This Is How You Lose the Time War

by Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone

Science Fiction

Romance

Time Travel

209 Pages

"This book is pure poetry disguised as science fiction—every sentence is gorgeous and the romance will break your heart in the best way."

Synopsis

Red and Blue are elite agents on opposite sides of a time war that spans across centuries and realities. Red works for the Agency, a faction that favors technology and industrial progress, while Blue serves the Garden, which champions organic growth and natural evolution. Both sides send agents through time to manipulate key moments in history, each trying to ensure their vision of the future comes to pass. When Red leaves a taunting message for her rival after a successful mission, Blue responds in kind, beginning a correspondence that evolves from professional rivalry to something far more dangerous. This Is How You Lose the Time War unfolds through their exchanged letters, hidden in everything from tree rings to quantum entanglements, as Red and Blue reveal their thoughts, fears, and growing fascination with each other. As their relationship deepens from antagonism to understanding to love, both agents must grapple with the reality that their feelings constitute the ultimate betrayal of their respective causes. The novel explores themes of identity, loyalty, and the transformative power of connection across seemingly impossible divides. When their correspondence is discovered, Red and Blue face a terrible choice between duty and love, leading to a climax that questions whether any force—even time itself—can ultimately keep two souls apart.

Our Take

Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone have created a stunning collaborative work that elevates both science fiction and romance through sheer linguistic beauty and emotional sophistication. Their prose reads like poetry, with each sentence carefully crafted to convey both the vastness of their time-spanning concept and the intimacy of a love story told through letters. What makes this novella exceptional is how it uses the epistolary format to create genuine character development and emotional stakes despite its brief length. Readers who loved The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo will appreciate the epic romance that transcends conventional boundaries, while fans of Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro will connect with the beautiful, almost alien perspective on love and identity. Like Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel, this book uses speculative elements to explore deeply human themes of connection and meaning. The collaboration between El-Mohtar's poetic sensibilities and Gladstone's world-building expertise results in something truly unique in genre fiction. This is essential reading for anyone who believes science fiction can be both intellectually challenging and emotionally devastating, proving that the best speculative fiction uses extraordinary circumstances to reveal universal truths about love, loyalty, and what it means to truly know another person.