Until the End of Time by Nicky James
Published 2013 · 65,000 words · about 3 hours at an average pace · M/M Romance, Historical Romance, LGBTQ+ Fiction
How hard is Until the End of Time to read?
Until the End of Time scores 28 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it relatively accessible. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 35 out of 100
- Estimated for a self-published M/M historical romance: accessible contemporary romance vocabulary with a period gloss (magistrate, assizes, capital sentence, courtroom procedure) for 1827 England. Sits just above baseline commercial romance (The Love Hypothesis, 32) and well below a formal literary register like The Remains of the Day (38).
- Sentence structure: 32 out of 100
- Genre romance sentence structure built for pace and emotional immediacy, with some period-formal courtroom dialogue. Comparable to Beach Read / The Love Hypothesis (30) with a slight lift for the historical setting's speech patterns.
- Abstraction: 40 out of 100
- The premise carries real social weight — sodomy as a capital crime, a closeted magistrate sentencing men like himself — but the treatment is concrete and plot-driven rather than philosophical, closer to To Kill a Mockingbird's (45) ideas-through-events approach scaled down for genre romance.
- Information density: 32 out of 100
- Estimated light-to-moderate density typical of single-thread historical romance: courtroom and period detail establish stakes without the layered historical texture of literary historical fiction. In the range of Beach Read / The Love Hypothesis (30).
- Narrative indirection: 28 out of 100
- Romance convention favors direct access to characters' feelings and motives rather than withheld or unreliable narration; estimated near genre baseline (Beach Read / The Love Hypothesis, 30).
- Symbolic density: 34 out of 100
- The courtroom and the closet function as recurring symbols of judgment and concealment, giving this slightly more symbolic weight than pure escapist romance (Beach Read, 30) without approaching literary allegory.
- Ironic distance: 20 out of 100
- A sincere, high-stakes dramatic romance — a magistrate risking his career to save a condemned man — plays its danger and emotion straight. Placed below rom-com-adjacent genre baselines (The Love Hypothesis, 40) and near earnest dramatic romance (It Ends with Us, 35), but lower given the mortal stakes leave little room for irony.
- Resolution withholding: 20 out of 100
- M/M romance convention guarantees a happily-ever-after; estimated at genre floor alongside Beach Read / The Love Hypothesis (25).
- Structural complexity: 25 out of 100
- Standard linear historical-romance structure built around a single central relationship arc; comparable to Beach Read / It Ends with Us / The Love Hypothesis (28).
How Until the End of Time is regarded
Until the End of Time holds a literary regard score of 70 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.