“Books are letters in bottles, cast into the waves of time, from one person trying to save the world to another.”
Author: Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone
# of Pages: 198
Rating:
I am upset that I didn't like this book more. This Is How You Lose the Time War has been on my list for a while because one of my favorite YouTubers, Joel Rochester, gave it a 5/5. It is a pretty short book, so I finished it in one day, but looking back, I know I should have taken more time. I can't change the past. I can't go back in time and change my reading speed, or can I? Can I plant a subconscious seen in my earlier life that will change my actions in the future? I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's review this book!
Here is my best attempt at summarizing the plot: This Is How You Lose The Time War is a sapphic f/f sci-fi enemies to lovers novel. Red comes from the technocratic faction called the Agency. She is a cyborg of pseudo-skin and programmable matter. Blue comes from the plant-based hivemind faction named the Garden. She is a bio-organic shape-shifting creature. Both of them traverse infinite space and timelessness fighting for their side to win the time war. However, their war is not fought in battles, but instead in little moments that will butterfly into key events, changing the outcome of the war. Red and Blue begin a dialogue by leaving letters creatively hidden for the other to find. The messages are read in fascinating ways like drinking and letting the words form in your head or reading the knots in a piece of cloth. Their one-upmanship and banter in these letters grows into respect, and then into love. After thousands of lifetimes fighting against each other, Red and Blue are now on a quest to stop. In a world where everything and anything can be undone before it even happened, all Red and Blye want to do is be together, no matter the cost.
The chapters/sections in this novel are very short. Each only contains a few pages of context and then one letter from either Red or Blue from that point in their timeline. There is little time spent establishing the braids, threads (braids and threads in this novel are the different universes and timelines/earth), and location of where Red and Blue are, so trying to keep up with the ever-changing setting really threw me for a loop. I understand that this is the ENTIRE purpose of the novel, but it was the main reason why I stayed confused throughout. However, there is a positive to this. Since the context was minimal, the room for imagination allowed me to craft entire worlds of my own inside my head, and that was beautiful.
Having two authors to write this novel was one of the best decisions that could have been made. Each letter has a clear and unique personality, and that is because each author focused on writing the letters of a single character. Each letter was written with genuine surprise at the contents of the previous letter from the other character. Each salutation, sign-off, and post-script grew more passionate and loving as their correspondence went on, almost like two time-traveling beings actually fell in love.
This Is How You Lose the Time War is poetry. I know a second read-through will COMPLETELY change my view on this book (It is similar to Inception/Tenet/Memento in how it warrants a rewatch to fully understand the plot). At 198 pages, my shortest read of 2021, This is How You Lose the Time War will forever be a piece of literature that I look back on with questioning eyes and recommend to all to see if they understand it more than me, Pick this up on your next stop to the library and let me know what you think!
Quotes:
"I love you. I love you. I love you. I'll write it in waves. In skies. In my heart. You'll never see, but you will know. I'll be all the poets, I'll kill them all and take each one's place in turn, and every time love's written in all the strands it will be to you."
“Books are letters in bottles, cast into the waves of time, from one person trying to save the world to another.”
“There’s a kind of time travel in letters, isn’t there? I imagine you laughing at my small joke; I imagine you groaning; I imagine you throwing my words away. Do I have you still? Do I address empty air and the flies that will eat this carcass? You could leave me for five years, you could return never—and I have to write the rest of this not knowing.”
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