This is How you Lose the Time War
This was the fifth or sixth time I’ve read this novella. I loved it. I linked an earlier review, and I stand by it. I decided to read it again today because I am in the middle of reading the ‘Old Kingdom’ series and I wanted a quick palate cleanser between larger novels.
I think this is a re-read, but for some reason I never did a review so here we go.
This is a review of Western Europe from about the fall of Rome to the Fall of Byzantium, aka 500 to 1500 AD. It goes broad, not deep. It discusses topics like the Black Death briefly, but not broadly. It discusses the Muslim Conquests for one or two chapters. It discusses cultural events like gothic architecture, art, literature and musical styles. It goes into stuff like the crusades. It discusses food, focusing more on everyday life for the rich rather than the poor but only because rich people are more likely to write stuff down so that’s what historians have today. It even discusses agriculture.
This is a good introduction to the topic. If you want to learn more, I see this is as a good place to start, learn the basics, and then do some research to go deeper. It is very, very basic; I’d say it’s high-school level, as opposed to being a college level course. But I would have loved to take this class in high school back in the day. If you already know a lot about the topic, you’ll probably not get much new, but for everyone else it’s pretty good.
John Mendez- Book Reviews and More 