Beautiful and Clever

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What a wonderful sci-fi/romance novella. It was beautiful and poetic and I feel like the description doesn't do it justice. You need to experience the story to know what it is really about.

We begin on a battlefield where Red has just emerged victorious. Within the death of the world, she finds a letter that reads "burn before reading," thus starting her correspondence with the enemy agent Blue. The relationship that forms between Red and Blue is the ultimate enemies to lovers and it made my heart soar. You could easily see their relationship evolving from taunting hatred to respect to friendship and then to love through their correspondence. It felt so natural and organic and beautiful. Not a huge fan of romance, but this relationship was just so well done.

The prose was a bit heavy at times, but I really think it worked for the story. Two highly intelligent beings would likely speak in this way, so it felt natural that the language extended to the exposition as well. If purple prose is a turn off, this book might not be for you...

Hardcore sci-fi readers might be disappointed if you love world building and explanations -- a lot of the world was intentionally left vague. All we really know is that Red works for the Agency, a technotopia focused on an orderly and uniform singularity, while Blue works for Garden, which appears to be a hive-mind that makes up organic matter. The two organizations are in a time war, braiding and unbraiding strands of time in order to ensure futures that match their ideals.

This novella was just so clever. The foreshadowing was woven into the story perfectly. There is so much symbolism and self-reference within the story that it definitely requires a second or even third read through. I definitely recommend this to readers who want a clever and poetic story (especially if you are looking for a f/f romance or anything that has to do with time travel and rich descriptions of alternate histories).