This Is How You Lose the Time War

by Max Gladstone, Amal El-Mohtar

Hardcover, 201 pages

English language

Published July 16, 2019 by Simon and Schuster.

ISBN:: 978-1-5344-3100-3

(36 reviews)

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 …

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.

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.

5 editions

el dang reviewed This Is How You Lose the Time War by Max Gladstone

Weird and beautiful but not always up to its own ambition

4 stars

The letters that make up about half of this book are gorgeously written, and I love the story they tell. The basic idea of the time war is clever, and the descriptions of placetimes the characters find themselves in evocative, sometimes reminiscent of Calvino's Invisible Cities. I devoured this book in a few days.

And yet... something about it felt a little thin or hollow behind its fireworks. I think it was a good artistic choice to leave all technical details out, but I couldn't help but get hung up on the time paradoxes. Not that it's the authors' responsibility to necessarily avoid or solve them, but for me personally they intruded on the suspension of disbelief.

Tak! reviewed This Is How You Lose the Time War by Max Gladstone

This Is How You Lose The Time War

5 stars

The first quarter reminded me of Doomsday Book and One Day All This Will Be Yours, and the last quarter reminded me of that Iain M. Banks book (I won't say which one because it would spoil either this or that if you haven't read both, but go read Culture (except for Consider Phlebas)).

The prose was everything I've come to expect from Max Gladstone, and now I'll have to try something else by El-Mohtar.

Merovius reviewed This Is How You Lose the Time War by Max Gladstone

Review of 'This Is How You Lose the Time War' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

Hauntingly beautiful. A love-letter to the written word.

Rainer reviewed This Is How You Lose the Time War by Max Gladstone

Beautiful. Moving.

5 stars

Really loved this book. Its beautifully written. At times it felt like the writing was a bit heady and I struggled to actually understand what was happening, but thats my only complaint.

bookafnd reviewed This Is How You Lose the Time War by Max Gladstone

probably not for everyone, but it's very good

5 stars

it's a magical realist (?) romance in a science fiction Time War setting, an unusual choice, but one that works well, given how strange the consequences of warping causality would be. If you can get ahold of the audio book, it's pretty good, has different readers for Blue and Red.

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

Review of 'This is How You Lose the Time War' on 'Goodreads'

1 star

Just finished reading this book and I have no idea what the plot is. There's a character called Red and another one called Blue, and they like each other but are opposite sides in a war and... that's about it. I'm not even sure what the Time War was or how it's in any way connected to the title. There's nothing wrong with any given line of prose - the authors can clearly write well in that sense - but there's no character development (or characters for that matter, beyond Red/Blue), no story, no anything really.

I'm clearly missing something though as it's won lots of awards and has plenty of five star reviews. If you think you might like it, check out the charity shops in my area shortly as you'll be able to pick up a copy practically brand new for less than the £10 cover price.

Frank Burns reviewed This Is How You Lose the Time War by Max Gladstone

Review of 'This Is How You Lose the Time War' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

Exquisite. I could wax lyrical about how the authors took the traditional weakness of the collaborative novel and made it a strength. I could go on about how they made me enjoy a time travel story, not something I would normally do. I could rave about the pull of the interactions between the protagonists and how choice it was that this was the main plot engine. Let me just say instead that this is definitely recommended. If you read my reviews, you should read this.