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

This Is How You Lose The Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone.
Published 18th July 2019 by Jo Fletcher Books.
Read April 2019.

Among the ashes of a dying world, an agent of the Commandant 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, grows into something more. Something epic. Something romantic. Something that could change the past and the future.

Except the discovery of their bond would mean death for each of them. There's still a war going on, after all. And someone has to win that war. That's how war works. Right?

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This Is How You Lose The Time War is an epic love story, co-written by two award-winning science fiction/fantasy authors, Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone.

The story centres on two soldiers from opposing factions - Red from the Agency and Blue from the Garden - who are engaged in a war that spans both space and time. It is their mission to move back and forth between parallel realities in the multi-verse, and up and down different threads of time, manipulating the worlds they find in order to get an edge over the opposing side in the future. Sometimes their interventions are of a bloody nature, but at other times their tamperings are extremely subtle.

Red and Blue are both very skilled at what they do - both highly valued by their own opposing factions - but in the overall scheme of things, neither side seems to be gaining a lasting advantage over the other.

Over time, Red and Blue become aware of each other, among the multitude of other operatives, and this sparks a correspondence of sorts between them. These letters are of an unusual kind, made of the fabric of the realities in which they find themselves, as they have to exist in a form that must endure until they fall into the way of their opposite number, without being discovered by anyone else.

Their messages begin as a way to taunt each other, but they develop into something much deeper, and they end up sharing the most personal details about their lives and desires. In time, Red and Blue come to love each other and rely on their correspondence, even though they have only ever seen each other from afar, but they live in constant fear that their relationship will be discovered - and Red is sure that someone is watching her at every turn. Can two such different beings, who are on opposing sides in an eternal war ever have a future together? Well, I am not one for spoilers, so you will have to read this book to find out!

This Is How You Lose The Time War is a complex many layered novella that manages to pack an awful lot into its 209 pages. It is a lyrical,  and rich journey through time, which draws on myth and history to weave a magical backdrop for an intimate love story between two genetically enhanced agents of war.

I must admit that it is difficult to get your head round what is happening some of the time, as the story bats backwards and forwards between Red and Blue's messages to each other, but this did not actually matter one jot, because the connection between our two players is so utterly compelling - and it has to be said that the ways the messages are crafted between Red and Blue are particularly inventive and original. There is the most beautiful of twists towards the end of the story too, which left me breathless.

It is hard to classify this book as being in a particular genre, but I would say this is much more of a science fiction tale, rather that a fantasy novel, with an epic love story thrown in - and it ended all too soon. I was left wanting more and hope these two eminent authors put their heads together to produce another book soon.

About the authors:

Amal El-Mohtar

Amal El-Mohtar is an author, editor and critic. Her short story 'Seasons of Glass and Iron' won the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards and was a finalist for the World Fantasy, Sturgeon, Aurora, and Eugie Foster awards. She is the author of The Honey Month, a collection of poetry and prose written to the taste of twenty-eight different kinds of honey, and contributes criticism to NPR Books and The New York Times. Her fiction has most recently appeared on Tor.com and Uncanny Magazine, and in anthologies such as The Djinn Falls in Love & Other Stories and The Starlit Wood: New Fairy Tales. She is currently pursuing a PhD at Carleton University and teaches Creative Writing at the University of Ottawa.

Max Gladstone

Max Gladstone is the author of the Hugo-nominated Craft Sequence, which Patrick Rothfuss called 'stupefyingly good'. The sixth book, Ruin of Angels, was published in the US last year. His critically acclaimed short fiction has appeared on Tor.com and in Uncanny Magazine, and in anthologies such as XO Orpheus: Fifthy New Myths and The Starlit Wood: New Fairy Tales. John Crowley described Max as 'a true star of twenty-first-century fantasy'. Max has also sung at Carnegie Hall.