This Is How You Lose the Time War
Why This Is How You Lose the Time War should be your next read?
The 2020 Hugo Award winner for Best Novella, the 2019 Nebula Award winner for Best Novella, the 2020 Locus Award winner for Best Novella, BSFA Award winner for Best Shorter Fiction, and the 2020 Ignyte Award winner for Best Novella; This Is How You Lose the Time War is a science fiction epistolary novella you should make your next read.
Red and Blue are two agents from the opposite sides in a time war. They go back and forth between times and historical events. They fix whatever needs to be fixed and destroy whatever needs to be destroyed for events to happen like they are supposed to happen. While doing their jobs, they also leave letters for each other.
We don't even know how these characters look. We just read the letters they write to each other and watch them go from enemies to lovers. The letters are beautifully written and poetic, and the ways they make the letters reach to one another are unique. The authors of the book, Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone, use creative ways for Red and Blue to send each other letters. For example, one of the letters was in a bird’s feather, while another one was in the growth of a tree’s rings. They try to hide their love while fighting to be together in the middle of a war.
Image: Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone
Gladstone wrote Red's letters while El-Mohtar wrote Blue's. The book uses natural elements and the concept of time to show us the love these characters have for each other.
This Is How You Lose the Time War is a love story. It is funny, sad, sarcastic, and meaningful at the same time. It has one of the most different worldbuildings I have ever encountered and has some complex and loveable characters. The plot of the book makes you feel so many things at the same time and you cannot put the book down once you find yourself in the time war Red and Blue are in.
Some quotes from the book:
“I have been birds and branches. I have been bees and wolves. I have been ether flooding the void between stars, tangling their breath into networks of song. I have been fish and plankton and humus, and all these have been me.”
“Red, I love you. Red, I will send you letters from everywhen telling you so. Letters of only one word. Letters that will brush your cheek and grip your hair. Letters that will bite you. Letters that will mark you. I’ll write you by bullet ant and spider wasp. I’ll write you by shark’s tooth and scallop shell.”
“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.”
“You gave me so much—a history, a future, a calm that lets me write these words though I’m breaking. I hope I’ve given you something in return—I think you would want me to know I have. And what we’ve done will stand, no matter how they weave the world against us. It’s done now, and forever.”
References:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43352954-this-is-how-you-lose-the-time-war