HUGO AWARD WINNER: BEST NOVELLA NEBULA AND LOCUS AWARDS WINNER: BEST NOVELLA “[An] exquisitely crafted tale…Part epistolary romance, part mind-blowing science fiction adventure, this dazzling story unfolds bit by bit, revealing layers of meaning as it plays with cause and effect, wildly imaginative technologies, and increasingly intricate wordplay…This short novel warrants multiple readings … short novel warrants multiple readings to fully unlock its complexities.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review).
From award-winning authors Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone comes an enthralling, romantic novel spanning time and space about two time-traveling rivals who fall in love and must change the past to ensure their future.
Among the ashes of a dying world, an agent of the Commandment finds a letter. It reads: Burn before reading.
Thus begins an unlikely correspondence between two rival agents hellbent on securing the best possible future for their warring factions. Now, what began as a taunt, a battlefield boast, becomes something more. Something epic. Something romantic. Something that could change the past and the future.
Except the discovery of their bond would mean the death of each of them. There’s still a war going on, after all. And someone has to win. That’s how war works, right?
Cowritten by two beloved and award-winning sci-fi writers, This Is How You Lose the Time War is an epic love story spanning time and space.
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Where to even start…this is such a different type of book for me. It took me a bit before I caught the flow and really got into it. It’s hard because you are dropped into the middle of a war, without any back story, without knowing who Red & Blue are, likewise not knowing what roles the Garden and the Agency play in this war.
What you come to find is that somehow, during this time travel war, Red & Blue have fallen in love. They go against their respective leaders and send letters to each other, while the love deepens and blooms. How or why they fall in love is up to the reader to interpret.
The language is flowery and beautiful, as to be expected with any love story. After reading this I wonder if a reread someday may reveal more. Although this is short, it definitely does not lack in content or in depth.
This is How You Lose the Time War is one of the most beautifully written books I’ve ever read. It’s original, imaginative, compelling, and any number of other positive adjectives I could list – everything I could have ever wanted in a book. After reading other reviews, my expectations for Time War were probably unreasonably high, but it exceeded every one of them.
In addition to the high quality writing, the enemies to lovers plotline manages to feel like the best sort of slow burn – no small feat for a novella.
I’m honestly still at a loss for words to adequately describe how much I loved this book. It was painfully beautiful and unlike anything I’ve ever read before. Please read this book.
In a world of too much same-old same-old, this book stands out as wholly original. Poetic, strange, continually surprising, this SF time travel love story is an extraordinary collaboration between two gifted authors. Not for everyone, but I just bought two copies for gifts.
This was a great little listen. I heard it recommended on an episode of The Incomparable, and immediately picked up the audio book. Beautifully wrought, poetic, and surprising.
Two agents travel through time and start writing letters to each other. At first they are just taunts and challenges, but slowly, they get to know each other and fall in love. They work for opposite sides in the time war and if they get found out, it will be the end for both of them.
This novel is so compelling! The writing is evocative and clever. The characterisation is restrained, but that’s part of who they are – both are highly trained operatives, spies, if you like.
I grabbed the book because of the premise and loved every minute of it.
This is one of those books that only comes along once in a long while. It is poetic, deep, lush, violent, and lovely. The combination of El-Mohtar and Gladstone blends together in a rich story, especially for being so short. I wanted to keep reading when it ended, even though I knew it couldn’t go on. I will definitely be recommending this for the 2020 Hugos.
The two warriors traveled through time to jump right off the page at me. “Blue” and “Red” came alive for me: their cause, their culture, and their friendship. I’d recommend to any SciFi reader.
Yes, the style tends to be a little poetic, but give the story a try. You won’t know what you’re missing until you get a taste. Then you won’t be able to put it down.
The first chapter pulled me in but just could not get past all the flowery wording in the letters. “My viny-hiney elfworld, as you say, versus your techy-mechy dystopia.” (36). The plot, if there was one, I could to figure out except Red and Blue were falling in love. Maybe it was the epistolary format but I have read books in that format and enjoyed them. I just cannot pinpoint the problem to just one focus. I like time-travel so that is not an issue. Red and Blue trying to kill each other but falling in love? Red and Blue are agents of what? The world is such an abominable time yet all the flowery words did not match. The way the book began, I was thinking “Terminator”. Thanks to Bookish First, the publisher, and the authors for the opportunity to read this book. Just wish I would have like this one more.
Save me from non-traditional narratives please… When, oh when, will I learn that they aren’t for me?! I try and try, but always struggle. It’s ABSOLUTELY a case of “it’s not you, it’s me” – especially here.
I was so excited by this one, the blurb and the excerpt grabbed me right from the first time I saw them. The writing was poetic and lovely and the plot was a very clever construct in a field – time travel – that is rapidly becoming overpopulated and repetitive. But I struggled with it from the second time interlude on, and ultimately had to admit it wasn’t for me.
This is wholly original, I will grant the authors that. And the writing is gorgeous, if your taste tends toward flowery Victoriana… But the non-traditional narrative format just never engaged me enough to allow me to connect with the characters or their burgeoning relationship. The prose in their letters back and forth was admittedly lovely, and the word games and verbal sparring were cool – up to a point. Then the overly dramatic, overly descriptive, and frankly overblown language started to lose me. It didn’t help that there’s never any backstory provided and I had the feeling I was stepping into a river midstream throughout as much of the book as I was able to read…
This one just wasn’t a good fit for me.
Thanks to BookishFirst for my raffle copy of this book.
I have never read a book like it. A heartbreaking, innovative, sensually written epistolary sci-fi epic poem novel. Please read it. It will change your idea of what a novel can be.
Imagine you are an agent of the time war. Now imagine you fall in love with an enemy agent.
I don’t even know how to put my thoughts on this book into words (which is, all things considered, ironic, on multiple fronts), but I do know that my eyes welled and my throat caught and my mind lingers over the pages with ecstasy and melancholy.
(I really fucking loved it okay.)
I stopped reading this book after four chapters. Luckily it was a library book and cost me nothing. Don’t let my review deter you from trying this book, however.
This book was different for me. But I enjoyed it caught me up in it at the beginning and I had to sit and read it all to find out how it would actually end. this was a Sci Fi, time travel, war, f/f romance but was tastefully written with good world development. Great characters and storyline loved the cat and mouse between characters. Well worth reading
This was a simple written dialogue between two women. I didn’t enjoying and only got half way through the book before unmoved on to something else.
This is a book that’s as impossible to describe as it is to fully understand – and I mean both of those in the best way possible. Still, I’ll try my best.
So. There’s a time war. It’s only ever implied, not explained, who the two sides are, what they’re fighting about, and how the war works. This bothered me at first, but eventually I didn’t mind it. (I feel like that’s what a lot of this review is going to be saying – things that I didn’t like at first but later got used to or came to appreciate. Bear with me.)
Two agents on opposite sides of the war strike up a correspondence, which starts out as taunts as they cleverly foil each other’s plans, then gradually turns into an incomparable, unforgettable love story through time and space.
Have I convinced you to read this yet? No? Let’s keep going.
This is the kind of book that you have to work for in order to understand, but if you put that effort in, the reward is extraordinary. It requires patience. I’ll admit that I often struggle with complex worldbuilding, which is a major facet of this novel, so I spent the first quarter or so being extremely confused. (Luckily this is a short book – only 200 pages! – so that quarter didn’t last too long.) However, once I’d gotten used to it – or more accurately: accepted that I wasn’t going to get answers to every question – I found myself in love.
The story is told through both prose and the letters that Red and Blue, the two agents, leave for each other. I actually enjoyed the letter portions more, and there were moments when I wished the entire book had been told through letters – though eventually I appreciated both sections and saw why each was needed.
The writing is lush and poetic – sometimes a little too poetic for my taste – but undeniably beautiful. This is where rating books gets tricky, because so much of the reason I’m rating this book four stars comes down to personal preference (my struggle to understand the worldbuilding, my preference in writing style, etc.), even though this book is clearly a masterpiece. Despite my near-constant confusion, it made my heart do a lot of things, so make of that what you will.
This is a book about war and its inherent destruction, about the complexities of time travel and each person’s impact on the universe, about two women unlearning what they’ve been taught their entire lives and fighting for a future together – but most of all, it’s a love story. It’s the kind of sweeping, epic love story that makes you want to lie on the floor for an hour listening to “A Thousand Years” by Christina Perri on repeat with tears streaming down your face. (Not that I did this…obviously.)
“Love is what we have, against time and death, against all the powers ranged to crush us down.”
Even though there were things about this book that I would have changed if I wanted it to be perfect for me, I know that this is truly an incredible book that a lot of people are going to love. I read it weeks ago and I’m still thinking about it constantly. (Even now, reading through quotes I noted while deciding which ones to include in this review is making my heart ache.) Honestly, it’s one of those books that I wish I could study in a class so I could analyze each word and attempt to uncover every hidden secret that this book holds.
So if you’re willing to put a little effort in, this book will undoubtedly reward you with a beautiful, emotional sci-fi love story that defies every expectation!
“Dearest, deepest Blue– At the end as at the start, and through all the in-betweens, I love you.”
When I was a precocious lad of eight or nine summers, I read an adult novel called The Fan, by Bob Randall, and no, not The Fan which was made into a 1996 movie starring Robert DeNiro and Wesley Snipes. This story was actually turned into a film much earlier, in 1981 and stars Lauren Bacall, but I digress. The thing about Randall’s The Fan that has stayed with me for lo, these many many years is that it was my first brush with epistolary story-telling; that is, a story told almost exclusively as a series of letters or diary entries or through some other documentation, much in the way Dracula, which I read many years later, does with Jonathan Harker’s journal entries.
This is How You Lose the Time War is also an epistolary novel; though of a form closer to Dracula than to Mr. Randall’s work, in that The Fan is told entirely through letters whereas Dracula and How You Lose the Time War break up the letters with more straight forward story-telling. Time War (notice how I keep making the title shorter and shorter? It’s a mouthful) is the story of Red and Blue, two master mercenaries, each on the opposite side of the titular conflict, who begin leaving letters for one another up and down the time stream as they fight to undo the harm each believes the other is trying to perpetrate. The narrative never describes them as such, but the more I read, and the more weight the characters gave to one another’s names and colors, the more I pictured them in some sort of superhero costume, one in red, the other in blue. For all my distractions up and down the color palatte, however, the book isn’t about that, nor is it really about the Time War. It’s about two women, drawn together (in the loosest terms; they never actually meet) by loneliness and a shared search for meaning in a meaningless universe who find something together worth fighting for; something greater than the sum of their parts. It’s a great story, told in a brisk economical style that still manages to portray all the depth of feeling and discovery I believe the authors intended.
I’ve never read Ms El-Mohtar’s work before, though I do own an unopened copy of The Djinn Falls in Love, that I apparently need to get to and I got three books into Mr. Gladstone’s Craft Sequence before my interest fell by the wayside, but here the two authors (I assume one writing Red and one writing Blue, though I could be wrong) find an authorial voice together that is fresh, original and wholly worth the trouble. Whether you consider it a short read or just a quick one, This is How You Lose the Time War is worth time is takes to savor every page.
A time travel adventure that has as much humanity, grace, and love as it has temporal shenanigans, rewriting history, and temporal agents fighting to the death. Two days from now, you’ve already devoured it.
This story is not like my usual reads, it is unlike anything I have read before. A whole new way of world than the one I know that made for quite an enjoyable read. The story flowed well and had me guessing at times what could happen next. A slow building romance that is mainly communicated through messages at various points of time. These messages are hidden that only either red or blue can find that have been left for each other even though they are on the opposites sides of the war. One is on the side of technology while the other is on the side of environment. This is a science fiction time travel masterpiece. I would recommend this book to others to read and while this is the first book I have read from this author I hope it will not be the last.
Red and Blue could not be more unalike; their names alone suggest as much. Their only commonality is that they are good at what they do; if fact, they are the best. Red is a member of the Agency, a technological society. Blue is part of the Garden, composed of organic matter. The Garden and the Agency are at war, across the strands of time, with no end in sight.
One day Red stumbles upon a letter that states, “burn before reading.” The relationship that follows between Red and Blue, through their letters to each other, pushes them both beyond their limits and their comfort zones, ultimately leading both characters to a major epiphany.
I thoroughly enjoyed this novel, from beginning to end. It definitely went in a different direction than I thought it would, based on an excerpt that I read, but that did not take away from my enjoyment.
I love the form in which the story is told, jumping from action, to letter, and back again. The forms the letters take are so creative, and all the different settings that Red and Blue find themselves leads to so much variety in the tale.
This Is How You Lose The Time War, to me, is a metaphor for our society today. It’s almost like people are in a fight with their electronics and technology. Technology is depended on, over people, too much today and we have forgotten where we came from. We need to find a balance; we need to find a Purple.
I received an ARC of This Is How You Lose The Time War in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.