vulpecula's Book Journey

WARNING: Do not read this review if you love this book because I know I'm very much in the minority with how I felt about it. Don't @ me if you love this book and still read this review because I have a lot of feelings lol.

This book made me so angry. That was my first reaction when I finished the book. I just sat there and seethed because what in the ever-loving bloated, pretentious, purple prose that said nothing at all did I just read? If this wasn't a book that someone lent to me, I would have set it on fire. (Not really because book burning is bad, but I might have considered flinging it out a window!)

I truly could not really tell you very much about what this book was about. I got the general jist - two enemies from opposite sides of some sort of war writing letters to each other and falling in love, but that was...about as far as I got. I couldn't tell you anything about this war or why it was happening, the setting/world-building, the way that things work in this setting, what the characters were really like, or tbh, why they even fell in love. It seemed like one of the characters suddenly decided she was in love with the other one and it just went from there. There was no believable development or buildup to it at all. I didn't care about either of the characters in any way because the authors never gave me a path to care about them. Basically, I have nothing I can really write about in review because the authors gave me nothing except for pretty words that barely made sense.

This book basically just ran on vibes rather than anything solid and I feel like the authors should have just written a poem if that's what they wanted to do rather than put this out as a story, because it barely felt like a finished novel. The last...maybe 25% of the book got a little better (which isn't saying much given how I felt about the whole thing) just because stuff actually was happening rather than just vibes. tbf, all that stuff was still written in the most pretentious way possible, but at least something happened.

As I'm writing this review, I think that maybe this book made me this angry because of how pretentious it felt. It felt like the authors were flaunting how clever and lyrical their writing was rather than focusing on writing a readable or engaging book. Clearly, most people do not agree with me on this, given the largely high ratings this book has, but I really do not get the hype at all. Overall, I was mostly confused, bored, and so ready for it to be over.

WARNING: Do not read this review if you love this book because I know I'm very much in the minority with how I felt about it. Don't @ me if you love this book and still read this review because I have a lot of feelings lol.

This book made me so angry. That was my first reaction when I finished the book. I just sat there and seethed because what in the ever-loving bloated, pretentious, purple prose that said nothing at all did I just read? If this wasn't a book that someone lent to me, I would have set it on fire. (Not really because book burning is bad, but I might have considered flinging it out a window!)

I truly could not really tell you very much about what this book was about. I got the general jist - two enemies from opposite sides of some sort of war writing letters to each other and falling in love, but that was...about as far as I got. I couldn't tell you anything about this war or why it was happening, the setting/world-building, the way that things work in this setting, what the characters were really like, or tbh, why they even fell in love. It seemed like one of the characters suddenly decided she was in love with the other one and it just went from there. There was no believable development or buildup to it at all. I didn't care about either of the characters in any way because the authors never gave me a path to care about them. Basically, I have nothing I can really write about in review because the authors gave me nothing except for pretty words that barely made sense.

This book basically just ran on vibes rather than anything solid and I feel like the authors should have just written a poem if that's what they wanted to do rather than put this out as a story, because it barely felt like a finished novel. The last...maybe 25% of the book got a little better (which isn't saying much given how I felt about the whole thing) just because stuff actually was happening rather than just vibes. tbf, all that stuff was still written in the most pretentious way possible, but at least something happened.

As I'm writing this review, I think that maybe this book made me this angry because of how pretentious it felt. It felt like the authors were flaunting how clever and lyrical their writing was rather than focusing on writing a readable or engaging book. Clearly, most people do not agree with me on this, given the largely high ratings this book has, but I really do not get the hype at all. Overall, I was mostly confused, bored, and so ready for it to be over.

WARNING: Do not read this review if you love this book because I know I'm very much in the minority with how I felt about it. Don't @ me if you love this book and still read this review because I have a lot of feelings lol.

This book made me so angry. That was my first reaction when I finished the book. I just sat there and seethed because what in the ever-loving bloated, pretentious, purple prose that said nothing at all did I just read? If this wasn't a book that someone lent to me, I would have set it on fire. (Not really because book burning is bad, but I might have considered flinging it out a window!)

I truly could not really tell you very much about what this book was about. I got the general jist - two enemies from opposite sides of some sort of war writing letters to each other and falling in love, but that was...about as far as I got. I couldn't tell you anything about this war or why it was happening, the setting/world-building, the way that things work in this setting, what the characters were really like, or tbh, why they even fell in love. It seemed like one of the characters suddenly decided she was in love with the other one and it just went from there. There was no believable development or buildup to it at all. I didn't care about either of the characters in any way because the authors never gave me a path to care about them. Basically, I have nothing I can really write about in review because the authors gave me nothing except for pretty words that barely made sense.

This book basically just ran on vibes rather than anything solid and I feel like the authors should have just written a poem if that's what they wanted to do rather than put this out as a story, because it barely felt like a finished novel. The last...maybe 25% of the book got a little better (which isn't saying much given how I felt about the whole thing) just because stuff actually was happening rather than just vibes. tbf, all that stuff was still written in the most pretentious way possible, but at least something happened.

As I'm writing this review, I think that maybe this book made me this angry because of how pretentious it felt. It felt like the authors were flaunting how clever and lyrical their writing was rather than focusing on writing a readable or engaging book. Clearly, most people do not agree with me on this, given the largely high ratings this book has, but I really do not get the hype at all. Overall, I was mostly confused, bored, and so ready for it to be over.

WARNING: Do not read this review if you love this book because I know I'm very much in the minority with how I felt about it. Don't @ me if you love this book and still read this review because I have a lot of feelings lol.

This book made me so angry. That was my first reaction when I finished the book. I just sat there and seethed because what in the ever-loving bloated, pretentious, purple prose that said nothing at all did I just read? If this wasn't a book that someone lent to me, I would have set it on fire. (Not really because book burning is bad, but I might have considered flinging it out a window!)

I truly could not really tell you very much about what this book was about. I got the general jist - two enemies from opposite sides of some sort of war writing letters to each other and falling in love, but that was...about as far as I got. I couldn't tell you anything about this war or why it was happening, the setting/world-building, the way that things work in this setting, what the characters were really like, or tbh, why they even fell in love. It seemed like one of the characters suddenly decided she was in love with the other one and it just went from there. There was no believable development or buildup to it at all. I didn't care about either of the characters in any way because the authors never gave me a path to care about them. Basically, I have nothing I can really write about in review because the authors gave me nothing except for pretty words that barely made sense.

This book basically just ran on vibes rather than anything solid and I feel like the authors should have just written a poem if that's what they wanted to do rather than put this out as a story, because it barely felt like a finished novel. The last...maybe 25% of the book got a little better (which isn't saying much given how I felt about the whole thing) just because stuff actually was happening rather than just vibes. tbf, all that stuff was still written in the most pretentious way possible, but at least something happened.

As I'm writing this review, I think that maybe this book made me this angry because of how pretentious it felt. It felt like the authors were flaunting how clever and lyrical their writing was rather than focusing on writing a readable or engaging book. Clearly, most people do not agree with me on this, given the largely high ratings this book has, but I really do not get the hype at all. Overall, I was mostly confused, bored, and so ready for it to be over.

This book is like an epic lucid dream

You don't think about it too hard, you go along for the ride, and at the end you feel something.

[warning- this book contains: yearning and poetic prose]

🎧was only able to listen to it this time around but would for sure reread it with 👀 if only to annotate and enjoy it all again. 🌃🌇

"she wants there to be a god, so she can curse her." i love being confused <3 ps pps SAMARKAND MENTIONED 🤩

WARNING: Do not read this review if you love this book because I know I'm very much in the minority with how I felt about it. Don't @ me if you love this book and still read this review because I have a lot of feelings lol.

This book made me so angry. That was my first reaction when I finished the book. I just sat there and seethed because what in the ever-loving bloated, pretentious, purple prose that said nothing at all did I just read? If this wasn't a book that someone lent to me, I would have set it on fire. (Not really because book burning is bad, but I might have considered flinging it out a window!)

I truly could not really tell you very much about what this book was about. I got the general jist - two enemies from opposite sides of some sort of war writing letters to each other and falling in love, but that was...about as far as I got. I couldn't tell you anything about this war or why it was happening, the setting/world-building, the way that things work in this setting, what the characters were really like, or tbh, why they even fell in love. It seemed like one of the characters suddenly decided she was in love with the other one and it just went from there. There was no believable development or buildup to it at all. I didn't care about either of the characters in any way because the authors never gave me a path to care about them. Basically, I have nothing I can really write about in review because the authors gave me nothing except for pretty words that barely made sense.

This book basically just ran on vibes rather than anything solid and I feel like the authors should have just written a poem if that's what they wanted to do rather than put this out as a story, because it barely felt like a finished novel. The last...maybe 25% of the book got a little better (which isn't saying much given how I felt about the whole thing) just because stuff actually was happening rather than just vibes. tbf, all that stuff was still written in the most pretentious way possible, but at least something happened.

As I'm writing this review, I think that maybe this book made me this angry because of how pretentious it felt. It felt like the authors were flaunting how clever and lyrical their writing was rather than focusing on writing a readable or engaging book. Clearly, most people do not agree with me on this, given the largely high ratings this book has, but I really do not get the hype at all. Overall, I was mostly confused, bored, and so ready for it to be over.

Bigolas Dickolas lied to me 🫩 Don't ask me what this book was about because idk tbh

This felt like a pretentious book, with pretentious prose as well. The story was not engaging, because we lack so much context clues, and depth in regard to the world building. The story itself is vague, and confusing, to shift the focus on the 2 MCs.

I was lost in sentences after sentences, full of metaphors or flowery writing, lyrical genius that flew past my brain and symbolism that bore me to no end!!! I wondered, when will it end? Lol

At some point, I gave up trying to understand whatever the heck I was reading, because it was clearly not the point anyway. It was easier to keep going this way.

I tried to focus on the romance but even that was not interesting enough for me since I stopped caring 😭

I'm going to preface this by saying that this book wasn't for me. I received it as a gift, and I don't tend to read a lot of science fiction or of romance. I decided to push through and finish it because a) I am a completionist and b) it's in two quests I'm in (both of which, full disclosure, I joined for purely aesthetic reasons), but I didn't enjoy it partly because it simply isn't the sort of thing I enjoy. However, I do also think there are some real technical issues with this book that I'd like to address mostly because I feel like, as the consensus on this site seems to be that the language is lush and gorgeous and whatnot, I am taking fucking crazycuckoobananas pills and I'm sure I'm not the only one. So.

I think there are some things that this short novel does very well. Firstly, it is impressive in and of itself that two people managed to collaborate and complete a tonally cohesive book. It never felt disjointed, or off-kilter, or in any way messy or ill-conceived. It is a story entire, and I have to commend that. Secondly, sapphic literature is always nice to see. I don't really want to comment at length on the representation, because I don't think that should really come into my critique or praise of Time War. Not to get all up on my soapbox about it, but queer representation should just be a given (it's not, but it should be), so I'd like to treat that as neutrally as the rest of the world should be treating it, but you know. In this proverbial economy, I will acknowledge that it's nice that lesbians are written about. I will say, I liked the ending of the book (and that's all I'll say on the ending of the book).

As I mentioned, some of Time War just didn't work for me. I found the characterisation of the protagonists needlessly violent. Though I realise the universe was intentionally left vague and shadowy, those seeking more in-depth world-building should look elsewhere. The structure of the novel got a little boring at times, and I half-wish they would have just made it entirely epistolary. There are very few characters outside of Red and Blue (our two heroines), and I would have liked, in a book which is essentially Romeo and Juliet with time travel, to have seen more of the interpersonal relationships Purple (that's the ship name I made up just now) had outside of each other. You know, for emotional peril and stuff. That's all fine.

The prose I think is actively bad. Yes, it's poetic, yes, it's flowery, yes, you can post passages of it on Tumblr or take photos of your annotated pages for Pinterest, but it isn't good because it is so metaphorical it becomes opaque, obscuring the actual plot. Max Gladstone, writer of Red, is the worst for this. There were times when I had to reread his chapters because the prose was so freaking purple that I had not one single Scooby Doo what was going on, and I've been reading fucking classic 19th century lit since I was 9. I've read every single one of Edgar Allen Poe's stories and those are fucking florid but I at least knew what was going on. To get nit-picky, Gladstone's prose wasn't even that new or interesting, it was all off-beat metaphor, two short sentences make a paragraph, ten-dollar words and viscera viscera viscera! I didn't care for it at all.

Amal El-Mohtar's prose was better, but still had some issues. Both writers struggled to make the few action scenes feel real and dangerous behind their overwrought proses. There were no stakes, there was no fear, and I think this comes down to, and I'm just musing here, the fundamental differences between poetry and prose fiction. Both authors tried their darndest to roll the former into the latter, and I'm just not sure you can do that. Short-form poetry (epic poetry and novels-in-verse are a different matter) is often intended to convey emotional truth instead of literal events. It is supposed to make mundane or difficult or specific emotions beautiful, and by doing this, make them universal, shrouding them in mystery and leaving their intended meaning up to reader interpretation.

Obviously to an extent prose does this too, but prose writing cannot leave everything up to reader interpretation. We can argue for centuries about why the curtains are blue, but at the end of the third act Chekhov's gun still killed that poor bastard. It's okay to leave some aspects of plot up for debate, sure, some of the most famous works in the literary canon do that, but Time War's authors' attempts to make every fucking sentence a poem unto itself, to imbue every paragraph with that mystery means that the reader isn't entirely sure if even the smallest, most meaningless events even happened in the way they think they're reading it. All the action happens at arm's length, the characters feel less and less tangible, their letters read less like letters and more like clunky, unedited poetry.

Plus, it gets really fucking annoying to read.

In summary, and as always, read this book or don't, but this really wasn't my cup of tea and I do think it has some glaring technical issues. She's going off to my bookshare, unfortunately, and I don't think I'll seek out anything more from these authors unless I can be assured that their writing has improved.