let's lose the time war again

[psocoptera]

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.

Comments

[crystalpyramid]

Interesting -- it didn't hit that button for me but I definitely do hit a threshold for language among some of Cat Valente's books.

[psocoptera]

Heh, I almost included a line in my post about recommending it if you loved Space Opera but wanted fewer jokes and a sort of Victorian-Goth aesthetic. :) (And another line about recommending it if Apex was your favorite magazine...)

[crystalpyramid]

I hadn't connected them before but they do share a certain grandiose ridiculousness. (I did enjoy space opera but can't get through the Prester John books at all.)

[ursula]

Huh, I actually expected it to be uniformly Like That and instead found it hilarious, but maybe it helps that I already like Gladstone's stories?

[psocoptera]

Huh, was it supposed to be over the top in the funny way? I guess I didn't get the joke. That's okay. I've read the first three of the Craft sequence and liked them a lot, especially the first one, but this didn't feel particularly similar, to me, although it's also been awhile so maybe I just don't remember the style clearly.

[ursula]

Playfully and deliberately egging each other on, I guess? The effect kind of reminds me of the Regent's pavilion in Brighton, where every time you look into a corner there is another glittering dragon statue.

There are a couple of passages of Empress of Forever that echo the listiness of this prose style, but I guess I was thinking more of the weirdness and displacement that you get in the first Craft book.

[conuly]

It's just a good thing it was so short. I could NOT have gotten through much more of it.