This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

Synopsis: Among the ashes of a dying world, an agent of the Commandant finds a letter. It reads: Burn before reading.
And thus begins an unlikely correspondence between two rival agents hellbent on securing the best possible future for their warring factions. Now, what began as a taunt, a battlefield boast, grows into something more.

Except discovery of their bond would be death for each of them. There’s still a war going on, after all. And someone has to win that war. That’s how war works. Right?


Review: This is How You Lose the Time War is one of those books that got a lot of hype and it made me a bit nervous to read it. We follow two agents on opposite sides of a war. One named Red and the other named Blue. The book switches between Red and Blue's perspectives so we get to see them interacting with the world and their timelines while the other agent leaves them notes hiding in plain sight. The banter between Red and Blue was very well done. It starts as taunting, then leads into respect, and then it finally turns into love. Seeing them tease each other without ever actually interacting face-to-face was incredible. I didn't understand why people like hate-to-love romances but, if this is representative of them, now I understand.


This is How You Lose the Time War takes a little to get used to. We are following time travelers, so the story isn't really told in sequential order. I know this book is, at its core, a romance. Still, I wish we had a little bit more time with Red and Blue interacting with their respective sides. I wanted to have a better idea of the motivations behind the Commandant and the Garden before the book ended. Also, maybe it's just me, but I got strong Steven Universe vibes when I was reading this book, and I'm not sure why. I like SU, so it didn't bother me. Sometimes Red and Blue would say something and it would make me think of the Gems or the Diamonds from SU. I think my biggest problem with the overall story is that I didn't quite understand how the time traveling worked. Sometimes, Red and Blue would talk as if they were part of parallel universes, and I feel like that's a separate dynamic from standard time travel. That's one of the few things that I couldn't wrap my head around when it came to this story.


Beautiful writing with one of the best romances I've ever read.


4.5 howls