Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Twitter Win Fizzles

This is How You Lost the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar, Max Gladstone

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Twitter was kind of saved from doom recently by a guy loudly and proudly promoting his favorite new book, and encouraging others to do the same. I approve of this behavior. I was with Bigolas Dickolas (a Monty Python reference, I hope) in his enthusiasm for about the first half of This is How You Lose the Time War, but then it lost me. The problem for me is that there is not enough world and character building to hold interest and keep the story […]

“Keep Reading. Keep Writing. Keep Fighting. We’re all still here.”

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

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I was intimidated by this book, which feels like a strange thing to say about a book that measures no more than 7 inches tall and less than 200 pages. But I was. A book that inspires so many positive, nay gushing, reviews that also seems to leave the reviewer at a loss for how to describe the book (see please reviews by Aquillia, andtheIToldYouSos, carriejay, and emmalita as a place to start) had me putting it on and taking it off my to read […]

A gorgeous love story that develops through time and letters

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

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This is How You Lose the Time War deserves the hype. The more fantasy I read, the more I crave something that pushes the boundaries, something that really wows me. Several of the books I read did this year by being ‘utterly bonkers’, as I’ve described them, but This is How You Lose the Time War managed it in an entirely different way. Technically, I think this is science-fiction, not fantasy, but it still pushes the boundaries because it is, first and foremost, an epistolary novel, […]

As the Prophets Say, “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough”

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

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I cannot explain this book. It is an enemies to lovers story divorced from time, place and humanity while also steeped in all three. Red and Blue are operatives in opposites sides of a time war. I don’t have any idea who the sides are or why they fight. I don’t know what’s at stake. There is no good guy or bad guy. None of that matters though. What does matter are the letters Blue and Red exchange. Initially it’s two enemies taunting each other […]

Books are letters in bottles, cast into the waves of time, from one person trying to save the world to another.

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

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I feel like this is a good one for this group of readers for a handful of reasons. This is a short novel told in vignettes and letters and small conversations. It’s about two different soldiers or time travelers (though it’s more appropriate to say they are inter-dimensional travelers) of warring or competing factions. So they travel to different times and universes or threads of the same universe. They sometimes meet up and sometimes are able to communicate with each other. And they’re in love […]



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