This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

This is a fairly basic time-travel story told through correspondence. There is nothing especially novel about it and nothing in particular to recommend it. It is fairly abstract. The grand sweeps of a cosmic struggle are portrayed through vague poetic gestures. The interesting things happen at a great distance, and what happens in the foreground feels shallow and repetitious. It is not poetic enough to stand on language alone, and there is not much plot to speak of, so it just orbits itself for a while, like a montage, building to its inevitable conclusion.