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

WINNER OF The Hugo and Nebula Awards for Best Novella, the Reddit Stabby Award for Best Novella AND The British Science Fiction Association Award for Best Novella SHORTLISTED FOR 2020 Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award The Ray Bradbury Prize Kitschies Red Tentacle Award Kitschies Inky Tentacle Brave New Words Award 'A fireworks display from two very talented storytellers' Madeline Miller, author of Circe Co-written by two award-winning writers, This Is How You Lose the Time War is an epic love story spanning time and space. 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? 'An intimate and lyrical tour of time, myth and history' John Scalzi, bestselling author of Old Man's War 'Lyrical and vivid and bittersweet' Ann Leckie, Hugo Award-winning author of Ancillary Justice 'Rich and strange, a romantic tour through all of time and the multiverse' Martha Wells, Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author of The Murderbot Diaries

Style over substance but i didn't really mind

3.5/5 stars

I said it in an update, but I'll say it again. I am too stupid for this book. It did start to click eventually and the words and story were absolutely beautiful, but I never felt like I got more that a superficial understanding of anything.

I feel like there aren't words I could use to describe my feelings towards this book, so I will list my favorite quotes, the ones that hooked me, that broke me, that build me back up, and the ones I hope will stay with me.

“Red likes to feel, it's a fetish. Now, she feels fear”
“You invigored your Shift's war effort and, in so doing, invigorated me”
“Tell me something true, or tell me nothing at all”
“I wanted to be seen. The need dug into the heart of me”
“Ask the pilgrims how the labyrinth came to be, and they offer answers varied as their sins”
“And this letter is a knife at my neck, if cutting's what you want”
“You are yourself, and so remain, as I remain”
“I could have swallowed this valley whole and still not have sated my hunger for the thought”
“But I am a songbird running out of air, and I must breathe”
“Maybe I've over-read the simple word with which you close your letter (but I can never over-read you, and the word you chose is not simple)”
“Wha will I do sky? Bluebird, iris, ultramarine, how can there be more when this is done”