let's lose the time war again

The thing I really wanted to know, when I was about 10% of the way into Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone's This Is How You Lose the Time War, was whether the whole thing was going to be like that. If you are also wondering: yes, yes it will. I did eventually get more into it - some plot eventually crystallizes out of the endless ~imagery~ (please imagine the word imagery in an excessively swirly font) - but this was definitely... ornate, for my tastes. The sort of thing with lots of bits I suspect were more fun for El-Mohtar and Gladstone to write than they were for me to read. (Which is fine! They seem like nice people, from what I've seen at them at Readercon, they should get to have fun.) I did enjoy it, but I would only recommend it if you're more likely to use "lyrical" as a term of praise than "florid" as a term of criticism.