This Is How You Lose the Time War

It is safe to say there is nothing quite like this delightful, quick read from Amar El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone with the ominous title of This is How You Lose the Time War. It is impossible to say what time or date this story begins, because it is ultimately a story about time travel and it’s also essentially irrelevant to the story at hand. Suffice to say it involves two unique, interesting, and complex characters who are very different but have a strong thing in common: they are both time travelers.

There is Red, who belongs to the Agency, a post-singularity technotopia; and there is Blue who belongs a vast consciousness within all organic matter known as the Garden. One day, Red discovers a letter that reads: “Burn after reading. Signed, Blue.” And so begins a most unique and unusual pen-pal relationship across time and space, as the two communicate with each other through these clandestine letters that are hidden in all manner of ways only to be skillfully discovered by the other, whether it be in the rings of the tree, or layers of a rock, or the strings of a fabric, or any other method of incomprehensible correspondence.

While the literary device begins creatively and draws the reader’s interest, past the halfway point it gets a little repetitive and dragging. But towards the end, things heat up and reach a satisfactory conclusion for the reader.