This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

 

I first heard about Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone's This is How You Lose the Time War from a YouTuber who loved it and highly recommended it a year or so ago. I loved the title and the premise sounded interesting to me, so I decided to give it a try. I included it as part of my 22 in 2022 Challenge, and I decided to pick it up this week.

The plot of the novel follows two female agents involved in opposite sides of a futuristic war. The agents, known only by their codenames Red and Blue, are both highly effective at what they do. They move backwards and forward through time making adjustments that shift the balance of the war in their favor. Their tasks range from the innocuous to the violent, and they've spent years locked in a covert battle, trying to undo each other's work up and down the timeline. At one point, Blue leaves a letter behind for Red to find, bragging about her work. Red writes a reply, doing the same. Soon, a correspondence develops between the pair.

As Red and Blue are on opposite sides of a very complex conflict, their letters to each other must remain a secret. If their superiors knew of their communication, they would be killed. As they grow closer and closer however, it becomes harder to hide. The two women soon fall desperately in love with each other, but they both know that the nature of their existence means that they can never be together. When their relationship begins to be discovered, they must embark on a desperate mission to try and save both of their lives.

At just 200 pages, this novella was a very unique reading experience. The real point of it was to get lost in El-Mohtar and Gladstone's beautiful language and bizarre imagery, not so much to understand everything they were saying. It's a good thing too, because the world that Red and Blue inhabit is bizarre. Specific details of how their universe works are never explained. We don't know the cause or goal of the time war, we never learn how time travel works, and we never learn exactly what Red and Blue are (because they aren't human). Trying to analyze the way their universe works is impossible, but the romance between the characters is understandable enough to carry the story while you marvel at the weirdness of everything around them. The amount of imagination packed into this story is astounding. I've never read anything else like it.

I definitely enjoyed reading this novel. The language was very flowery and pretty. It reminded me a lot of The Night Circus, which is one of my favorites, so I really enjoyed that aspect of the text. The relationship between Red and Blue was pretty to read as well, although I did think that their affection for each other developed a little too quickly. This was meant to be a short book though, so it's understandable in this circumstance. I was ultimately glad that the novel was short, because there wasn't enough time for the novelty of all the weirdness to wear off. If this was a full length story, I would have grown frustrated with the lack of specific details about the world. As it was, this was just enough to be intrigued with it without getting annoyed.

So overall, this was a weird and very cool reading experience, and I'm glad that I gave it a chance. It was interesting to explore something new and I enjoyed the story, strange as it was. This didn't make it to the level of a new favorite for me, but it was definitely a success!

Challenge Tally

22 in 2022: 7/22

Total Books Read in 2022: 31