella/Small Novel, Literary Fantasy, Literary SciFi

Similar books:

• Circe, in the sense of being a semi-episodic, character based story, with beautiful prose, told over a scope and scale of hundreds if not thousands of years.
• The Temporal Cold War plotline from 'Star Trek: Enterprise'

Previous books by the author/in the series I've reviewed:

• Max Gladstone: Full Fathom Five by Max Gladstone, Body Problems,Three Parts Dead, Last First Snow, Two Serpents Rise ,  Four Roads Cross
• Amal El-Mohtar: None (Yet)

Here's the TL;DR for my review (SPOILERS!):

• Pros
  • Gorgeous, Gorgeous prose.
  • Episodic Time Travel goodness. One moment you're in the far future, doing battle in starships above dying planets, and the next you're leading a Mongol Horde across the Steppe.
  • A really, really, really good romance.
    • If you read very many of my reviews you will know that I'm usually indifferent to romance plotlines. Not here. The romance herein is so good that even misanthropic me liked it.
  • The Time War. It was just cool, watching the characters dance around the braid of possible timelines, carefully adjusting events to cause maximum changes in causality down the line. It kinda reminded me of the Temporal Cold War plotline from Star Trek: Enterprise.
• Mixed
  • If you positively detest romances

https://preview.redd.it/k918xb8yvpa31.jpg?width=318&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a00249986524a47301c7b832c1aa0c8779ae62d1

>Among the ashes of a dying world, an agent of the Commandant finds a letter. It reads: Burn before reading.
>
>And thus begins an unlikely correspondence between two rival agents hellbent on securing the best possible future for their warring factions. Now, what began as a taunt, a battlefield boast, grows into something more.
>
>Except discovery of their bond would be death for each of them. There’s still a war going on, after all. And someone has to win that war. That’s how war works. Right?

From the moment Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone announced they were co-writing a novella, it immediately became one of my most anticipated SFF releases. I was dying to get this book, blurb unseen – because with these two authors, there was no doubt it would be amazing. And weird.

This is How You Lose the Time War is a love story – the star-crossed kind. Two enemy agents start an unlikely correspondance in the midst of a war through time. The messages are sent through improbable ways, each time a surprise for both the reader and the recipient. The tone is taunting, boasting at first, then it becomes flirty, then achingly beautiful.

It’s a study of contrasts: the horrors of an unending war, the beauty of a blossoming and fragile love. The playfulness of a new relationship, the tension of the outside world where they’re supposed to be mortal enemies. The fear, the wonder, the hope.

The setting is strange. Granted, saying “the setting is strange” when Gladstone and El-Mohtar are involved is very much like saying “water is wet”. There a mix of futuristic elements and a form of dark, fairytale-like magic which makes the reading experience unsettling. But at the same time, we’re grounded with familiar elements to pop culture and classical references. I got Blue by Eiffel 65 stuck in my head for days (thanks Amal, thanks Max…).

Both authors play to their strengths, which gives us this miracle of a book. Poetically nerdy, poignantly romantic. Surprising at every turn. I’ve never read anything like it, and I strongly suspect I never will again.

This is How you Lose the Time War is released today!

(This review was first published on The Fantasy Inn)

Edit: Bingo squares

• SFF novella
• Published in 2019
• 4+

A woman approaches you. She's wearing a dark coat. She reaches into an inside pocket and holds something out. "Hey you," she says, "look at this." You're not entirely sure what you're looking at; but it's beautiful. Multi-faceted like a diamond. Intricate like one of those sculptures where the artist makes stone look like lace. You try to get a closer look, but she whisks it away and holds out her other hand. This one holds something as alien as the first thing, just as beautiful, just as intricate, but wholly different. Even as she tells you to look at it she's pulling it away, but there's something new back in her first hand....

This is what reading This Is How You Lose The Time War feels like. An onslaught of sharp and beautiful things, one after the other, no context and no mercy. Neither of the heroes, if heroes is even what you could call them, strike me as the kind of women prone to hand-holding, so I guess this makes sense. 'Keep up or drown and I really don't care which,' is a sentiment I could see coming from either one of them. It's certainly how they feel about each other. At first anyway.

Every second line of this novella is the kind of startling perfection most other books would hinge their entire selves around. The worldbuilding, or at least the worldbuilding shown to the reader is flashes and reflections, is rich and raises endless questions. It's not hard to picture a multi-volume sci-fi epic set in this world(s), but at the same time I didn't find myself unsatisfied with the briefness of this story. And the inherent briefness of a novella is nine times out of ten my main issue with the format, so that's high praise from me. It was similar to Kai Ashante Wilson's two breathtaking books that way; the prose is rich enough and just challenging enough that each lines carries the weight of two, or three.

If you were to strip this prose back to the barest language I suppose you would find a plot that lands on the scant side. Easy to spoil, with beats that aren't impossible to predict. You might notice that a good third of this novella is just two (human? delightfully unclear) woman confessing their feelings for each other in different ways while nothing else really happens. Although I think even in this scenario you'd have be impressed by how time travel is handled here, how all the usual paradox's aren't ignored so much as not even dignified with a response.

But anyway, these complaints

I absolutely loved this book! It was everything I've ever wanted in a novel. The prose is soooo dreamy <3

>“I want to be a body for you. I want to chase you, find you, I want to be eluded and teased and adored; I want to be defeated and victorious—I want you to cut me, sharpen me. I want to drink tea beside you in ten years or a thousand. Flowers grow far away on a planet they’ll call Cephalus, and these flowers bloom once a century, when the living star and its black-hole binary enter conjunction.I want to fix you a bouquet of them, gathered across eight hundred thousand years, so you can draw our whole engagement in a single breath, all the ages we’ve shaped together.”

https://preview.redd.it/1c6cq5h6w2c31.png?width=1217&format=png&auto=webp&s=c925981d2899281d571746431b24d5cd2d20f949

THIS ARC WAS PROVIDED by Saga Press via NetGalley IN EXCHANGE FOR AN HONEST REVIEW

Originally posted on my blog, Black Forest Basilisks

Future Publication Date: July 16th, 2019

Execution: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Enjoyment: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Applicable /r/Fantasy Bingo Squares: Slice of Life (HM), Novella (HM), 7 Word Title (HM)

>“I keep turning away from speaking of your letter. I feel – to speak of it would be to contain what it did to me, to make it small. I don’t want to do that. I suppose in some ways, I’m more Garden’s child than she knows.

>Even poetry, which breaks language into meaning – poetry ossifies, in time, the way trees do. What’s supple, whipping, soft, and fresh grows hard, grows armo. If I could touch you, put my finger to your temple and sink you into me the way Garden does – perhaps then. But I would never.

>So this letter instead.

>I ramble, it seems, when writing to the darkness by hand. How embarrassing. I’m quite certain I’ve never rambled a day in my life before this. Another thing to give to you: this first, for me.

>Yours,

>-Blue”

This book is poetic, romantic, strange, and violent – a whirlwind of emotion, fear, and firsts. Two soldiers fighting on opposite sides of a war up and down through the strands of time find that their greatest joy lies in each other, and thus begin a correspondence. They are two parallel lines that never meet despite having shaped one another through each of their interactions.

Whatever I can say about this novella will not do it justice. This book is utterly, wholly, an experience in and of itself. It’s the act of reading the prose. It’s the empathy you feel at the characters’ want for one another. Honestly, if you want to know whether you’ll like this book… read an excerpt on Amazon, because the first few pages will definitely tell you whether or not this is for you.

Red is an agent of the Commandant – she is violence and destruction, tearing worlds and civilisations down across time to force history upon a new path.

>“She holds a corpse that was one a man, her hands gloved in its guts, her fingers clutching its alloy spine. She lets go, and the exoskeleton clatters against the rock. Crude technology. Ancient. Bronze to depleted uranium. He never had a chance. That is the point of Red."

Blue is an agent of G