Sometimes I think I'm not discriminating enough in my reading, especially of fiction. I tend to like most things I read. I can count on one hand — or maybe two — the number of books I've read that I despised, or had to stop reading because I disliked them so intensely.
Well, it just happened again, and in some ways it makes me feel better. I'm not a patsy for a pretty face, or an award-winner!
This time it was This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amar El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone. I picked it up because the edition I saw was beautiful, and it was the winner of the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus Awards for best novella. I did finish the story this time, because I wanted to make sure I wasn't missing something in how it would develop. Nope.
I have great patience for science fiction that throws you into the deep end of incomprehensibility. I've been reading the genre since I was 10. Generally, I catch on to the world the author is building at some point and that's all it takes.
But that never managed to happen for me with this story. Sometimes there were glimpses of it beginning to make sense, but I didn't care enough about the world or universe they were describing to try to figure it out. The writers were so wrapped up in their precious inter-textual cleverness and the epistolary form of the story that there was, as Gertrude Stein said, no there there.
I'm not a Goodreads member, but I do check it once in a while. This book had the most divergent reviews I think I've ever seen. It has many five-star reviews, but there are also a substantial number of one-star reviews, often with dozens and dozens of comments in agreement.
The fact that this story won those three awards makes me doubt the judgment of the people who award them.
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