After hearing about this book a few time on Writing Excuses I was thrilled to finally be able to read it.

It's everything I expected it to be and then some.

I really liked the characters and the circular nature of the story.

The world(s) details were enough to make the locations recognisable but subtly different.

The book stand alone really well but it also comes across as a part of a wider, bigger story. this nagging feeling that I was missing something is the only reason I gave 4 stars rather than 5.

Well worth reading.

Two opposing Time Agents battle each other through the time streams through the old fashioned warfare of ... epistolary?!? With the occasional help from Mrs Leavitt's Guide to Etiquette and Correspondence, letters have never been so lovely ... or deadly.
<b><blockquote>PS. The keyboard's coated with slow-acting contact poison. You'll be dead in a hour.
PPS. Just kidding! Or... am I?</blockquote></b>
Who knew that in the hearts of warriors were the souls of poets.

"Like your victory, love spreads back through time"

* * *
3 / 5

First off, I want to praise the title of this book to heaven and back. This is How You Lose the Time War. I love it. I stayed up at night thinking about how great it was (no joke). The cover is also beautiful. The book itself gave me mixed feelings.

"She climbs upthread and down; she braids and unbraids history's hair."

I expected a typical sci-fi novel focusing on time travel. What I got instead was a very artsy, purple prose filled quasi-poetic novel that mostly consists of letters. I loved the letters. To be honest, this book could probably just have been written in the form of the letters and how they were delivered. The beginning of the book put me off. It is very artsy and vague and not a bit confusing. But as I got into the swing of it I was enveloped.

So, what is it about? Red works for the Agency, an organisation that promotes technology. Blue works for Garden, which values the environment. The two sides are at war, up and down the timeline. They send out agents across the multiverse to braid the timelines to their liking; Red works on the surface of history, a murder here and there to change the shape of time, whilst Blue melds into history, taking up and living a whole life, wreaking changes from within.

"I have been birds and branches. I have been bees and wolves. I have been ether flooding the void between stars, tangling their breath into networks of song. I have been fish and plankton and humus, and all of these have been me."

Red finds a letter on an intergalactic battlefield that isn't supposed to be there. It is from Blue, her enemy. They begin to communicate in letters, but these letters take unusual forms to avoid detection from their superiors; they find notes to each other in the stomach of a seal, in the flying pattern of a bee, engraved into a tree, and running through poison. I loved this. Another thing that I definitely appreciated is that this isn't a classic case of technology=bad, environment=good. Both sides are violent and manipulative and cruel.

The writing itself was very divisive. At some points I loved it - the letters, the sentiment, the passion and the fear. At other times I thought it was weird, off-putting, and deliberately trying to make things confusing for me as a reader. I definitely didn't understand all of it and I feel like this was a decision on behalf of the writers for whatever reason.

All in all, I loved the title. I loved the letters. I liked and disliked the writing style. I'd have loved to understand more about the time-travel and the war. I think that I will be thinking about this one for a while.

My thanks to Netgalley, the publisher, and the authors for an ARC of This is How You Lose the Time War.

The title of Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone's forthcoming novella, <i>This Is How You Lose the Time War</i>, was almost enough on its own to make me want to read it. Add to that the fact that this lifelong <i>Doctor Who</i> fan can't ever resist a time-travel story, and how much I have loved everything of El-Mohtar's I've read, and you may understand why I spent several months stalking the book on Amazon waiting for the kindle version to be available to pre-order, and why, when I saw that the publishers were offering review copies via NetGalley, I jumped at the chance to read it sooner than the July release date, dusted off the NetGalley profile I'd set up ages ago but never used and requested a copy.

<i>This Is How You Lose the Time War</i> is just over 200 pages of stunningly beautiful prose, every word weighed and considered and placed in just the right place to create a series of amazingly vivid scenes from across time and space: the far future, the distant past, alien worlds and alternate Earths. Across this broad canvas, an epistolary romance plays out between two characters known only as Red and Blue (neither entirely human, but both referred to with she/her pronouns), agents of opposing factions in a conflict spanning the entire multiverse. I loved following the progress of Red and Blue's relationship, from the taunts of rivals to a breathtaking depth of emotion; I adored their witty, allusive letters and gradual realisation of their feelings for each other. Reading this book was an utterly immersive experience, and I never wanted to come to the surface.

I suspect this book won't be for everyone; it's all dazzling use of language and close focus on the two main characters, with the background merely sketched in, and I'm sure there will be people who would have preferred more everyday prose and detail of the whys and wherefores of the time war and its two combatants. I absolutely loved it, though, and have updated my pre-order from the kindle version to the paperback; this is a book I will want to re-read again and again, and to lend to anyone I can persuade to try it because it is just so good.

Last night I almost missed my stop. I had just finished this book and I was sat there among all the commuters, lost in thoughts of just how beautiful this book is. I suddenly thought to myself "Shit, where am I?" and glanced out the window. The train was sat, with the doors open at my station. So I had to rush off.

I can't remember the last time a book did that to me.

Poetry and war and love and time-travel and so many letters.

Glorious.

An unusual read for me as although I’m not completely without romance (my wife may argue that point) I generally don’t lean towards “romance” novels per se, however I do like books that make my brain do something other than just sit there twiddling it’s thumbs, I’m not sure if I “like” this book but I didn’t dislike it and kept me coming back to it till the end

This book is an epistolary f/f time travel enemies-to-lovers romance. And if that hasn't hooked you already, then I don't know what will.

This is How You Lose the Time War is about two agents on opposite sides of the war and what starts out as something like a game trying to best one another, leaving behind gloating letters, but becomes something more like an obsession and then a desperate kind of love.

This isn't a book with a lot of plot. It's a character-driven, slowburning romance, with a science fiction twist to it. There are only two characters in it (although more are mentioned), it's more like a conversation between the two of them, in which they slowly undo all the hatred they have for the other side and fall in love.

One of my favourite things about this book was how well developed the romance was despite the two characters not meeting face to face for the most of it. And then when it does come it has that intensity and obsessiveness that you don't get to see a lot of in f/f romances. And, honestly, I have no idea how to describe the feeling that gave me. When you've had romance after romance that's soft and gentle (which, obviously, is no bad thing, but when that's all you get?), and suddenly you get this one that's not gentle but is intense and desperate in a way that you've only ever seen m/m and m/f romances be and it just kind of leaves you speechless (in an amazing way, sure, but not conducive to writing a review). Anyway, it's like that. And when I say intense, I mean, "will literally tear apart space and time to get to you" level intense.

And this is all developed without having the characters meet face to face until right at the end. This book is gonna be my yardstick for good relationship development from now on.

Besides all that, this is also just a really really good book. It's compulsively readable - I meant to do a thread on Twitter while I was reading it, but I completely forgot because I just didn't want to put it down at all. Part of that is because the writing is so lovely and the other part is the characters just drawing you in, and making you invested in them.

This book was one of my most anticipated reads this year since I found out about it, and it really did not disappoint one bit.