After giving This is How You Lose the Time War a five star review, I started scrolling through other reviews and I found thoughtful, well reasoned arguments for the other side. This is a thoroughly crafted well written book that is not going to be to everyone’s taste.
The premise is two opposing secret agents, saboteurs, time and history manipulators who work for conflicting civilizations become aware of each other and start to exchange letters. It becomes a love story.
The nature of the work each main character does to manipulate history across many centuries and many parallel universes makes the narrative confusing. I can’t imagine it done effectively any other way, but I also like other confusing time shifting stories where the story starts to make sense later.
The characters only meet through their letters with a couple of exceptions, so some say the love story is unbelievable. For me, it reflects the extreme isolation and loneliness of their work and how even minimal tenuous companionship of a peer would satisfy a gaping need.
The writing includes extravagant romantic feelings and poetic literary allusions to go with the science fiction and time travel aspect. I appreciated it, but people who like romance and poetry don’t always like science fiction and time travel and vice versa.
The authors lean into the epistolary format. It’s not exclusively letters but a significant percentage of the writing is the letters these two characters exchange.
This book reminds me of some classic novels that also are somewhat polarizing.
!Romeo and Juliet, (I know a play), Tale of Two Cities, O Henry Gift of the Magi!<
The creative forms the letters take were fun for me and seemed like a valid extrapolation of actual historical spycraft if you assumed much greater ability to manipulate matter. However some people find them over the top.
It is an exuberant, enthusiastic book that is fun if you like it and possibly cringy if you don’t
The characters only meet through their letters with a couple of exceptions, so some say the love story is unbelievable. For me, it reflects the extreme isolation and loneliness of their work and how even minimal tenuous companionship of a peer would satisfy a gaping need.
This is a perfect summary of that point.
“…some say the love story is unbelievable…” LOL, it’s a f___ing time travel story – but the love story? Totally not realistic.
the thing this book felt the most like to me was Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities. It’s like the narrative is there, but it’s not (that) important. This is a story about having readers enter a dreamscape and be surrounded by the poetry of it all. Literalists will hate this.
That’s fair. I liked the book, didn’t love it, and that’s probably because while I admired the inventiveness of their communications there wasn’t really much of a story, and I do, as a rule, like books to have a plot.
If this is a vote, I vote in favour. One of my favourite sci-fi novels of the last ten years. A bit subtler than some readers expected.
I wish I had enjoyed this book, as the fanfare around it was delicious and fun, and the authors seem by all intents and purposes like good people who deserve good things. Alas! It was not the book for me.
For me, ‘This is How You Lose the Time War’ is a love story that vaguely dabbles and wanders in a sci-fi landscape. The descriptions are lovely, I will completely agree to that, but after the 6th or so time where I lost track of what they were even talking about in that sea of nature-inspired metaphors, I lost interest.
The setting for this book is barely existent. There is a time war, sure. There are two sides at war, yeah I got that. What’s it about? How does it work? Are there different universes, or just different times? And how do all the times affect each other? No clue, not a thought, not for us to consider.
I prefer my sci-fi romances to be action packed, character infested, dramatic fanfares through space that you can almost taste on the tip of your thought. This book had an interesting plot clincher (a war that’s been going on for so long no one knows why or what for and the main players have literally transcended real existence into being space ether) but it didn’t really explore much of that, and as such I didn’t particular enjoy it, even if I liked that one the characters got called “Blue-da-ba-dee”, my favourite cocktail drink.
The setting for this book is barely existent. There is a time war, sure. There are two sides at war, yeah I got that. What’s it about? How does it work? Are there different universes, or just different times? And how do all the times affect each other? No clue, not a thought, not for us to consider.
I thought this was really well fleshed out, to the wibbly wobbly timey wimey extent that these things can be managed. They each hale from a very different potential far future where humanity has reached an end state of technology, either mechanical or biological. Each side is trying to alter history to make their potential future become the actual future. The bio-organic Blue sabotages advancements in computer technology for example, or Red goes back and plants the seeds of the discovery of the transistor. The two timelines merge at a ‘wall’ in the recent past, and it’s almost impossible for them to exist in the others’ timeline after that point.
!Also the characters realize in the end they are in a causal time loop where each of them brought the other into existence in a way.!<
Listened to it on audiobook on a Road-trip and it was definitely hard to follow! Wish I’d read it instead. Definitely an interesting concept but they should’ve used two narrators bc we kept going “wait- who is this now?”
I liked it it’s just everything was so vague, how they time travelled was too and even lowkey the ending. But it’s still a great love story
It reminded me a lot of the New Wave scifi of the 1960s & the 1970s. There was quite a bit of push back against the New Wave in fandom circles by the Campbellian old guard back then so I get how the book isn’t for every one.
I just read this two days ago. I thought I’d split it up between Saturday and Sunday but just got through it in one day. I even thought about reading it again on Sunday but my eyes were too tired lol I returned it to the library, but I do kinda feel like I should have held onto it to re-read at some point over this coming long weekend. Seems like something that would be great to re-read.
It was stylistically unlike what I normally read. Which I didn’t know would be the case going into it. However, I think that’s what I enjoyed most. I’m a “go with the flow” kind of reader, which might be weird for someone who mainly reads epic fantasy, and I think that’s the type of reader who will get the most enjoyment from this novella.
What I really liked about this book is that the language is very synesthesic/ sensory based. Like others have said, if you’re into reading as a sensory experience rather than a plot experience, it’s great but I can understand why others may struggle with that kind of language.
I feel like both elements were interesting, but neither was given the time to thrive
I liked the book very much. I just finished watching the 2nd season of Loki and there’s some similarities, such as temporal agents and Loki & Sylvie starting as enemies but warming to each other. I liked the way the war was conducted indirectly, subtly poisoning the enemies timeline and laying mines and traps for the opposition who will inevitably jump in to un fuck their situation. Also I found the two opposing time factions equally believable while still being surreal in their own way.
That finale was epic right? Just an amazing hour of television.
It was good and (to stay on topic) Loki is treated and behaves much like the characters in ‘Time War’. He’s a timeless cosmic being while also being a guy who wants friends and eats key lime pie. In time war the characters still enjoy sensual human activities and experience loneliness, even though their bodies are mutable, gender fluid, and sometimes not even human.
Yea I thought it was really good. Idk how they can make it into a series but they changed A LOT doing the Station Eleven adaptation and that still ended up amazing so we’ll see. My only problem with the book was the language was so flowery often I sat back and thought “I have no idea what’s going on right now” lol
Sounds like an interesting concept, but having it be a love story just completely turned me off to it.
This book was fascinating! I read it based on the title alone. The audiobook is great.
This was the last book we read in my long-running book club.m, and the reactions varied from tepid to downright frosty. I liked some of the imagery and some of the ideas, but ultimately it wasn’t for me. The best thing I can say about it is that it was short.