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This is How You Lose the Time War

Max Gladstone, Amal El-Mohtar

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Essential science fiction reading

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 …

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.

paperback, 208 pages

Published July 18, 2019 by Jo Fletcher Books.

ISBN:: 978-1-5294-0523-1
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Reviews

Paranoid Fish reviewed This is How You Lose the Time War by Max Gladstone

Excellently crafted

4.0 stars

This novel leaves me a bit ambivalent. On one hand, its language is of outstanding beauty, though a little hard to read; you should have a thesaurus at hand. The text also has an enormous information density, so it’s important to read it very thoroughly. It is elaborately constructed like a good detective story, and from a purely aesthetic point of view, it’s a great piece of art. On the other hand I found the two time traveling agents quite unendearing, and their conniving attitude didn’t help to conjure up the romantic feelings advertised in the blurb. The killing of a pinniped (which is used as a pun and/or metaphor for “breaking the seal”) and other grim deeds made it difficult for me to find a connection to them. I don’t think a protagonist has to be likable, there are lots of counterexamples throughout literature, but I’m not sure if …

This novel leaves me a bit ambivalent. On one hand, its language is of outstanding beauty, though a little hard to read; you should have a thesaurus at hand. The text also has an enormous information density, so it’s important to read it very thoroughly. It is elaborately constructed like a good detective story, and from a purely aesthetic point of view, it’s a great piece of art. On the other hand I found the two time traveling agents quite unendearing, and their conniving attitude didn’t help to conjure up the romantic feelings advertised in the blurb. The killing of a pinniped (which is used as a pun and/or metaphor for “breaking the seal”) and other grim deeds made it difficult for me to find a connection to them. I don’t think a protagonist has to be likable, there are lots of counterexamples throughout literature, but I’m not sure if the authors did this intentionally here. The book is entertaining and well composed, but it didn’t evoke any compassion. Despite all criticism, I can still recommend „This Is How You Lose the Time War“, because the story is brilliantly told and excellently crafted.

(written without AI by a non-native speaker, any awkward formulations are all mine)

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February 26

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