Amal El-Mohtar

Max Gladstone

This is How You Lose the Time War

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.

This Is How You Lose the Time War

smile??

I loved you. That was true. With what's left of me I can't help but love you still.

I have been made a weapon, and they have plunged me into your heart.

I love you. I love you. I love you. I'll write it in waves. In skies. In my heart. You'll never see, but you will know. I'll be all the poets, I'll kill them all and take each one's place in turn, and every time love's written in all the strands it will be to you.

I want to meet you in every place I have loved.

I want to be a body for you. I want to chase you, find you, I want to be eluded and teased and adored; I want to be defeated and victorious — I want you to cut me, sharpen me. I want to drink tea beside you in ten years or a thousand. Flowers grow far away on a planet they'll call Cephalus, and these flowers bloom once a century, when the living star and its black hole binary enter conjunction. I want to fix you a bouquet of them, gathered across eight hundred thousand years, so you can draw our whole engagement in a single breath, all the ages we've shaped together.

Memory is tipped and decanted into Garden, life to life to life, always deepening, thickening, growing new roots and efficiencies — but Red's letters she keeps in her own body, curled beneath her tongue like coins, printed into her fingers' tips, between the lines of her palms. She presses them against her teeth before kissing her marks, reads them over when she shifts her grip on motorcycle handles, dusts soldiers' chins with them in bar fights and barracks games. She thinks without thinking, often, of what she will name Red in her next letter — hides her lists in plausibly deniable dreamscapes, on the undersides of milkweed leaves, in shed chrysalis and wingtip. Vermillion Lie. Scarlet Tanager. Parthian Thread. My Red, Red Rose.

So I go. I travel farther and faster and harder than most, and I read, and I write, and I love cities. To be alone in a crowd, apart and belonging, to have distance between what I see and what I am.

There's a kind of time travel in letters, isn't there? I imagine you laughing at my small joke; I imagine you groaning; I imagine you throwing my words away. Do I have you still? Do I address empty air and the flies that will eat this carcass? You could leave me for five years, you could return never — and I have to write the rest of this not knowing.

I must tell you it gives me great pleasure to think of you reading these words in licks and whorls of flame, your eyes unable to work backwards, unable to keep the letters on a page; instead you must absorb them, admit them into your memory. In order to recall them you must seek my presence in your thoughts, tangled among them like sunlight in water. In order to report my words to your superiors you must admit yourself already infiltrated, another casualty of this most unfortunate day.

One spared life might be worth more to the other side than all the blood that stained Red's hands today. A fugitive becomes a queen or a scientist or, worse, a poet.

GIRL. THE SHADOW IS HER. OF COURSE OH MY GOSH IT’S GENIUS

Madelaine Jarcew

They didn’t know they were being watched yet, of course. Only rough precautions taken. She emerges from the shadow of a broken gunship and stares into the sky of a world they wrecked and left.

i going to explode. this letter is so raw and so sad.

What will I do, sky? Lake, what? Bluebird, iris, ultramarine, how can there be more when this is done? But it will never end—that’s the answer. There is always us.

Dearest, deepest Blue— At the end as at the start, and through all the in-betweens, I love you.

But when I think of you, I want to be alone together. I want to strive against and for. I want to live in contact. I want to be a context for you, and you for me.

I love you, and I love you, and I want to find out what that means together.

this is insane. like SO heart wrenching, earth shattering.

So in this letter I am yours. Not Garden’s not your mission’s, but yours, alone.

I am yours in other ways as well: yours as I watch the world for your signs, apophenic as a haruspex; yours as I debate methods, motives, chances of delivery; yours as I review your words by their sequence, their sound, smell, taste, taking care no one memory of them becomes too worn. Yours.

seeing the subtle ways the air/contents/vibes of their letters change every time is sooo good. this is real yearning.

There’s a kind of time travel in letters, isn’t there? I imagine you laughing at my small joke; I imagine you groaning; I imagine you throwing my words away. Do I have you still?

Sabrina D. 

Adventure works in any strand—it calls to those who care more for living than for their lives. 

mia esme hsu

“A fugitive becomes a queen or a scientist or, worse, a poet. ”

sofia 🪆

In the rings of trees. In the wreckage of a planet crumbling to space. In bubbling water. In bee stings and dragonfly wings, in stars. In the depths of lonely woods where I wandered in my youth, staring up—and even then you watched me. You slid back through my life, and I have known you since before I knew you.

Larissa Campos

When you said you wouldn't write again, when you saidthat is the only letter of yours I've wanted to obliterate from myself. If I'm honest, that's part of why I took the bait. To be unmnade, that last written over-to be destroyed by you was easier, truly, than living with what you proposed.

"Garden doesn't deserve us. Nei- ther does the Agency." By us she means herself and Blue, wherever she may be, if in fact she is. She means all of them, all the ghosts on all the threads dying in this sick old war. Even this guard. Red gives her this truth, at the last. Maybe it will save her life. The guard throws her into the cell anyway.

Iloved you. That was true. With what's left of me I can't help but love you still This is how you win, Red: a long game, a subtle hand played well. You played me like a symphony, and I hope you won't mind my feeling a little proud of you for such a magnificent betrayal.

Dearest, deepest Blue- At the end as at the start, and through all the in-be- tweens, I love you. Red

I'm sorry. No. If we're this far, if you've been this selfish-I did not mean that. I would have fought you forever. I would have wrestled you through time. I would have turned you, and been turned. would do anything. I have done so much, and would have done as much again, and more. And yet here I am, a fool, writing you one last time, and here you are, a fool, reading me. We're one, at least, in folly. I hope you never read these words. I sicken to write them; I know how it will hurt you to reach this far. It is always too late to say what must be said. 

Relatively short, but packed an insane amount of emotional punch. 

Ashley Flitter

Weird. Poetic. Timeless. 

Relatively short, but packed an insane amount of emotional punch. 

- the worldbuilding is, as you may have guessed with the page count, a bit too dense for the container it's being poured into. far too much exposition constantly dumped on and far too little time to actually sit and understand what you're given

- the letters and the romance are really the 

shining qualities but oh boy do they shine. some of the most heart wrenching prose about love that you’ll ever find in a modern day book

- godddddd the letters!!! 

- the worldbuilding is, as you may have guessed with the page count, a bit too dense for the container it's being poured into. far too much exposition constantly dumped on and far too little time to actually sit and understand what you're given

- the letters and the romance are really the only shining qualities but oh boy do they shine. some of the most heart wrenching prose about love that you’ll ever find in a modern day book

- 9/10

An incredible/unique lesbian sci-fi story

I might have to read this again. The language is beautiful, though sometimes hard to completely absorb (this might be because I listened instead of read). As a reader who likes to know things (e.g., character descriptions, setting, background), I had a hard time accepting the vague references to the context of the "time war." However, it is clear that the book's main focus is on the relationship between the two main characters, and here the poetic writing and imagery truly shine. I want more of both Red and Blue <3

Niza Contreras

I wanted to like it more than I did. At times beautiful, at times confusing, at times a poetry of love. A thorn in your side that you come to love just a little. A multi-colored tapestry. Worth reading. 

BC Hark

An absolute delight to read. The format is wonderful, and it is emotionally rich. I CRIED my eyes out. 

Chloe 

Someone referred to this as a “romance story with sci-fi set dressing” and that feels right \complimentary. The writing style was beautiful and I love the playful use of time travel in the story. 

Coley T

This Is How You Confuse the Hell Out of Me

“This Is How You Lose the Time War” has been sitting on my shelf (for like, a few days) like it holds the secrets of the universe. Apparently, those secrets are encrypted so hard that no amount of IT skills I have can decrypt the vault. I DNFed it 34min into the audiobook, cause I legit couldn't tell what was happening, or why anything mattered.

I don't know, but everyone's saying it is. I had more fun studying for my exam earlier (no, really I had the time of my life).

Did I, at any point, know what was going on?

I kept waiting... and waiting... and I thinking I'd have an 

 moment. But I had a “nah uh” moment. Over and over for 30 minutes. I don’t mind working for a story — but I need to feel like there's a story to work for.

If you loved it, I'm happy for you. Truly. I'm not here to yuck your yum.

I’m not even mad. Just confused. And not confused in a fun, "I can't wait to figure this out!" way. More in a “what just happened and why do I feel like I missed the prerequisite course” kind of way.

So no, I didn’t finish it. And no, I’m not going to lose sleep over it. But this 

Tali ⋆.˚🦋༘⋆

This Is How You Confuse the Hell Out of Me

“This Is How You Lose the Time War” has been sitting on my shelf (for like, a few days) like it holds the secrets of the universe. Apparently, those secrets are encrypted so hard that no amount of IT skills I have can decrypt the vault. I DNFed it 34min into the audiobook, cause I legit couldn't tell what was happening, or why anything mattered.

Is it poetic?
I don't know, but everyone's saying it is. I had more fun studying for my exam earlier (no, really I had the time of my life).

Is it lyrical?
Sure, what the hell.

Did I, at any point, know what was going on?
Absolutely not.

I kept waiting... and waiting... and I thinking I'd have an “aha” moment. But I had a “nah uh” moment. Over and over for 30 minutes. I don’t mind working for a story — but I need to feel like there's a story to work for.

If you loved it, I'm happy for you. Truly. I'm not here to yuck your yum.
I’m not even mad. Just confused. And not confused in a fun, "I can't wait to figure this out!" way. More in a “what just happened and why do I feel like I missed the prerequisite course” kind of way.

So no, I didn’t finish it. And no, I’m not going to lose sleep over it. But this is how you confuse the hell out of me.

Yearning. Loving. Losing. I loved this. Needed time to get into it, but was so greatly written. One of the best written Lovestorys I've read so far. They did such great worldbuilding without overexplaining. A Lot was left to imagine And i Loved that. Very vast but so deeply written. 

Celina Irena Kuhn

I still feel really confused having finished this book, but I thought the writing was stunning. I was constantly noting down quotes and pages that I thought were beautiful. A favourite line being ‘you slid back through my life, and I have known you since before I knew you’. 

I enjoyed the narrative of letters and the unfolding romance within these letters and across time. I just felt lost for like 70% of the plot. 

Beth Bartholomew

I still feel really confused having finished this book, but I thought the writing was stunning. I was constantly noting down quotes and pages that I thought were beautiful. A favourite line being ‘you slid back through my life, and I have known you since before I knew you’. 

I enjoyed the narrative of letters and the unfolding romance within these letters and across time. I just felt lost for like 70% of the plot. 

that girl that recommended this to me at the bookstore was right: tough the first few chapters out and it will make sense. this was beautiful and lyrical, the way it wrote imagery and concepts that should be all too outlandish felt familiar still, and warm. i can't remember the last time i read yearning like this and i would do it again, teary-eyed at a coffee shop.

HELL YEAH! Loved love love this book! It was captivating from the start! That twist? DID NOT see it coming?!? The love. The yearning. All so sweet and how it all came together in the end. I know people either love or hate this book and I’m soo glad I got to be on the side that loved it 🥰 

Sofia B

First of all, the book is refreshing. In the first half of the book I was confused because what was the war? Why are they having this war exactly. I disregarded it though cause clearly the authors are focused on showcasing the main characters and how are they're going against their agenda.

Now I have this theory of mine cause seeing the title, there's a specific phrase, 'time war'. This had me thinking that Red represents the future while Blue represents the past. There's a glaring evidence from Red using a pod and the sun as her food, using electronics to convey her letters too. While Blue is using paper. wax seals, typewriters, and nature for her letters. 

And about their powers, its seems that Red is able to go back to the past because the past had already happened and that's why she was able to go back and revive Blue once again. Blue, she can never get to the future since she represents the past. 

And the seeker, wow I called it. It's definitely Red herself who came back in time just to get some memory scraps of Blue. And she was able to revive her again just from the memory. 

I also love how in the end Blue said that being together this is how they will win and the title is This is how you lose the time war, by having opposing agents love each other. 

Although they can't really cross each other but they can dance around and cross over again and again because history repeats itself. The past will eventually show in the future but in another way like wars which is never ending. 

This book definitely isn't for everyone, some people won't get it because I feel like this is written just for the fun of it. And I like the idea. I read this by trying to understand how and the authors are writing it this way. And I enjoyed that so much. I can't give it a 5 star though because I wish some parts are explained clearly but maybe the story is up to the people to judge and this is mine. 

Spoilers alert before reading!

First of all, the book is refreshing. In the first half of the book I was confused because what was the war? Why are they having this war exactly. I disregarded it though cause clearly the authors are focused on showcasing the main characters and how are they're going against their agenda.

Now I have this theory of mine cause seeing the title, there's a specific phrase, 'time war'. This had me thinking that Red represents the future while Blue represents the past. There's a glaring evidence from Red using a pod and the sun as her food, using electronics to convey her letters too. While Blue is using paper. wax seals, typewriters, and nature for her letters. 

And about their powers, its seems that Red is able to go back to the past because the past had already happened and that's why she was able to go back and revive Blue once again. Blue, she can never get to the future since she represents the past. 

And the seeker, wow I called it. It's definitely Red herself who came back in time just to get some memory scraps of Blue. And she was able to revive her again just from the memory. 

I also love how in the end Blue said that being together this is how they will win and the title is This is how you lose the time war, by having opposing agents love each other. 

Although they can't really cross each other but they can dance around and cross over again and again because history repeats itself. The past will eventually show in the future but in another way like wars which is never ending. 

This book definitely isn't for everyone, some people won't get it because I feel like this is written just for the fun of it. And I like the idea. I read this by trying to understand how and the authors are writing it this way. And I enjoyed that so much. I can't give it a 5 star though because I wish some parts are explained clearly but maybe the story is up to the people to judge and this is mine. 

Decided to complicate my own life by reading it in English and that's why the beginning was a little bit hard for me, however the story was so compelling that I pushed through my linguistic difficulties. I loved this book so much, it moved me in a way no book has recently. Soooo recommended 

Emma

Finnegan Cole

This excellent book is an explosion of  ideas, and it’s so wonderfully written. The ways B and R get to read each others letters reach a next level of creativity! I just love them. 

Barbara

Enchanting, addictive, unique love story. 

Maria Fernanda Arnay

Good world building without getting too caught up in the details; this is not hard sci-fi in that way. 

It is a high concept love story and I was very here for it! 

Also, in the words of the great Roy Kent, "you can't put it down because the chapters are so short!"

Liam Richardson

I really enjoyed this book. 

Good world building without getting too caught up in the details; this is not hard sci-fi in that way. 

It is a high concept love story and I was very here for it! 

Also, in the words of the great Roy Kent, "you can't put it down because the chapters are so short!"

It's confusing, there isn't a sequence in the history. However, the poetry in chasing is wonderful.

Martin Morales

it has been a long while since i had a book bring me to snot and tears and this one did it! 

the writing and the prose was beautiful and the imagery was astounding. i love the feeling of love and to be able to feel and read interest grow into this all consuming love between red and blue was…it was amazing! 

this is a book i will wish i can go back and read for the first time for the rest of my life. 

K.K. Jane

it has been a long while since i had a book bring me to snot and tears and this one did it! 

the writing and the prose was beautiful and the imagery was astounding. i love the feeling of love and to be able to feel and read interest grow into this all consuming love between red and blue was…it was amazing! 

this is a book i will wish i can go back and read for the first time for the rest of my life. 

Eu também morreria envenenada se a única forma de ler as palavras Dela fosse através da morte. Especialmente sabendo que seu amor juvenil e preparado seria o antídoto, que nossas escolhas estão tão interligadas que não existe guerra que não possamos vencer apenas criando pontes que ninguém mais sabe.

Antídoto esse que a minha amada me daria arriscando sua vida e aceitando o destino de passar o resto dos seus dias na cadeia. Seus dias na cadeia que eu assombraria com mais cartas minhas, mostrando que nunca acaba.

Me encontro sem ar e depois de muito soluçar, certa de que cartas são uma das coisas mais valiosas em um amor intenso, cartas essas que não precisam ser palavras para serem sentidas na pele, no vento, na natureza, em uma semente no dente. 

Eu também morreria envenenada se a única forma de ler as palavras Dela fosse através da morte. Especialmente sabendo que seu amor juvenil e preparado seria o antídoto, que nossas escolhas estão tão interligadas que não existe guerra que não possamos vencer apenas criando pontes que ninguém mais sabe.

Antídoto esse que a minha amada me daria arriscando sua vida e aceitando o destino de passar o resto dos seus dias na cadeia. Seus dias na cadeia que eu assombraria com mais cartas minhas, mostrando que nunca acaba.

Me encontro sem ar e depois de muito soluçar, certa de que cartas são uma das coisas mais valiosas em um amor intenso, cartas essas que não precisam ser palavras para serem sentidas na pele, no vento, na natureza, em uma semente no dente. 

beautiful prose but very difficult to read as a first-time narrative :c but its merit probably rests on being very very very second read–worthy, even if only to keep unboxing this very layered (but vague!) novel. i liked the slight references to history tho (which i think would also benefit from a re-read)

Mika

It’s confusing. But I enjoyed the tangle of confusion as it goes. Poetic, might even be too flowery. Deserves a second read. 

This is How You Lose the Time War

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