This is How You Lose the Time War

This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone (2019) 209 pages

I listened to the audiobook on Libby narrated by Cynthia Farrell and Emily Woo Zeller. Amal answers a reader's question on Goodreads about how the two authors divided the writing with "In brief, Max wrote all of Red and I wrote all of Blue." I struggled to follow the story and understand what was really happening in the early chapters of the book. It is a very abstract book with lots of poetic language and mind-bending multi-verse time jumps. The two main characters named Red and Blue are female time agents from two warring factions. If you are a fan of espionage stories, I wouldn't recommend this because the spy work of these two time agents is left pretty vague, or, at least, it is difficult to follow the thread of the consequences of their actions forward and backward through time. There are letters that Blue and Red send to each other in this short book, which start as taunts between competitors and turn into proclamations of love. Red's world includes many more references to human civilizations throughout history and has a sci-fi bent. Blue's world has many references to plants and animals and has a fantasy angle. Ultimately, I think this is really talking about the competition between humanity and nature through the millennia, and a star-crossed couple representing these two things begins to see value in each other.

 

When Will There Be Good News by Kate Atkinson

When Will There Be Good News by Kate Atkinson, 388 pages.

The third book of the Jackson Brodie quartet was, in my opinion, the best of a very good lot. One of my favorite books this year.
As with Atkinson's other Brodie books, there are several separate stories that overlap and are woven together. The book starts with a savage and seemingly random killing thirty years ago. Then, switching to the present, 16 year-old Reggie recently lost her mother and is trying to get by on her own. This is made more difficult than it should be by the continuous fallout from the activities of her older brother, a sociopath. Meanwhile, our hero, former soldier, police officer, and private investigator Jackson Brodie finds himself going the wrong way and into the path of everyone else in the story. Really one of the best of mysteries.

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The Heroes by Joe Abercrombie

The Heroes by Joe Abercrombie, Fantasy, 541 pages.

Abercrombie's latest takes place in the same world he created for his First Law trilogy, and continued in his previous stand-alone book, Best Served Cold. Many of the main characters in this book were in the First Law series. Some were major characters there, like Bayaz, Dog-Man, and Black Dow, and some were merely mentioned. Heroes takes place several years later and alliances have shifted. The Union is back to fighting the Northmen, though Monza Mercatto, the wonderful character from Best Served Cold, lurks in the background, far to the south, worrying the Union generals and the Council. This book, unlike Abercrombie's others doesn't venture far afield. The book takes place over a short period of time, and almost never wanders from the battlefield in and around one small fortified town, as three Union armies clash with Dow's Northmen. Abercrombie's characters make stupid decisions, falter when it is their turn to shine, and even when situations turn out in the best possible way, feel the very real disappointment of those who have seen their dreams collide with harsh realities. From the Lord Marshal of the King's army, to Black Dow, the Protector of the North, to Beck, a young man joining the fray in hopes of becoming a named man like his father, everyone who lives comes away knowing that heroes are mostly dead guys, and that nothing turns out quite like you thought it would. Bayaz is, again, the only one who learned this lesson a long time ago, and learned to profit from that knowledge. The characters, with all their quirks, and notions, and dashed hopes make this another great book by Abercrombie. Anyone waiting around for George R. R. Martin's next should be reading all of Joe Abercrombie's stuff while waiting.