THIS IS HOW YOU LOSE THE TIME WAR by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

(Original review written April 19, 2020)

A beautiful, heart-stopping and heart-aching course through the braids of time.

This book will make you want to be more creative. Choose better words, higher descriptions. To observe at a deeper level. And it will make you feel. How do you write a review for a book that's so expressive? It feels like saying "Hey, look at these worse words!" But here they are anyway.

I want to live in these pages, the technicolor explosions of senses and dreams. It's entrancing. Each sentence is poetry, splashing and crashing over you, while these adversaries attempt to outwit each other with their skills and wordplay. I absorbed it in two blink-and-they're-over sittings.

You're bombarded with images of space battles, prehistoric wildlife, planet-forming explosions, and corner cafe's, picked apart and described as if the atoms could talk. Moments in time are stops on the L train, windows of experience Red and Blue adapt to or have adapted already depending on how the hell time travel really works. Physics are irrelevant here. That boundary is broken in the most satiating way -- scenes that give your imagination a playground to dance in. It's Romeo and Juliet meets The Matrix with Bill and Ted's framework. And it's gratifying.

I took this in at a time when I'm attempting new lengths with my creativity, and that probably plays a part in how this intensely visual book struck me. I'm invigorated and inspired, just as Red and Blue find themselves as their correspondence continues on. Exceptional feelings to exit a book with.