paperback, 198 pages
Published July 18, 2019 by Jo Fletcher Books.
Two time-traveling agents from warring futures, working their way through the past, begin to exchange letters—and fall in love in this thrilling and romantic book from award-winning authors Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone.
In the ashes of a dying world, Red finds a letter marked “Burn before reading. Signed, Blue.”
So begins an unlikely correspondence between two rival agents in a war that stretches through the vast reaches of time and space.
Red belongs to the Agency, a post-singularity technotopia. Blue belongs to Garden, a single vast consciousness embedded in all organic matter. Their pasts are bloody and their futures mutually exclusive. They have nothing in common—save that they’re the best, and they’re alone.
Now what began as a battlefield boast grows into a dangerous game, one both Red and Blue are determined to win. Because winning’s what you do in war. Isn’t it?
A tour de force collaboration from …
Two time-traveling agents from warring futures, working their way through the past, begin to exchange letters—and fall in love in this thrilling and romantic book from award-winning authors Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone.
In the ashes of a dying world, Red finds a letter marked “Burn before reading. Signed, Blue.”
So begins an unlikely correspondence between two rival agents in a war that stretches through the vast reaches of time and space.
Red belongs to the Agency, a post-singularity technotopia. Blue belongs to Garden, a single vast consciousness embedded in all organic matter. Their pasts are bloody and their futures mutually exclusive. They have nothing in common—save that they’re the best, and they’re alone.
Now what began as a battlefield boast grows into a dangerous game, one both Red and Blue are determined to win. Because winning’s what you do in war. Isn’t it?
A tour de force collaboration from two powerhouse writers that spans the whole of time and space.
If you like books where you don't get all the answers, that aren't necessarily linear, and are more about prose and gut-wrenching heartache, you'll enjoy this book. It's art. If you don't like artsy books, you probably should pick something else to read.
I loved it.
I think I get it, it's jazz- two authors in an experimental flirtation. One author is scifi, the other enjoys regency epistolary romance. A cute experiment that never should have seen the light of day
The cringe. The prose is so awkward, so desperate. It's like Ready Player One, full of snide references- Do you get it? Do you see? Are you worthy of me & my enormous capacity for yellowing Tumblr memes & high-school literary reference?
Yeah, nah. Get in the bin.
I could not stop listening. This book is SO good. Intricate and lovely. Prose this delicious is rarely written.
"This is How You Lose the Time War" asks the reader to perch on the shoulders of two operatives on opposing sides of a time-traveling war.
Each chapter follows "Red" or "Blue" as they scurry up and down timelines and across dimensions. The book is both sweepingly broad and extremely contained and personal.
The settings flit by, dizzying: a temple for mechanized humans, an ancient holy cave, the assassination of Caesar - each sketched with broad, emotional strokes to give the setting an aesthetic. One gets the sense that a great web of cause and effect is being constantly constructed, altered, and destroyed, without ever seeing the full picture.
Against these backdrops, the characters "Red" and "Blue" write to each other - as nemeses, then as friends, ever deeper entangled even as they demolish each other's plans and forces. The letters make up an enormous part of the experience, and …
"This is How You Lose the Time War" asks the reader to perch on the shoulders of two operatives on opposing sides of a time-traveling war.
Each chapter follows "Red" or "Blue" as they scurry up and down timelines and across dimensions. The book is both sweepingly broad and extremely contained and personal.
The settings flit by, dizzying: a temple for mechanized humans, an ancient holy cave, the assassination of Caesar - each sketched with broad, emotional strokes to give the setting an aesthetic. One gets the sense that a great web of cause and effect is being constantly constructed, altered, and destroyed, without ever seeing the full picture.
Against these backdrops, the characters "Red" and "Blue" write to each other - as nemeses, then as friends, ever deeper entangled even as they demolish each other's plans and forces. The letters make up an enormous part of the experience, and they are comic, intimate... poignant. I didn't give a damn about the war - I just wanted these two characters to be alright.
I loved it. I stayed up past midnight every day I was reading, which wasn't long because I had to see what came next and kept reading.
Brilliant and beautiful. Wolfwood was right.
[20240430]
I forgot how wonderful the many and varied literary, historical, and cultural references are. Still loving this on the second read, and I can see myself reading this again and again.
[20240610]
Finished my second read through, and it was every bit as wonderful as the first. More? Just enough time had passed that I was entranced and delighted all over again at each of the witty quips, allusions, hints, and references (both internal and external).
Bigolas Dickolas was right.
Amazing, even after all the rave reviews and recent hype. It holds up and earns it all. An absolutely gorgeous story.
How do you have a love story between two beings separated by war, time and dimensions? With covert letters. They may be written in seeds or lava flows, but letters nevertheless.
I love this book so much. Just gorgeous in execution, and a story delightful in its telling.
This book deserved to be an overnight twitter sensation holy fuck. Splendid, vibrant, everything I could ever dream of all rolled into a beautiful bite-sized package.
Didn't understand a word of this book. Way too pedantic for me. But hey, if you gots more smarts than me, then give it a read! I caught glimpses of beauty and fantastic character development.
Took me a bit to come around to this. The early chapters are saddled with a lot of overcomplicated scifi world building and inexplicable pop-culture references, but once it shifts into being an earnest villains-to-lovers romance I was all in. I do not read enough violent and vulnerable love poetry so perhaps I am just starved for intimacy, but the way Red and Blue's brovado gets shelled as they realize they are falling for each other made me yearn for a similar connection the way all great romances do.
I am not particularly interested in picking apart the time travel for inconsistencies as the emotional impact works regardless of if I can make sense of the strands and ripples. The impression I get from talking with others is the stylistic moves and flowery ambiguity are fully love/hate, but I'm glad to fall in the former. Irrelevant in some ways, but …
It wasn't what I was expecting, more poetry than science-fiction. That said, it was an interesting read and had some twists I didn't see coming.
Once you start grasping some of the bigger picture, "This is how you lose the time war" is actually quite a ride.
The prose sure is beautiful but overly complex at some points, if you asked me.
The Sci-fi world which lies beneath is fascinating. This just wasn't the story to expand on it.
Glorified game of geocaching!
The first quarter reminded me of Doomsday Book and One Day All This Will Be Yours, and the last quarter reminded me of that Iain M. Banks book (I won't say which one because it would spoil either this or that if you haven't read both, but go read Culture (except for Consider Phlebas)).
The prose was everything I've come to expect from Max Gladstone, and now I'll have to try something else by El-Mohtar.
