This Is How You Lose the Time War Paperback – March 17, 2020

This book is phenomenal. I just finished reading it, and I already want to start it again.It’s sci-fi. It’s poetry. It’s philosophy. It’s a love story. But no matter how hard I try, I won’t do it justice by trying to describe it, because it’s unlike anything I’ve ever read.Two immortal agents travel through time and across different threads of existence, altering historical events and weaving realities to further their cause.Along the way, they begin sending letters that start as taunts but become so much more. And when I say “letters,” I don’t just mean emails or notes on paper. My favorite was a message etched into the rings of a tree over centuries meant to be read only once the tree was cut down.I listened to this on audio while reading along, because the prose was so rich, dense, and beautiful. I needed to fully immerse myself just to have a chance at understanding it.Extraordinary. Exquisite. Delightful. Delicious. Thought-provoking. And a thousand more words I could use.Spice: 1/5Plot: 5+/5Writing: 5+/5My Enjoyment: 5+/5

Giving it a 4 for its unique and weird fantasy. When you pick it up you won’t know what’s happening for awhile but stick with it for the satisfying ending. Beautiful prose carries you away.

This is just a beautiful book.A few sentences in the book will force you to "google" wordsand "famous" people you've never come across before.But I didn't find any of those limited occurrences to affectreadability at all.I first read this in 2020 and just reread again in 2025.

A book club choice brought this into my read pile. Unprepared, I rebelled at early readings. Respecting the choice I pushed on. Not really understanding, I found it at times lyrical, clever and confounding. I stopped trying for logic. Instead I floated along taking what landed and releasing what did not. For me, love was always there. Glad I made it through. A bit sad it ended. Now looking forward to book discussion next week!

I don’t know that I have sufficient words to explain the depth confusion, desperation, love, emotion, that you feel or reading this book.The format was confusing at first, but once you get used to it, and you consume each piece, and the seeds that are planted begin to bloom in your mind, and all of these threads start to make sense. At the same time with every new entry, you still feel confusion, you still feel a depth of emotion you can’t quite grasp, and you become attached to characters that for the most part, you can’t quite fathom.Red and Blue are agents on opposite sides of a post human time war. You follow them through their time traveling missions in which their actions change and redirect outcomes, they seem to both witness experience and celebrate each action in a detached dismissal and also reverence. They both notice each other’s fingerprints, actions, and methods in each mission, actively thwarting each other and each sides plans in this grand scheme that feels both personal and excessively depersonalized. they gain appreciation for each other, and so they start to reach out and converse and through these words and conversations they fall both for each other, and for their images of each other. It’s interesting to watch how they fall in love with parts of them selves that they’ve never before connected to, or had forgotten, and how they fall in love with this adversary who also feels like a complement.I started to read this book at my normal pace until I started realizing that while I was reading, I was incapable of absorbing each piece, and it’s totality. So I slowed myself down, and I tried to absorb the words on the page, the actions of the characters, the minutiae in the references, and the details that both the authors created, and the images I invoked from the words.This novel was definitely overwhelming, it was a lot to process. There were so many layers and details to absorb that I found myself going back and rereading to fully comprehend as much as I could. I feel like I haven’t fully grapsed the entire text and while that could be confusing and frustrating for some, I find that it may just be a promise of continued enjoyment.I highly recommend this novel, for anyone that wants to be challenged in their reading, who wants to explore the depths of a world, not even fully realized, and find promise both real and imagined between two people in the tapestry of a larger setting.I am both exhausted and exhilarated by this story, and I look forward to diving into it again soon.

How You Lose the Time War is told from the point-of-view of two protagonists. Nearly all chapters end with one of them reading a letter. An unconventional choice. It has a rich, science-fiction word encapsulated in under 200 pages, two different points-of-view, a mysterious time traveling system, and a rich vocabulary filled with references most readers will have to look up.Most choices work in the authors’ favor. The novel never slows down, but the changing attitudes of the protagonists seems rushed. At the halfway point, the shift of viewpoint is not sublime but jarring. However, the conclusion brings the book to a satisfactory end.The title is excellent, the format is exquisite, the writing is admirable, and the ideas are creative. A worthy read with minor issues, this novel should be on any science fiction reader’s list.