Book Report: This is How You Lose the Time War

[spacedogfromspace]

Book Report: This is How You Lose the Time War by Max Gladstone & Amal El-Mohtar

Synopsis

This is How You Lose The Time War is a brilliant novella about two time-travelling agents of enemy factions who begin an unlikely correspondence. Turning from snarky and taunting to genuine interest and friendship over years and lifetimes of chasing each other through time, undoing one another's work in an effort to win the Time War, they find themselves falling in love. But what happens when their relationship is in danger of being discovered? What happens when one of them still has to win?

---

Plot Summary - Spoilers!

Two time travelling agents— Red and Blue —are on opposite sides of the Time War. Red is an agent of the Agency, a faction centred on technological advancement. They've turned themselves into something more akin to cyborgs, and no longer require things like food and sleep. Blue is an agent of Garden, which is a nature-centric faction which operates like a hive. The people of both sides have sacrificed their individuality in service of their respective factions.

This starts to change when one day, Blue leaves a letter behind for Red to find. Red, for reasons she doesn't really understand, responds, and they enter a correspondence that at first is simply to taunt one another as they unweave each others' work. But eventually, they become more inquisitive about each others' factions, and about each other. They form a friendship, and eventually fall in love.

Throughout their correspondences, Red has been followed by a shadow. It follows her wherever she goes, and always comes looking for the remnants of Blue's letters to consume. When Red becomes aware of the shadow, she starts to get paranoid that the Agency is spying on her, and maybe even knows about her correspondence with Blue. Part of this turns out to be true when Commandant— Red's Agency boss —confronts her about Blue. But Commandant is unaware of the contents of the letters, or Red's true relationship with Blue. Commandant believes Blue is trying to turn Red to Garden's side, so the Agency decides to take advantage of this and use Red to set a trap that will poison and kill Blue, taking out one of Garden's greatest assets.

Red warns Blue that the Agency has discovered their connection. She tells Blue not to read her next letter, no matter what, because it will be a deadly trap. Blue agrees, but when the trapped letter comes, Blue realizes that if she doesn't fall for the trap, the Agency will know she had been tipped off and become aware of Red's betrayal. To protect Red, Blue reads the letter by eating the poison, and dies an agonizing death.

Red discovers Blue's corpse and is heartbroken. Unable to accept Blue's death, Red starts to travel rampantly through time, following her past self to collect all the pieces of Blue left behind from her letters— Red was the shadow all along. She uses Blue's DNA gathered from the letters to grow a second skin that will disguise her as Blue. She uses this disguise to infiltrate Garden. There, she finds Blue— as a child —and gives her the antivenom, which will make her immune to the poison in the future.

After fleeing Garden, the Agency captures Red, and she is tortured and imprisoned. But in her cell, she finds a letter. It's from Blue. Her plan worked, Blue is alive! In Blue's letter is a plan for Red to escape the prison, and they spend the rest of their lives running and hiding in time from the Agency and Garden, together. This is how they win.

---

Thoughts - Spoilers!

This is How You Lose the Time War is a short book that packs a punch. It's very much a science fiction story, but it is also incredibly romantic.

The structure of the book is an alternation between Red and Blue's perspective as they find and then read letters from one another. At the end of Red's chapters, when she is finished reading Blue's letter, a shadow emerges and devours what is left of the letter.

For how short this book is, as a time travel story, it manages to have all the things I love about time travel stories. The first is the mystery of Red's shadow. Red thinks that it is an Agency spy, but Red— and the reader —later find out that the shadow is actually Red herself on a desperate quest to save Blue. The other is when in one of Blue's letters she describes to Red how as a child, she fell mysteriously ill. When Red infiltrates Garden, we find out why. Red travelled back in time to Blue's childhood an fed her an antivenom, which would have made her ill for a time but make her immune to the poison later on. Of course, if Red had given the antivenom to Blue in the past, Blue should have never died, prompting Red to go back and give Blue the antivenom, but time travel stories wouldn't be very fun if they adhered to this type of logic.

Evidence of Red and Blue's romance is in their letters, but it's hard to really get a read on it from the letters alone. Part of this is due to how short the book is, it isn't given time to develop as smoothly as it might have if the book were longer. But the other part of it is that the letters are written years— if not life-times —apart from each other. But the true romance comes out with the reactions of Red and Blue after their correspondence is discovered by the Agency. Despite being warned against it, Blue read Red's poisoned letter, sacrificing her life so that the Agency wouldn't discover Red's betrayal because Blue couldn't bear anything happening to Red. Despite the risk of being caught by Garden, and with the consequence of being discovered and imprisoned by the Agency, Red infiltrates Garden to save Blue because nothing matters as long as Blue lives. Both are such intense acts of love that I think this is the most romantic thing I have ever read, and it more than makes up for the slight lacking in the letters.

I recommend this book to anyone who likes science fiction, time travel stories, sapphic romances, or anyone who just wishes that Romeo and Juliet was about lesbian time travellers who got their happy ending.