This Is How You Lose the Time War (Review)

I finally finished this book last night and have been dying to talk to someone about it, but since none of my friends have read it I figured I’d do the next best thing and write a review. I’m no great reviewer, by the way. This book just needs to be talked about.

This Is How You Lose the Time War was my most anticipated read for this summer. It’s a novella co-written by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone (I’ve not read any of their previous work) about two agents working for opposite factions of a war to control the timeline.

This is a vast over-simplification of the situation, of course. The writing is interesting; nothing about the war is ever explicitly explained so everything that’s mentioned in the narration has to be parsed out by an intelligent reader. I think if I was more in the mood for a vague, lyrical science fiction I would have better understood what was going on. As it was, I spent most of the book confused about the specifics of what was happening with the war.

Honestly, though, that didn’t detract from the story, which isn’t actually about the particulars of this inter-dimensional war but rather the relationship between these two women. Each chapter is a scene followed by a letter, which one agent writes to the other in their battlefields. They never actually meet through most of the writing, so each letter is left behind where one knows the other will find it.

It’s such an interesting way to write a story. Half epistolary, half narrated, with a touch of mystery following both characters along the way (named Red and Blue, by the way, matching the birds on the cover. Very poetic).

The minor spoiler I will give is the spoiler than convinced me to read this book, which is the eventual romance between the two rival agents. It took the book literally making a Romeo and Juliet reference for me to realize that connection (it’s not a direct adaptation; the ending is different, though I won’t say how). Over the course of the story their battlefield taunts turn into genuine interest, and connection. In a war reaching further back than all human history, and out into every possible future, these agents spend millennia moving their chess pieces into place, and it’s terribly lonely work. The love that grows between them is subtle, at first, but I adored seeing how they got closer, and how this love plays out over time and realities.

It took me a week to get through this book solely because the lyrical narration made me sleepy every night (note to self: maybe trying to read a lyrical novel in snippets while trying to go to sleep each night wasn’t the best idea?) but now that I’m done I immediately want to reread it. I would, too, if the library didn’t need the book back for their other readers. It may not have been exactly what I expected but I highly recommend it for anyone who has an interest in unusual science fiction. And if you do, let me know, so I can have someone to talk to about it!