I did not pick up “This Is How You Lose the Time War” by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone because of the beautiful cover art, the intriguing summary or even the review comment from Madeline Miller herself. Rather, I picked it up because of a tweet I saw four months ago
Yes, I picked up one of my now-favorite books of all-time because of a Twitter user called maskofbun.
I’m not sure what that says about me.
Regardless, the book follows the lives of two time traveling agents, Red and Blue, who work for rival organizations seeking to bring about their utopias. The chapters switch between Red and Blue’s perspectives, from one universe’s Atlantis to another universe’s Beijing, and are split up with teasing letters to each other.
From the first page I was hooked. El-Mohtar and Gladstone’s writing makes you feel like twirling your hair and kicking your feet up on your bed like a teenage girl before her first date.
(Apologies to every student who made awkward eye contact with me in Saxbys as I was desperately trying to take the dumb smile off my face — I was just fanpersoning over two time-traveling lesbians.)
For me, the highlight of the book were the letters sandwiched between each narrative chapter. It’s here that Red and Blue’s personalities truly shine. Red is a by-the-book, intense and extremely driven woman, while Blue is cockier, more adventurous and ultimately the first to start their little game.
Red and Blue’s relationship develops at just the right pace. We see them start as teasing opponents, bragging about how they foiled the other’s plans and taunting them to retaliate, to becoming confidantes who can only express their emotions in the secrecy of their letters.
One of the biggest connections between Red and Blue is their feeling of loneliness. They both reveal how they feel like outsiders in their agencies, separate from the other agents. It’s this loneliness that allows them to find solace in each other, and it was also the aspect of the book I connected most with.
Both agencies expect their agents to be extensions of everyone else, for all of them to operate for the same goal. Red and Blue have been in countless relationships required of them by their agencies, played roles to a perfect T, yet it’s only with each other that they realize that they want more for themselves.
It’s their forbidden love that makes them begin questioning their roles and what futures they truly want for themselves. After all, only one of their agencies can win the time war.
Red and Blue find themselves having to pick between their true identities, their love for each other and the expectations their agencies have for them. It’s the classic story of star-crossed lovers — except, not really, because Red and Blue’s lives are intertwined in ways that make you want to believe that soulmates really do exist.
“This Is How You Lose the Time War” isn’t for everyone. The prose can get a little too flowery and unclear in its meaning, the plot can occasionally get away from itself and I sometimes found myself having to backtrack to understand just what El-Mohtar and Gladstone were saying. However, it’s a cheap, quick and intensely enjoyable read for anyone who’s looking for a fun book to scream into your pillow about.
Sinqueerly Yours,
Kal
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