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Amal El-Mohtar
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Max Gladstone
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This Is How You Lose the Time War Kindle Edition

by Amal El-Mohtar (Author), Max Gladstone (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 14,987 ratings
Editors' pick Best Science Fiction & Fantasy
See all formats and editions
* HUGO AWARD WINNER: BEST NOVELLA * NEBULA AND LOCUS AWARDS WINNER: BEST NOVELLA *

“[An] exquisitely crafted tale...Part epistolary romance, part mind-blowing science fiction adventure, this dazzling story unfolds bit by bit, revealing layers of meaning as it plays with cause and effect, wildly imaginative technologies, and increasingly intricate wordplay...This short novel warrants multiple readings to fully unlock its complexities.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

From award-winning authors Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone comes an enthralling, romantic novel spanning time and space about two time-traveling rivals who fall in love and must change the past to ensure their future.

Among the ashes of a dying world, an agent of the Commandment finds a letter. It reads: Burn before reading.

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, becomes something more. Something epic. Something romantic. Something that could change the past and the future.

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

Cowritten by two beloved and award-winning sci-fi writers, This Is How You Lose the Time War is an epic love story spanning time and space.
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  1. Print length
    223 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Sticky notes
    On Kindle Scribe
  4. Publisher
    S&S/Saga Press
  5. Publication date
    July 16, 2019
  6. File size
    2223 KB
  7. Page Flip
    Enabled
  8. Word Wise
    Enabled
  9. Enhanced typesetting
    Enabled
  10. See all details
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Customer reviews

4.3 out of 5 stars
4.3 out of 5
14,987 global ratings

Customers say

Customers find the writing style beautiful, glittering, and snarky. They describe the romance plot as lyrical and interesting. They also describe the book as a wonderful, dense read with a fascinating take on time travel. Readers describe the originality as intriguing, immersive, and sensory. Opinions are mixed on the entertainment value, difficulty level, and characters. Some find the book highly enjoyable and packed a huge punch, while others say it's not compelling or interesting.

AI-generated from the text of customer reviews

Select to learn more
Writing styleReadabilityRomance plotOriginalitySettingEntertainment valueCharactersDifficulty level
250 customers mention "Writing style"205 positive45 negative

Customers find the writing style beautiful, creative, and economical. They say the letters are a creative way of building a story. Customers also mention that the title is intriguing and the book is quick to read.

"...💙Some words I might use to describe this story: captivating, poetic, sapphic, fantastical, bittersweet, romantic, imaginative, and heart-..." Read more

"...The paper can vary. Same with the ink. But the transportive quality of letters endures. I only wish we wrote more of them in our current “strand.”" Read more

"...And the romance! I can't overstate how great it feels. It's playful, it's teasing, it's as rich as a triple chocolate cookie, and it's thrilling...." Read more

"...The language used is carefully chosen so as to give the reader a general image of the setting, allowing the reader to fill the gaps...." Read more

161 customers mention "Readability"145 positive16 negative

Customers find the book wonderful, satisfying, and beautifully written. They also say it's fresh, original, and worth the trouble. Readers also mention that the book is compact and can be read in a day.

"...I might use to describe this story: captivating, poetic, sapphic, fantastical, bittersweet, romantic, imaginative, and heart-wrenching...." Read more

"...I will say, for a relatively short 200 page novella, this book is remarkably dense and intense...." Read more

"It was... fine?While this was unarguably a beautifully written book, it wasn't a compelling and interesting one, at least not to me...." Read more

"...To the contrary, it's a superbly written, well crafted piece of storytelling. It's just not my cup of tea." Read more

152 customers mention "Romance plot"122 positive30 negative

Customers find the romance plot brilliant, heart-rendingly passionate, and beautiful. They also recommend the book for sci-fi and romance fans.

"...to describe this story: captivating, poetic, sapphic, fantastical, bittersweet, romantic, imaginative, and heart-wrenching.❤️💙“..." Read more

"...It’s a fascinating tale.The prose borders on poetry—mostly to the good, although I occasionally had trouble following the action...." Read more

"...The result is a surprisingly compelling tale of two people connecting across (literally) time and space, slowly evolving in their understanding of..." Read more

"...Enemies to lovers; poetic, BEAUTIFUL writing; story told via letters, time war (obviously), alien species/cultures... So, so good. Just buy it." Read more

120 customers mention "Originality"100 positive20 negative

Customers find the book intriguing, unique, and rich. They also describe the world as unnerving, fantastic, and ephemeral.

"...💙Some words I might use to describe this story: captivating, poetic, sapphic, fantastical, bittersweet, romantic, imaginative, and heart-..." Read more

"...tool splashed against a sci-fi/fantastical backdrop that is decidedly captivating." Read more

"...; while it occasionally veers into the overly poetic/angsty, it's too interesting and imaginative for me not to find myself drawn in, and the way it..." Read more

"...So, it is obviously super unique, and it was, in fact, unlike anything I’ve ever read in my life...." Read more

20 customers mention "Setting"17 positive3 negative

Customers find the setting fascinating, timeless, and alternating timelines. They also mention the prose is sapphic and timeless.

"...It’s a story of time travel, and divisive ideals, and friendship, and humor, and most of all, love…how love really might be worth losing everything..." Read more

"...Their struggle is the next thing to endless. Both are essentially immortal, capable of playing the longest of long games in one “strand”..." Read more

"...Flaws aside, this book is lyrical in its prose, poetic and timeless with it's theme of needing to be connected to someone, to not be alone;..." Read more

"...a sucker for a romance between opposing sides, and the time & space aspects were intriguing...." Read more

57 customers mention "Entertainment value"27 positive30 negative

Customers are mixed about the entertainment value of the book. Some find it highly enjoyable, passionate, and heart-wrenching, while others say it's beautifully written but not compelling or interesting.

"...While this was unarguably a beautifully written book, it wasn't a compelling and interesting one, at least not to me...." Read more

"...And the romance! I can't overstate how great it feels. It's playful, it's teasing, it's as rich as a triple chocolate cookie, and it's thrilling...." Read more

"...It is really not very good. I have no idea why some have given such praise to this book, it really is not deserving of any attention." Read more

"...get more and more intimate as the book goes on was really, really enthralling...." Read more

29 customers mention "Characters"18 positive11 negative

Customers have mixed opinions about the characters in the book. Some like the premise and amazing characterization, while others say there's not enough about them.

"...❤️It is wordy, perhaps even pretentious, but it fit the characters so well, and the English major (and lover) in me appreciated the hell out..." Read more

"...That the characters weren’t more developed. The end wasn’t my favorite because it was once again a mess...." Read more

"...Persistent foreshadowing. And memorable, mysterious, and mischievous characters. For this is an unlikely story (are not those always the best?)..." Read more

"...The imagery is lush and invocative and tantalizing; the focal characters thought-provoking...." Read more

24 customers mention "Difficulty level"9 positive15 negative

Customers are mixed about the difficulty level. Some find the book confusing, complex, and fun, while others say the writing is intentionally difficult, incoherent, and convoluted.

"Moving and profound but also Confusing and clunky at times. Definitely a book you need to read twice. Im glad I stuck with it, it was beautiful" Read more

"...It is beautifully written, lyrical and confusing and delightful. I don't think I've ever read anything so odd but not at all offputting...." Read more

"...Very well written however just took to long to put everything together...." Read more

"...But it was definitely not for me. For such a short book, it took forever to slog through. Points for uniqueness, though...." Read more

The writing style is SO pretentious
2 out of 5 stars
The writing style is SO pretentious
[No spoilers] The writing style is so pretentious. It's like it's pretentious for the sake of being pretentious. It reads like a pseudo-intellectual in a creative writing class trying to be as extra as possible. "...musing as she does on the agonies of symmetry recording the water's randomness- the magnetic bones settled like reading glasses on the thermodynamic face of the universe"....... Dude, what? I'm not a brainlette but Jesus, I find my comprehension struggling.Or, as this author would write... "My comprehension wanes on the ever-victorious walls of a reality crushed, solace found only under the bones of a $9 price tag"
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Top reviews from the United States

Sarah Hackbarth
5.0 out of 5 stars Unexpectedly sweet sci-fi/fantasy sapphic romance
Reviewed in the United States on December 14, 2023
Verified Purchase
“I wanted to be seen. That need dug into the heart of me.”
❤️
This book left me speechless. I’m still not sure how to compose a true review, because my review will be worlds below the skill and beauty that Gladstone and El-Mohtar were able to weave together in their beautiful love story.
💙
Red and Blue stole my heart and carved a piece of themselves into my soul. This book comes in at just under 200 pages (198 to be exact), but the impact on me was no less than that of an epic fantasy.
❤️
It is wordy, perhaps even pretentious, but it fit the characters so well, and the English major (and lover) in me appreciated the hell out of this text. It’s a story of time travel, and divisive ideals, and friendship, and humor, and most of all, love…how love really might be worth losing everything else for.
💙
Some words I might use to describe this story: captivating, poetic, sapphic, fantastical, bittersweet, romantic, imaginative, and heart-wrenching.
❤️💙
“And what I return to, the me-ness that I know as pure, inescapable self…is hunger. Desire. Longing, this longing to posses, to become, to break like a wave on a rock and reform, and break again, and wash away.”
❤️
“Always a balancing act, of course, to give without losing, to support without weakening. Everything a weaving.”
💙
“But when I think of you, I want to be alone together. I want to strive against and for. I want to live in contact. I want to be a context for you, and you for me. I love you, and I love you, and I want to find out what that means together.”
❤️💙
11 people found this helpful
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Nick Wisseman (author)
4.0 out of 5 stars Letters = Time Travel
Reviewed in the United States on June 5, 2021
Verified Purchase
Letters are many things in Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone’s This Is How You Lose the Time War. Taunts between foes. Invitations to friendship. Missives of love.

They are also, at various points, tree rings, magma, and bubbles. (Seal guts are involved at one point too.)

This epistolary novella begins as a contest between two time travelers, the preeminent members of competing organizations bent on shaping the multiverse to fit their respective visions. Red works for the Agency, a technologically advanced version of humanity that’s implanted her with weapons and armor and pseudo-skin that can change form as required. Blue works for Garden, an organic hivemind whose members have evolved natural corollaries to these tools of destruction and deception. When deployed against each other, Red and Blue are “equal and opposite reaction[s],” as Blue terms them at one point, “a microcosm … of the war as a whole.”

Their struggle is the next thing to endless. Both are essentially immortal, capable of playing the longest of long games in one “strand” (i.e., potential timeline) after another. They might live out an entire life advising a variation of Genghis Khan, for example, and then skip to a resulting future to alter the outcome of a space battle, before circling back to a connecting past to ensure that the wind in an underground labyrinth “whistles over the right fluted bones,” so that “one pilgrim will hear the cry as an omen that will drive him to renounce all worldly goods and retreat to build a hermitage on a distant mountain slope, so that hermitage will exist in two hundred years to shelter a woman fleeing with child in a storm, and so it goes.” Sometimes these actions seem noble, like immunizing Native Americans centuries before contact with Europeans. But in other missions Red and Blue massacre millions.

And it wears. Early in the time war, it was probably easy for these adversaries to shrug off the psychic toll levied by their work—why bother with morality when there are multitudes, when London has so many incarnations they’re labeled with numbers and letters? Yet after eons of plotting and maneuvering and killing, the war goes on, and Red and Blue have little to show for their service.

Except their rivalry.

One-upping each other becomes a new challenge. Not just in the field—although they do plenty of showing off there too (subtle and otherwise). But after Blue rubs in a victory by sending Red a letter that can only be read by burning it, Red responds with a message that can only be read by boiling. From there, they concoct increasingly elaborate ways to continue their correspondence. In the process, their relationship changes, morphing from competition to curiosity to … something more.

It’s a fascinating tale.

The prose borders on poetry—mostly to the good, although I occasionally had trouble following the action. And I’m not sure all the time travel mechanics add up. (If Red and Blue can pinpoint their communications to the exact time and place the other will receive them, how have their parent organizations not figured out when and where to assassinate each other’s agents?) But I loved the ways El-Mohtar and Gladstone play with the concept of letters. “There’s a kind of time travel in letters, isn’t there?” muses Red at one point—words you can reread to take you back to a specific moment, no matter how long it’s been since you first read them.

The paper can vary. Same with the ink. But the transportive quality of letters endures. I only wish we wrote more of them in our current “strand.”
32 people found this helpful
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Sarah
5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastical sci-fi book with a compelling romance to top it off
Reviewed in the United States on June 6, 2023
Verified Purchase
I actually bought this book a few months ago on the recommendation of a reading list, but I never got around to seriously digging into the book. But after getting through another few stories, and after reading about a certain Twitter user whose endorsement went viral, I was intrigued. So I picked it up and almost immediately, I was enthralled.

I will say, for a relatively short 200 page novella, this book is remarkably dense and intense. It is a back-and-forth between two warriors of warring factions in a time war. The time war itself is both rather obvious in nature (they travel to different times and places and influence events) and incredibly dense, with interweaving timelines that form and melt based on the actions of the protagonists. I would say that if you are looking for a book that deep dives into finer details of the worldbuilding and time travel system, this isn't the kind of book for you.

Instead, the worldbuilding serves as a fascinating tapestry upon which the narrative unfolds. The authors, in my opinion, leave wide room for interpretation, and I found that to be so refreshing for a sci-fi book. I suppose that was a necessity, based on the length of the novella, but it was an excellent one, because it allows so much of the story to revolve around the romance between the characters.

And the romance! I can't overstate how great it feels. It's playful, it's teasing, it's as rich as a triple chocolate cookie, and it's thrilling. It felt so lively, I could have seriously guessed that the authors were dating each other (which was not the case, as the afterword mentions, both are married to other people). And the fact that it was a Sapphic romance was perhaps the most delightful part. I'm so used to Sapphic romance being rather plain, or falling into several tropes, but the setting really forced the authors to expand beyond those tropes. And what a delight that was! I would not only recommend this book to lovers of LGBT romances, but to anyone who loves a great romantic tale. It's too good to pass up!
8 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

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Stephanie
5.0 out of 5 stars just beautiful
Reviewed in Canada on June 23, 2024
Verified Purchase
I’m not even sure where to start other than I am floored by the beauty of this novel. I wasn’t sure at first but once I figured out the plot more the more beautiful it became. I cried a lot of tears and in the end I am left with hope. It shows that in the end there really is no winner in war.
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Liéria
5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful
Reviewed in Brazil on June 14, 2023
Verified Purchase
Loved it.
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M C Donaldson
5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant work
Reviewed in France on July 12, 2024
Verified Purchase
Fantastic work of fiction.

LOL @ "Twitter sensation" bc I read this before the memes. :cool-guy-in-sunglasses:
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Layla
5.0 out of 5 stars life changing
Reviewed in Germany on April 25, 2024
Verified Purchase
the romance i have witnessed in this book is like no other i have ever seen in my life, in media, or in my wildest dreams. Reading this was the best thing ever and I can only recommend
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Layla
5.0 out of 5 stars life changing
Reviewed in Germany on April 25, 2024
the romance i have witnessed in this book is like no other i have ever seen in my life, in media, or in my wildest dreams. Reading this was the best thing ever and I can only recommend
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Rosa Arangüena
5.0 out of 5 stars Un libro precioso
Reviewed in Spain on March 16, 2024
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La edición es muy bonita y la novela es original, me ha gustado mucho.
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