by Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone
DETAILS:
Publisher: S&S/Saga Press
Publication Date: March 17, 2020
Format: Paperback
Length: 198 pgs.
Read Date: July 23, 2025
On a span of blasted ground, she finds the letter.
It does not belong. Here there should be bodies mounded between the wrecks of ships that once sailed the stars, Here there should be the death and dirt and blood of a successfut op. There should be moons disintegrating overhead, ships aflame in orbit.
There should not be a sheet of cream-colored paper, clean save a single line in a long, trailing hand: Burn before reading.
What’s This Is How You Lose the Time War About?
Red and Blue are agents from two great forces who are battling to control the timeline. They do this by going back and forth in time—along strands—to make small adjustments that will have big implications. For example (not from the book, but to give you an idea), instead of going back to kill Hitler, they’d go back to convince the man who taught Hitler’s art teacher to go into a different field.
Red is an agent of the Agency—a technology-driven group, with aspirations to keep history moving in a direction for their cybernetic, singularity culture to thrive in. Blue works with Garden, who are all about nature, growth, and nurture.
They both seem to be some of the best agents each side has—and they keep running into each other, preventing each other’s missions from succeeding. Until after one defeat, Red finds a letter (see above). Thanks to mechanics that work only for time travelers, she’s able to burn the letter and then read and retain the contents.
Blue knows her from her work and taunts her for her recent defeat. At their next encounter (where Red comes out on top), she’s hidden a letter for Blue—and I’m not going to try to describe how that letter is hidden/revealed. The two begin exchanging taunts, which turns into a friendship of sorts (very few individuals in all of existence—past, present, future) can really understand their lives. From friendship, a romance blossoms—and that is where the danger is found.
Atlantis and The Absence of World Building
Atlantis sinks.
Serves it right. Red hates the place. For one thing, there are so many Atlantises, always sinking, in so many strands: an island off Greece, a mid-Atlantic continent, an advanced pre-Minoan civilization on Crete, a spaceship floating north of Egypt, on and on. Most strands lack Atlantis altogether, know the place only through dreams and mad poets’ madder whispers.
Because there are so many, Red cannot fix just one, or fail to. Sometimes it seems strands bud Atlantises to thwart her. They conspire. History makes common cause with the enemy. Thirty, forty times throughout her career she has walked away from some sinking, burning island, thinking, at least that’s over. Thirty, forty times, the call has come: Go back.
It’s here with the talk about Atlantis—and the following discussion about the various ones—that was probably the highlight of the book for me. It’s at least where I liked the book the most. Somehow in all the possible pasts, the strands keep bringing Atlantis into the world—which is where we get all the various stories about it. Just this idea and Red’s distaste for all of the Atlantises…and compared to Blue, it turns out she might have a positive view of the island.
In each chapter—this falters later on in the book, but it’s close enough—we’re introduced to a possible future or past with an explanation of what the agent we’re focusing on in this chapter is trying to accomplish—and then we see how they fail. Before getting a letter.
The possible settings are fantastic. They each feel like they could be the basis of a gripping 300-page novel—but we dispose of them in a few pages. Each Agent’s mission—and the counter—is depicted and explained in a way that’s just as wonderful. The only thing that tops either of them is the transmission/delivery of the next letter and its reception.
We don’t really get worldbuilding here—we just get glances at them, a quick bit of immersion into the world—and then right back out and into the next. Beyond that, we’re not given any idea how Red, Blue, and the rest travel upstrand or downstrand. We don’t get a clear picture—outside of tech vs. nature—of what the war is over, or how the missions are selected and designed. We get a little of Blue’s backstory, but not much—just enough to set up a great scene or two.
This is both frustrating and fantastic. It’s my nature as a reader to want more, to want the nitty gritty. But, I’ll tell you what, El-Mohtar and Gladstone make this work—it’s enough to get these glances. And to give those details would change the nature of the book—and it’s probably best they didn’t.
Humor and Heart
This is a strange, fantastic book with an earnest tone—what I wasn’t prepared for was the humor. But fairly early on, Red taunts, “Ha-ha, Blueser. Your mission objective’s in another castle.” And I was caught off-guard, “Oh, we’re doing laughs, too?”
And yes—the very next page is hilarious. And the two will make me laugh several times after that.
But this is not a comedy. I want to go back to the earnest idea. This book wears its heart on its sleeve. There a big feelings expressed and felt. Largely, those are delivered in a prose that’s simply delicious. Worthy of quotation and meditation.
So, what did I think about This Is How You Lose the Time War?
Killing gets easier with practice, in mechanics and technique. Having killed never does, for Red. Her fellow agents do not feel the same, or they hide it better.
So clearly, after everything I’ve just said, I loved the book, right?
Sadly, no. All the elements were there—killer concept, the execution of individual scenes was spot-on, the characters are interesting and engaging, etc., etc., etc. I loved the authors’ language, their approach to the whole thing, and more. Seriously, a time-traveling epistolary novel? Come on…
But I couldn’t buy the central relationship. They went from taunting admiration to a camaraderie across battle lines pretty quickly, and I could’ve bought that (probably). But then it goes into a romance that threatens to mark one or both of them as traitors to their cause, and they risk everything to keep going? That just happened too quickly. If we’d gotten a few more letters before things got super-serious between the two, I could’ve maybe accepted it. But in the end, it was just too deep, too fast—and these elite agents are both ready to throw caution to the wind and risk incurring the wrath of their superiors?
I wanted to like this, I really did. There’s little reason why I shouldn’t—sadly, Gladstone and El-Mohtar found the reasons I shouldn’t.
I’m going to be in the minority here—or so I bet—and for those who can really get into the book, I understand you and envy you that ability. But I just couldn’t go that far.
Fantastic building blocks, but poor use of them, left me with mixed feelings at best—but mostly a strong sense of missed opportunities.
I think most readers will find something—probably several things to relish in this book. I just can’t be positive it’ll be worth it to you (then again, it’s less than 200 pages of nicely moving prose—maybe it’s worth the investment). Also, if you look at the accolades this book has garnered, I could be way off base about this.
This post contains an affiliate link. If you purchase from it, I will get a small commission at no additional cost to you. As always, the opinions expressed are my own.
Twenty Literary Would-You-Rathers by Julianne Neely—There are some tough calls to make in this new McSweeney’s piece
