This Is How You Lose the Time War

Me sorprende que haya habido gente que se terminase en una tarde este libro, cuando a mí me ha llevado un mes (alternando otras lecturas entre medias y leyendo de a poquitos) Sé que tenía mayor dificultad por haberlo leído en inglés, pero "This is how you lose the tine war" no es una historia "fácil". Lo digo porque te tienes que dejar arrastrar (hilo arriba, hilo abajo) sin cuestionarte demasiadas cosas, porque van a quedar huecos incluso cuando hayas terminado el libro.

Pero, ¿acaso importa? Porque para mí (salvo en la recta final), loque me hacía seguir leyendo eran las cartas que Red y Blue se intercambian. Desde la lejanía de dos enemigas que no quieren reconocer la curiosidad que sienten por la otra. Hasta el amor más poetico, intenso y condenado al fracaso.

O tal vez no.

Gracias kageRapaz@bookwyrm.social por compartir, una vez más, tus libros conmigo, a pesar de no haberme encantado como esperaba, Blye y Red se quedan conmigo y en todo lo que tenga sus colores.

Once into the flow of the correspondence, I knew I wanted to take it slow, only read on my commute, which is ideal given that the chapters are short and I could change trains or transports and divide the chapter into action and letter. I really loved the tone, story, the arch it builds, everything... This is certainly one I will revisit.. it's so imaginative and at the same time relatable.

I thought it was great. Let field and it doesn't patronize the reader (you have to keep up!) but I loved it. A bucket of fresh air.

I can't decide if this would have worked better (for me) as a short story, or a full length book. If it was longer, it could have expanded on it's ideas. If it had been shorter, it wouldn't have felt so repetetive.

There is some good ideas here, but they deserve better than being hand waved away. How do Red and Blue target their letters to each other across strands of time? If there are certain contested junctures in time, shouldn't they be swarmed with agents, and multiple aspects of the same agents? If the protagonists are just cogs in two massive opposing machines battling for supremacy over all time - why does it seems like they are the only two operators in the field?

I'm not saying this is a bad book, there is a lot good writing here. But it didn't work for me. Two highly subjective stars. (I'm going to hold of actually rating as there are so few reviews here yet)

The letters that make up about half of this book are gorgeously written, and I love the story they tell. The basic idea of the time war is clever, and the descriptions of placetimes the characters find themselves in evocative, sometimes reminiscent of Calvino's Invisible Cities. I devoured this book in a few days.

And yet... something about it felt a little thin or hollow behind its fireworks. I think it was a good artistic choice to leave all technical details out, but I couldn't help but get hung up on the time paradoxes. Not that it's the authors' responsibility to necessarily avoid or solve them, but for me personally they intruded on the suspension of disbelief.