Not Your Average Love Story

cover of the book "This is How You Lose the Time War"

I almost stopped reading This Is How You Lose the Time War by Max Gladstone and Amal El-Mohtar. I am very glad that I didn’t. I found it a little hard to get into. The language is what I would call “flowery” and poetic. And since the story is largely told through letters, learning about the world takes some investment. But the investment is worth it.

The love story is deep and complex while somehow being somewhat traditional despite it being between enemies. I am not a big fan of sappy romantic nonsense (that’s my description for absurd, unrealistic romantic ideas that pass for relationship stories). Some parts of this story gave me that feeling, but for reasons I can’t quite put my finger on I kept reading and lost that feeling.

In the end, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It isn’t for everyone, but if you are willing to explore an unusual story unusually told, this might be for you.

A Fun Series

The Murderbot diaries by Martha Wells is just flat out fun. It is about a cybernetic robot who gains consciousness and just wants to be let alone to watch his “stories”. But the universe and its humans have other ideas. Murderbot is snarky and despite avoiding humans comes to care about a few of them.

I’ve just started reading the sixth in the series, Fugitive Telemetry. Each book in the series is a short quick read. They are a combination of mystery and thriller. I thoroughly enjoy them and highly recommend them to others.

Mixed Bag But Good Ending

This morning I finished Supernova, the final book in the Renegade trilogy. Wow! What an ending! It was amazing. But the first half of the book had some really tortured plot twists. They felt a little forced. Not enough to ruin the book, though. They kept the story going. I found myself shaking my head, but I still wanted to see what happened. The last half of the book was relentless with the action. And the final resolution was amazing, topped only by the epilogue. Again… wow!

A Short Review

I finished reading Archenemies, and I loved it! It reminded me of how I felt when I watched The Empire Strikes Back. The story was full of action and twists. I was at the edge of my seat in anticipation; I couldn’t wait to see what would happen next. The end was a cliff hanger that left me wanting the next in the series right away. Fortunately, the next book has already been published so I don’t have to wait three year for the sequel like I did with Star Wars.

Difficult Questions

I am reading the second book of a young adult trilogy named after the first book of the series, Renegades. It is the story of a world where “prodigies” discover they have super powers. The world is very reminiscent of Marvel’s X-Men. The themes involved are very similar as well. What do we do about people who have powers? What does justice mean in such a world? Who gets to decide?

The story takes place in a city that ten years previous had suffered a great battle between the villains (known as the Anarchists) and superheroes (the Renegades). The Renegades won and now are trying to put the city back together and establish society and culture. The founding members form a council that runs the city and much of the world through a sort of police force of prodigies.

What makes this most interesting is that the story is very open about questioning what it means to be the good guy. The characters start to question why an unelected group of people get to make all the rules. It is clear through the characters that good and bad, hero and villain, are not two sides of the same coin but rather a spectrum. I haven’t yet finished the book, but I am thoroughly enjoying how the two main characters are starting to question who they are and what side they are on.

A Disappointing Issue

A human looking figure is surrounded by playing card sized objects in the air

I was disappointed by the January/February 2022 issue of Uncanny Magazine compared to my experience with the other issues I have read since subscribing in May of last year. None of the fiction in this issue really connected for me. I felt like too much was left unclear on the background of the stories. The topics were very interesting, but the execution left me feeling like the stories could have been improved.

The one piece that really grabbed me was “Gone with the Clones: How Confederate Soft Power Twisted the Star Wars Prequel Trilogy” (article available online starting Feb. 1). Briefly, the argument is that while the original Star Wars trilogy was based on WWII with the clear enemy being the Nazis and fascism, the prequels were based on the US Civil War, the meaning of which is much more messy due to the myth of the “Lost Cause”. The best part was the author’s amazing summary of how organizations like the Daughters of the Confederacy muddied the cause for the Confederacy from preserving slavery to a number of nebulous higher level ideas like states’ rights (states’ rights to do what?). Buying this issue is worth it just for this essay.

A Fantastic Read

Recently I was texting with my son. We were sharing what we like to read. He asked me if I was familiar with Brandon Sanderson. I told him the name sounded familiar but that I had never read anything by him. For the most part, he is an author of fantasy. Until recently, I haven’t cared much for fantasy. My son knows that, so he mentioned there is a logic to the magic in his books. But more than anything, he writes good characters. I was sold. For me, great characters almost make the story. It is hard to write people the reader cares about without putting them in a good story.

So I asked my son to recommend a good starting place to read some Brandon Sanderson. He recommended a fantasy story but then remembered a science fiction novel that he had written, the first of a series. I am a big sci fi fan, not mindless pulp, but the kind that explores ideas and people struggling with those ideas. My son recommended Skyward. I looked it up on Goodreads, read the description, and immediately got the ebook from my library and started reading. I just finished it. Wow!

When I started reading it, I texted by son to say that it felt like Top Gun in space. The story is about a young girl who wants to be a pilot but has all sorts of obstacles in her way. And the characters! I loved them. Even the ones I didn’t like were real enough that I cared about them. I wanted to know more about these people. Like all great fiction, I felt like I had found new friends. And for a week, I kept coming back to those friends as much as I could.

Whenever I am reading a book, I often find areas that fall flat to me, places where I need to reread a passage to understand what it said. That never happened in this book. In fact, I couldn’t find anything that I didn’t like about this book. And now that I have finished it, I can’t wait to start reading the sequel — Starsight. In fact, I think I’ll go start now. Happy reading!