Someone’s going to ask me what “This Is How You Lose the Time War” is about, and all they are going to receive is a blank stare.
Don’t mistake that for indifference to or disdain of the story — quite the opposite, in fact. It’s tremendous.
I just can’t explain it.
This is often the case when it comes to Sci-Fi for me. I don’t seek it out. It’s not my favorite genre. Not my least favorite, either. Just not the one I seek out at the bookstore or library. Instead, if it’s Sc-Fi I am meant to read, it finds me. And with Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone’s love story, a viral post on Twitter was the impetus behind me picking it up in an independent bookshop in Kensington, near Kate and Will’s family abode in London. (What’s the point of being a book fan if you don’t go into all the bookstores on vacation?)
It’s exactly the kind of story that’s going to play like a Rick Astley earworm in your brain. Two agents/assassins on opposite sides of an eternal war face off over and over again across space and time, their primary purpose to set in motion/attend to/prevent historical actions that could alter the course of events downthread and upthread. The minutiae of which can be dizzying — think about how the creation of a footpath may trigger the loosening of boulders that then crash with precision into a river, altering its course so that the water will carry eroding sand over a source of metal meant to later become a weapon with a unseen weakness in its core that will render it ineffective on the battlefield, thereby saving, let’s say, Jon Snow.
And that’s my ear worm — what teeny tiny events and distractions paved the way for me to open Twitter at the right moment to read a Tweet about a book I’d never heard about beforehand and what machinations took place on the other side of that exchange that determined the Tweet was even ever sent?
This kind of thinking is like Fantasyland for the overthinker (see: me), and grossly entertaining to read about and imagine if that’s your thing.
Even more engaging is the relationship between these two agents, Red and Blue. Red working for the omnipresent Commandant, and Blue repping for the Garden — two forces determined to outwit and outlast. What starts as a cunning exchange between Red and Blue turned into something so emotionally intimate it defies explanation. It’s not a love traditionally defined. It’s more than romantic, it’s more than maternal. It’s otherworldly.
It’s the kind of prose that can leave you wanting with deep, yearning, feeling — the words you read that leave you wishing and hoping for that kind of connection with your partner. (Though, at least for me, I know I’d fall over laughing if I said these words aloud to my husband or he to me. So out of character, that I am content to leave this as it is. Fantasy writing.)
And there you have it — about as good as an explanation you are going to get from me. To the Tweeter who caught my attention … you were right. This is something you should go back to read at least once a year. It’s a fast read, at just under 200 pages. It’s engrossing, thought-provoking and all the good things a book should ever be. Highly recommended.
LitzyDitz 
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