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BooksScifi

This Is How You Lose The Time War by Max Gladstone & Amal El Mohtar (book review).

Now here’s an odd book. It’s small and the text is double-lined, usually a sign that it is a Young Adult book. Except it isn’t. ‘This Is How You Lose The Time War’ by the dual authors Max Gladstone & Amal El Mohtar is for readers who like flowery descriptive prose than adventure text.

There is a dividing line between the two styles and the type of readers who like their fiction.

Essentially, we have Red and Blue, two female time travellers who can change their appearances and even species in different time zones and their correspondence. What they are doing in these places is only inferred and not very often. It’s more like two girls having a gossip, exchanging perfume smells and whathaveyou. I tended to find that I was reading continually to find out what was going on.

What happens towards the end is spoiler but gives little reason for their motivation in doing what they’re doing other than a war of some sort is going on. Without the mechanics of that, this story could be considered practically fantasy simply because there is no insight into the reasons for time travel and, heaven forbid, how it affects the people involved or how they could leave messages for each other.

Although it’s not pertinent to the story and who is writing which character, El Mohtar is female and Gladstone is male.

Nice prose but it could really have done with a lot more plot but as it’s a short book, is likely to keep you amused on a holiday trip thinking about what it all means.

GF Willmetts

July 2019

(pub: Jo Fletcher Books/Quercus. page small enlarged paperback. Price: £10.00 (UK). ISBN: 978-1-52940-523-1)

released: 18 July 2019

check out website: www.jofletcherbooks.com

UncleGeoff

Geoff Willmetts has been editor at SFCrowsnest for some 21 plus years now, showing a versatility and knowledge in not only Science Fiction, but also the sciences and arts, all of which has been displayed here through editorials, reviews, articles and stories. With the latter, he has been running a short story series under the title of ‘Psi-Kicks’ If you want to contribute to SFCrowsnest, read the guidelines and show him what you can do. If it isn’t usable, he spends as much time telling you what the problems is as he would with material he accepts. This is largely how he got called an Uncle, as in Dutch Uncle. He’s not actually Dutch but hails from the west country in the UK.

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