Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Skillful Language, Elusive Impact

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

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You can read this book quickly, but don’t. Take your time. This book calls for attention. There is so much wordplay, sometimes intricate and subtle, which calls for re-reading sentences or paragraphs. I’m sure that I missed quite a bit both because of the depth of wordplay and because I only have so much patience, but the authors are just so skillful in their use of language (e.g., “Who’s infecting whom? We know from our hoarse Trojans, in my time”). The novella follows Red and […]

“I want to meet you in every place I ever loved. Listen to me. I am your echo. I would rather break the world than lose you.”

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

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Cannonball Read Bingo Square: Recommended I’m always eager for a good recommendation, and my friend Mindi gave me this one. She is one of my very best pals, but our book tastes do not often align, in fact, we are predictably unpredictable in giving each other solid recs. We’ve joked about needing to catalog our reads and likes to find the determining factors to create a Venn diagram of where our tastes comingle because it’s that ineffable. So far, of books we have both read, […]

Penpals Across the Timestream

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

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This is an interesting book told in epistolary (letter) form. It won the Hugo and Nebula awards for best novella (!). Two agents, Red and Blue, working for different time-traveling agencies, start off as adversaries as they travel up and down multiple timelines to defeat each other’s organizations to prevent them from coming into existence. They are immortal and capable of being any creature they wish to be, mostly killers. Sparring with one another across strands of time, they develop a respect and familiarity with […]

All the fuss

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

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I chose this book based on popularity and on its genre. It tells the story of two agents, red and blue, fighting across time and worlds as part of an ongoing war between their two organizations. As they dip in and out of time, they begin a correspondence. Through this correspondence, we learn bits and pieces about who they are, what and how they are made, and the role they and their kind play. As their flirting develops into deeper feelings, they must each decide […]

Sorry, guys, this just wasn’t for me

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

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I was excited when I saw this in one of my local little free libraries, because I remembered seeing several very positive reviews on CBR. Sometimes, though, things just don’t work out. On paper, it sounded great: love story between enemies; strong women kicking ass in battle; time travel triggering alternate histories. I wanted to love this. The execution just didn’t work for me. Red and Blue are agents in opposite sides of a war. Red’s side, “the Agency,” is a technotopia, and Blue’s side, […]



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