This is How You Lose the Time War

Science fiction

Print length: 224 pagesGallery / Saga Press, 2020

Description

Red and Blue are elite agents on opposite sides of a war fought by rewriting history. Red serves the technological, post-singularity Agency; Blue belongs to Garden, a vast consciousness rooted in organic life. As they move through competing timelines, each adjusts events to secure a future in which her own civilization survives and the other disappears. Their rivalry changes when one begins leaving the other secret messages, hidden in elaborate materials and scattered across altered worlds. Taunts become confidences, then declarations neither side could tolerate. Alternating mission scenes with their increasingly intimate letters, the novella turns temporal warfare into a courtship conducted under surveillance, where every reply threatens professional loyalty, personal safety, and the histories they have been trained to create.

Reading profile

About this profile

Collected’s assessment, not reader ratings. Complexity runs from 1 (least demanding) to 5 (most demanding).

Writing: How much attention the sentences and language require.
Ideas: How much interpretation or abstract reasoning the book asks of you.
Structure: How much you need to keep track of speakers, timelines and connections.
Background knowledge: Prior knowledge needed to follow the book, beyond what it explains.
Emotional intensity: Emotional pressure, from gentle (1) to intense (5). Separate from difficulty.

Writing style

Dense · Experimental · Lyrical · Poetic

Pace

Brisk

Tone

Intimate · Romantic · Tense · Wistful

Structure

Braided · Episodic · Multiple timelines

Focus

Plot · Relationships · Voice

Emotional intensity

4 / 5

Reading complexity

1–5 · higher means more demanding

Writing: 4 / 5
Ideas: 4 / 5
Structure: 4 / 5
Background knowledge: 2 / 5

Themes

FreedomIdentityLoveTechnology and societyTransformationWar

About Amal El-Mohtar

Amal El-Mohtar is a Canadian poet and speculative fiction writer whose work also encompasses short stories, essays, criticism, and editing. She is best known for This Is How You Lose the Time War, written with Max Gladstone, which combines far-reaching science fiction with dense, lyrical prose and an intimate relationship at its center. Her solo novella The River Has Roots similarly places close bonds and private forms of language within a fantastic setting. Alongside her fiction and poetry, El-Mohtar edits the fantasy-poetry magazine Goblin Fruit and reviews science fiction and fantasy for the New York Times Book Review. These overlapping roles reflect a career unusually attentive to language across both creative and critical work.

About Max Gladstone

Max Gladstone is an American fantasy novelist whose career spans the Craft Sequence, the urban fantasy serial Bookburners, and the co-written science-fiction romance This Is How You Lose the Time War. His most distinctive world-building appears in the Craft novels, beginning with Three Parts Dead, where law, finance, religion, and public infrastructure operate as parts of a single magical system. Contracts constrain gods, souls carry economic value, and skilled professionals confront civic emergencies inside damaged institutions. Across this work, Gladstone favors compromised agents and systemic pressures over uncomplicated quests. Time War extends his range through dense, lyrical prose and a conflict conducted across competing timelines.

Book details

For the print edition listed above.

Publisher: Gallery / Saga Press
Language: English
ISBN: 9781534430990

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