This Is How You Lose the Time War

It's a weird one. The book is two genres - scifi and romance. Or more accurately, it is romance with a scifi setting. Unfortunately, the romance was weak, and I was more interested in the actual time war, which made this a chore to read. I don't particularly mind reading love burgeon through letters. It's just that the letters were a bit ridiculous and took themselves and words and metaphors too seriously. It felt very high school. Very try hard. But it did not feel romantic. And I was not convinced that two could fall in love through these letters.

Also, the two protagonists were too interchangeable. It felt like one person but with two character designs. They both work for evil agencies. they're both the best at what they do, they both have powers. But they felt like essentially the same person. It didn't help that I kept confusing their names - blue and red; it was not enough of a differentiator.

Also, almost every character was female or took the form of a woman. At first, I thought it was a world of women, which is fine, but this was not the case. I'm not sure what the reasoning behind this stylistic choice is, but I could not figure it out. This is more of a note than a criticism.

The scifi elements were easy enough to understand. There were nice metaphorical elements and thought experiments. They both touched each other's lives before their met. At times it was a bit disturbing. I don't know if I misunderstood this, but the tech one kissed the nature one when the nature one was still being grown, which is kinda gross.

Oh well.