Book review: This is how you lose the Time War

Book review of This is how you lose the Time War

This is my book review of the sci-fi novel This is how you lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone. I ordered this book online after seeing it mentioned in a booktube video. (However, I cannot remember which video).

This is how you lose the Time War

“Among the ashes of a dying world, an agent of the Commandant finds a letter. It reads: Burn before reading.

Red and Blue, two rival agents hellbent on securing the best possible future for their warring factions, strike up an unlikely correspondence. But what started as a taunt, a battlefield boast, grows into something more: something epic and romantic. Something that could change the past and the future.

The discovery of their bond will mean their deaths. There’s still a war going on, and someone has to win that war. That’s how wars work. Right?”

Red & Blue and the war

Described as an epic love story spanning time and space, I’ll have to agree. For such a relatively short book, it was a great and adventurous read. And, if you’ve been following my blog for a while or seen my bookstagram, well. Then you know how I’m actually not a big romance-person. Generally, I tend to avoid books marketed as romance, but this one had so much other stuff going on. Not too much though, but it seemed like the perfect intellectual way to flirt with the enemy if you were a time-agent in war.

Red and Blue are so different and yet have so much in common. It doesn’t matter what they look like, as its a battle of wits and war. They leave notes and traces for each other throughout time and space and events and it’s just so epically beautifully put together. Their stories are woven together in the patchwork of time, while they try to taunt each other.

The war starts out as being quite important and you as a reader think you are getting into the story of what this war is about. But, as you read on, that becomes less important as the story of Red and Blue steps further into the foreground. Everything else becomes somewhat insignificant, due to terrific writing.

Should you read this “epic time war romance”?

I really enjoyed this book and the attention to detail in how the agents planned out centuries worth of build-ups to a single message to each other. I mean, that’s an epic lovestory. Romeo and Mr. Darcy can pack up and go home. (Also because Red & Blue are both women).

This felt believable, as a lovestory based on grown, mutual respect over time. Applause all around, and if you don’t like this book, it will most likely be due to the sci-fi elements.

If you’re curious and want to browse through other book reviews on this page, feel free to have a look at my collection of book reviews right here>>

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