This Is How You Lose the Time War Book Reviews

AUTHOR
Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone
SCORE
4.5
TOTAL RATINGS
683

This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone Book Summary

* HUGO AWARD WINNER: BEST NOVELLA * NEBULA AND LOCUS AWARDS WINNER: BEST NOVELLA *

“[An] exquisitely crafted tale...Part epistolary romance, part mind-blowing science fiction adventure, this dazzling story unfolds bit by bit, revealing layers of meaning as it plays with cause and effect, wildly imaginative technologies, and increasingly intricate wordplay...This short novel warrants multiple readings to fully unlock its complexities.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

From award-winning authors Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone comes an enthralling, romantic novel spanning time and space about two time-traveling rivals who fall in love and must change the past to ensure their future.

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

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

Cowritten by two beloved and award-winning sci-fi writers, This Is How You Lose the Time War is an epic love story spanning time and space.

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Book Name This Is How You Lose the Time War
Genre Science Fiction
Published
Language English
E-Book Size 2.38 MB

This Is How You Lose the Time War (Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone) Book Reviews 2024

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Beautiful.. beautiful.

Nebula Award Winner About Two Time Warriors. “This is How You Loose the Time War” by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone won the Nebula Award for Best Novella in 2019. It is an interesting work, with a back and forth narrative, told partially through “letters.” The story centers around two time agents, who represent the two different factions in a war that extends through both time and space in a multiverse that may include our own. The first of these is known as Red, and she is the elite operative of the Agency, which is a post-singularity high-technological civilization. The second is Blue, which is an agent of Garden, a civilization based on biology, described as “... a single vast consciousness embedded in all organic matter.” These two mutually inimical forces are fighting throughout the past to insure that the future will be theirs. They influence things both small and large through the braids of time streams, all to give them eventual advantage. After a particularly devastating battle on a alien world, Blue decides to gloat by leaving a letter for Red in the midst of the battlefield. This begins their correspondence.... The novella is very “Timey-Wimey” as Doctor Who fans might say. At first I wasn‘t sure I liked the story, but it grew on me. By the end I had decided it was a worthwhile narrative with some clever twists.

AWAHHHH!!!!!!. READ THIS RIGHT NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! OH MY GOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! IM GOING TO EAT MY DRYWALL!!!!!!!!!!!! AND MAYBE A TEACUP OR TWO!!!!!!!

A true adventure. This is a love story that allows the reader to become lost in the path yet relish each word as a new discovery!

Wonderful. Such a pleasurable read. Both challenging and accessible. I highly recommend

Absolutely Adored It. I loved this book so much. Everything is so intricately dreamlike, woven together in ways I never thought possible. The story is guided by the world building aspect, and the world itself is so full of twists and turns and obscure yet detailed characteristics, and the story is made so interesting by it. The romance between Red and Blue is sweet and teasing, and some parts of their letters made me laugh out loud. The writing style is one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever read, and it really pulls you into the world and into space and time itself until you never want to leave. Some passages were so well-written that I read them two or three times. I can’t recommend it enough.

So worth reading. Oh my god. The prose and world hooked me in and kept delivering line after line. When I said I literally gasped out loud chapter after chapter at the end, I mean it. I was fangirling over these characters from the first lines. Definitely one of my favorites!

Strangely worth the read. This was one of the stranger books I’ve read, but I’m glad I got through it. The structure is really compelling, unfortunately you spend so much time lost that it only sort of works. It’s just the right length and that helps its cause.

Lovely - ashley lovestoread. This story is not like my usual reads, it is unlike anything I have read before. A whole new way of world than the one I know that made for quite an enjoyable read. The story flowed well and had me guessing at times what could happen next. A slow building romance that is mainly communicated through messages at various points of time. These messages are hidden that only either red or blue can find that have been left for each other even though they are on the opposites sides of the war. One is on the side of technology while the other is on the side of environment. This is a science fiction time travel masterpiece. I would recommend this book to others to read and while this is the first book I have read from this author I hope it will not be the last.

don't set it down. the worldbuilding is so intricate and so subtle—don't miss a word of this poetic and romantic story, or you might miss the linchpin. a fast read and but by no means light. i wanted to start over from the beginning as soon as i finished it, just to find all the hints and details i might have missed. it will take a lot for another time-travel book to top this, and probably for another romance, too!

Stunning. A breathless, passionate Escher drawing turned into an immensely compelling and satisfying story.

Ok. It was ok. Long winded, too bloody at times. Predictable. But saying that, it was exactly what I needed to read right now. It gave me hope in sickness.

New favorite book. Most beautiful and wonderful book I have ever read. I feel like it’s a part of my soul now. God. Wish I could read it again for the first time. Absolutely stunning.

Absolutely Magnificent!. A love story between two time-traveling agents that represent very different futures. Told mostly through letters encountered after clashes in various timelines, it manages to weave these threads into a beautiful, lyrical, incandescent whole with a happy ending that truly feels earned. Do not miss this book.

Fantastic. A wonderful piece, it hooks you from start to finish with its vivid prose and poetry blended into a series of letters. I desperately want to know more about Red and Blue’s respective worlds, but I suppose I’ll have to sate my imagination with what’s sumptuously laid out for us. What a great novella! Will be recommending to my friends soon. :D

Full Circle. The real beauty of this book rests with its broad and engaging lyrical descriptiveness. Our authors bring a depth of perspectives that really put you into the seat of our time traveling protagonists. The spaces and times we travers through given just enough description to give the narrative a three dimensional texture. While minimal in breath the story is expansive in scope, philosophical perspectives, and all the imagery that fills the space of the things left unsaid. El-Mohtar and Gladstone are elusive and work hard to keep us from relying on a single anchoring point in time or event. This approach makes us all the more invested in the fates of our dueling protagonist. For all the conflict, it was refreshing to navigate through this intentionally stilted and imaginative love story along the way. The story resembled a time traveling Romeo and Juliet retelling. It was refreshing story telling that made you rethink spy craft. The only knock on this read is that it could have had better exposition.

Pretentiously Awful. If you want to spend a few hours listening to two pretentious self-appointed “literary savants” say nothing about anything, ignoring any responsibility for satisfying the reader’s curiosity about time-traveling and world-building, have at it. This was truly awful.

Heart aching and Beautiful.. I would give this book more stars, if only possible. The concept of loving another through time and space has always broken my heart. But, when those two are enemies on opposing teams in a time war; it's brilliant! I would recommend this book to my dying breath, and I recommend anyone who reads my review to open up this poetic and new story to anyone who needs something fresh.

Amazing. Beautiful

Beautiful but a little slow at times. Two time agents on opposite sides of a war fall in love through hidden letters. Fantastically original. It’s a little slow at times but there is so much there, you feel compelled to find out what happens at the end.

Resilience, beauty, and a sapphic love story all rolled up into one.. Wow. I have just finished reading Time War and I'm really impressed with the way that this book can simply grip the reader's heart with such ferocious precision and emotion. While Time War is honestly not my favorite book to sit down and read, as a lot of the story is obfuscated by strange stylistic choices and confusing poetry, it was a wildly enjoyable story which lead me to keep wanting to read it despite the difficulty. Blue and Red are two which I deeply enjoyed the company of — their letters are works of pure genius, as the two authors genuinely wrote these letters to one another and modeled the novel after their own emotional responses to each letter. This is the strongest thing Time War has going for it: you're ALWAYS looking to read the next letter between Blue and Red. They're enjoyable, full of personality, and so well written. If you need a book which will captivate you and send you on an emotional rollercoaster, This Is How You Lose The Time War is your next favorite read. My heart rate was genuinely high during parts of this book. I felt, understood and internalized the emotions of Blue and Red as if I was reading their exchanges from their perspective. I took a star off though, as the writing is genuinely hard to read and complicates the story wildly. I felt like I had to seriously sit down and think about the meanings of a lot of the terminology in this book, as it's never quite explained how Blue and Red are jumping between timelines and who/what the Agency/Garden is, or why they're warring.

Twisty complex worldbuilding. Sometimes I stumble into reading a book that isn’t in my usual target zone at all. I’ve read some short fiction by El-Mohtar that I rather enjoyed, but “epistolary time-travel secret agent romance” isn’t something that would necessarily pique my interest until you insert the word “lesbian” into that phrase. Reading the book set me ruminating on questions of what even is gender in a post-human society, but that’s a different discussion. I love books that make you reconstruct the setting, premises, and backstory from breadcrumbs dropped along the way, and this book goes all in on that technique. There are two sides (at least), with two worldviews (perhaps), and the same goal: to alter branching possible pasts in order to create the future in which they “win” the ability to assert their paradigm over reality. The two are supposedly differentiated by method--perhaps by philosophy--but that’s hard to see clearly in the midst of the casual death and destruction their agents leave in their wake. (In fact, it was sometimes difficult to differentiate the two characters even by voice.) That casual death and destruction is no worse than the ordinary death and destruction of unaltered history (if there is such a thing), but initially I found it impossible to sympathize with the protagonists because of their indifference to the lives they were deliberately meddling with. That remained a theme for me throughout the story: we’re enticed to fall in love with these two opposing agents as they fall in love with each other, but it was hard for me to see them as other than monsters, playing at intellectual games out of boredom and loneliness as they criss-crossed time in their seemingly ageless existence. And yet, I really enjoyed reading this book. I loved the challenge of visualizing the underlying conceptual structure. I loved deciphering the puzzle of how it would all end. The reader is given enough clues to get a sense that the puzzle is there, but not enough realistic detail to be able to work it out in advance--which is a good thing because doing so would have bogged down an otherwise fast-moving story. I loved that sense of just barely holding a slippery tangle of images in my mind long enough to feel that it stuck the landing. It wasn’t quite the book I expected it to be. And it wasn’t as mind-blowing as the social media buzz made it out to be. But it was a fascinating read.

made me cry. 10/10.. AAAAA

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Summary of This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone

The This Is How You Lose the Time War book written by Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone was published on 16 July 2019, Tuesday in the Science Fiction category. A total of 683 readers of the book gave the book 4.5 points out of 5.

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