This Is How You Lose the Time War

At the 62% mark, one of the protagonists writes, "I veer rhapsodic; my prose purples," and I boggled a little, because to my mind, that line had already been crossed about 70 pages earlier. This was made worse by the fact that I found the two protagonists' voices almost indistinguishable, and the non-epistolary parts of the prose similarly overwrought.

My impatience with the prose aside, this is pretty much the opposite of what I like in time travel stories. I prefer either a neat and precise exploration of the time travel mechanics and their implications, or stories that handwave the mechanics entirely in favor of getting on with the plot. The poetic and metaphorical time travel featured in this novella, by contrast, doesn't appeal to me at all.

There were things I did enjoy about the story (the nature of the opposing forces in the war; the shadowy figure stalking the protagonists through time; some aspects of the ending), but overall, it just wasn't for me.