January Book Club Discussion: This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

Welcome (or for some of you, welcome back!) to the Speculative Chic Book Club! Thank you so much for joining us on our relaunch in 2020. To say I’m excited about it is an understatement: I’m tickled that every month, a different blogger gets to select a book and lead us in a discussion, and I knew that to kick things off, I had to be the first host. Before we get started, let me share how this will work: each section is clearly marked with a header. Expect spoilers in the section labeled “Discussion.” To skip most of the spoilers, just scroll on down to “In Conclusion.” As an added bonus, you can also find “Recommended Reading” for some similar-yet-different reads, and there’s a poll for you to let us know whether or not you’ve read the book.

So with that in mind, let’s get started, shall we?

This is How You Lose the Time War (2019)
Written by: Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone
Genre: Science Fiction/Time Travel
Pages: 198 (Hardcover)
Publisher: Saga Press

The Premise:

Two time-traveling agents from warring futures, working their way through the past, begin to exchange letters — and fall in love in this thrilling and romantic book from award-winning authors Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone.

In the ashes of a dying world, Red finds a letter marked “Burn before reading. Signed, Blue.”

So begins an unlikely correspondence between two rival agents in a war that stretches through the vast reaches of time and space.

Red belongs to the Agency, a post-singularity technotopia. Blue belongs to Garden, a single vast consciousness embedded in all organic matter. Their pasts are bloody and their futures mutually exclusive. They have nothing in common — save that they’re the best, and they’re alone.

Now what began as a battlefield boast grows into a dangerous game, one both Red and Blue are determined to win. Because winning’s what you do in war. Isn’t it?

A tour de force collaboration from two powerhouse writers that spans the whole of time and space.

This is a book club discussion, so it will therefore contain spoilers. If you haven’t yet read the book and want to remain unspoiled, please come back after reading!

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Discussion

Before we deep dive into the book, I want to take a step back in time and remind us all about my thoughts on this title when we announced the Book Club relaunch back in November:

I couldn’t very well kick off the revamped Book Club without setting the tone, could I? Oh, you mean you want to know why I picked the book! The title alone caught my eye from the very start, and when I read the premise, I was immediately attracted to the idea of two time-traveling agents from opposite sides of a war falling in love. Forgive me, for I have read To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis and The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger, and I’m a sucker for a great time-traveling romance. I really, really hope this fits the bill.

So with those expectations in place, how’d This Is How You Lose the Time War fare?

Well, I’ll be honest: I had to read the book twice. Due to my day job, I’d decided to get an early start and finished reading this book on my Kindle well before we got into the 2019 holiday season. Then I realized that if I sat down to write the review at that moment, I’d have absolutely nothing to say. There are a few reasons for this:

I’ve said over and over on Facebook and Twitter, this book is surreal. I’ve gotten spoiled by very tangible fantasies and science fictions and mixes thereof, which means I haven’t been challenging myself lately with narratives, so not only did I get lulled into the format of the novella (prose, followed by a letter, followed by a point-of-view switch, followed by another letter), but because each letter was discovered in such a unique way and read in such a unique format, I was never able to grasp the shape of the narrative. We have these amazing characters from amazing places: you’ve got the technologically advanced Agency, represented by Red, and then the verdant Garden, represented by Blue. And through their letters, we learn about each side and what they’re capable of, and it’s because they’re so different that we’re left to assume the war is due to that difference.

But I, as a reader, had a really hard time grasping that.

Time travel is always full of timey-wimey whatevers, but as you can surmise from my original expectations, I’m used to time travel in familiar settings: Connie Willis’ To Say Nothing of the Dog is set in the Victorian Era, and Aubrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife is set in the modern world, both of which are familiar. This is How You Lose the Time War was utterly unfamiliar, even if the periods Red and Blue would be infiltrating sometimes were. Because I couldn’t visualize the individual futures both sides were fighting for, I never picked sides, and after two reads, I suspect that’s the point. It doesn’t matter which future the reader feels should win: the point, of course, is the interaction and relationship between these two spies, between Red and Blue, and how they carve something out of this war that’s meant for only the two of them.

But I didn’t get that on my first read. I finished the book, set my Kindle down, and wished I’d read a hard copy of the book instead. So that’s what I ended up doing: getting a hard copy of the book and reading that for my second pass.

How was that different? For starters, I already knew what I was getting into: I knew how the book ended, I knew the structure, and I knew the characters. So picking it up for the second time allowed me to actually focus on what I was getting, rather than wondering what was next and struggling to visualize what was happening on the page.

So on the second read, I was struck immediately by the crisp, beautiful power of the prose. Consider the opening line:

When Red wins, she stands alone.

Blood slicks her hair. She breathes out steam in the last night of this dying world.

And then, a few paragraphs later:

A tremor passes through the soil — do not call it earth. The planet dies. Crickets chirp. Crickets survive, for now, among the crashed ships and broken bodies on this crumbling plain. Silver moss devours steel, and violet flowers choke the dead guns. If the planet lasted long enough, the vines that sprout from the corpses’ mouths would grow berries.

The imagery is fantastic, and on my second read, I was able to truly appreciate and relish it. My first read, I admit to impatience, letting these descriptions wash over me and furthering my own confusion, because I couldn’t sit still and breathe in the beauty of the book. In this day and age, it’s too easy to rush through.

Moving on, I had a certain amount of fun in reading each section and trying to discover where in history (our history?) Red and/or Blue were. Sometimes I didn’t know until the end of a section (like the Genghis period), and sometimes I was told straight away such as Atlantis. Oh, how I loved this particular section: how it’s despised by both Red and Blue, which is so at odds with the allure surrounding the myth of the lost city.

I was also rather fascinated to realize that we weren’t just dealing with time, but rather with multiverses. At least, that’s how I read it. To think of it all as a single loop of time (such as the Willis or the Niffenegger) invites more confusion than not. Often, references are made to a particular strand’s London, or a particular strand’s Genghis, or a particular strand’s Atlantis, and it’s as if there are multiple versions of all of these things. And I do wonder a bit about that: for two sides that are warring to keep their futures intact, how is it these futures came to be? From what strand did they erupt, or have there always been multiple strands, and somehow, they got crossed? I know I said earlier that the point of this book is not to wonder these things: after all, time travel can be confusing even if you’re dealing with a single loop with no divergences, let alone adding multiverses, but I’ll admit, my nerdy brain wanted more in that regard. In order for these two futures to be at war with each other, they had to start somewhere, which leads to the age-old question, which came first, the chicken or the egg? Dr. Manhattan, from HBO’s Watchmen, would say it’s both, and truly, that’s the concept this novella embraces.

Perhaps I’d have a better grasp to the answers to those questions if I remembered anything at all of Naomi Mitchison’s Travel Light, but unfortunately, all I remember is that I read it. Reading this book made me want to dive into my own shelves to see if I still own a copy, to see how it complements or enhances This is How You Lose the Time War, so if anyone has read Mitchison’s book recently, or at least has a good memory of it, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Now let’s zero in and focus on the main point of this book: Red, Blue, and their love story. I admit, on first read, I didn’t really “get” this as a love story, at least not in the traditional sense of which I was clearly expecting. That said, having read this book twice now, I see that magnetic pull between these two agents, the way they were the best of their respective sides, and how by seeing their adversary as their equal, were able to cultivate something they couldn’t find elsewhere: respect, friendship, and indeed love. The lengths Red and Blue go to save each other, to protect each other, transcends the expectation of a traditional love story. And one of the joys in reading this book twice is getting to see how El-Mohtar and Gladstone build to the climax and weave that moment throughout the book: I loved understanding who the Seeker was the second time around (and why). It’s a completely different experience between first and second read: the first go-around, I thought Red and Blue were compromised. The second go-around, I realized it was Red gathering everything she needed to preserve what is essentially a time loop and in turn save Blue.

I did so enjoy their letters back and forth, specifically their pet names for each other. Having a spouse who’s also a graphic designer, I immediately latched on to “0000FF” as a favorite, though “Red Sky in the Morning” was a delight as well.

Truth be told, I feel like there are so many different ways to read this book. There’s so much to absorb, so much to ponder, so much to explore and enjoy. I loved how every single main character (Red, Blue, and their respective bosses) were portrayed as women, and I loved how utterly normal all of it felt. I loved the utter and wild creativity to this piece, even though at times I felt a little lost during my first read-through.

In Conclusion

This is How You Lose the Time War is ultimately a book that rewards re-reading, and I don’t say that lightly: there are too many books in this world I want to read, and too little time to read them all. That I stopped and made myself re-read this one speaks to the power of the prose and beauty of the story, even if I couldn’t quite consciously absorb it all on the first time around. Even after a second read, my head is still spinning, wondering what clues I missed: there’s such a huge part of me that wonders how many times Red and Blue saved each other; there’s also a huge part of me that wonders what happened between the pages, and how often Red and Blue were truly able to interact outside of their respective letters. It’s a book that requires careful and considerate reading, and I immediately know it’s not to everyone’s tastes, no matter how carefully they read. That said, I’m glad I selected this book: it definitely didn’t fit into my expectations for the piece (honestly, I visualized something like Connie Willis’ time-traveling historians going back and forth in time and running into each other and having an illicit affair), but it’s been a long time since I challenged myself with a new narrative. I can see myself revisiting this yet again in the future, but for now, I want to savor the experience, and I want to hear everyone’s thoughts.

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Recommended Reading

To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis (1998): I’ve mentioned it over and over, and truth be told, after reading Willis’ Doomsday Book and Blackout/All Clear, this one didn’t impress me on my first reading, but that was because the tone was utterly different from what I was expecting, and I don’t seem to do well with Victorian-styled pieces/humor. All of that being said, To Say Nothing of the Dog has the single best kiss I’ve ever read about or will ever read about, and trust me: you’ll know it when you read it.

The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger (2015): Bear with me on this, because I read this book over a decade ago, and no, I haven’t seen the film, which either revealed or highlighted the problematic nature of the story (content warning: grooming). But this book still bears a special place in my heart, especially for the way it plays with structure and uses that structure to create the tapestry of this doomed love story. It’s another book that rewards re-reading, and having a physical copy on hand so you can flip back through the pages for those “wait, what?” moments.

Replay by Ken Grimwood (1998): This isn’t really a love story, and one might even argue it’s not even a time-travel story, but in so many ways, it really, really is both. This book caught my eye for its premise, how a man has a heart attack and goes back to his teenage years with the knowledge of his adult self and relives his life. But every time he dies, he goes back in time, only he restarts a little later than he did the time before, slowly inching back to the point of his heart attack. As you can imagine, a person can create quite the life for themselves if they could live the same life over and over and over, and this book was utterly riveting.

Steel Time by J.L. Gribble (2018): Sue me, I’m biased, but I was tickled pink by the fourth book in our very own J.L. Gribble‘s Steel Empires series. While I always enjoy Toria’s point-of-view, to be given a book that focuses on time travel was a sheer delight, not only because that’s when Gribble’s worldbuilding really started kicking in for me, but also because, spoiler alert, there’s a love story! The end of this book really jarred me with just how well-plotted this story (and series!) is, but remember: this is the fourth book in an ongoing alternate history/urban fantasy series, and it is not meant to be read as a standalone.

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Participation Poll

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February’s Book Club Selection: The Atrocities by Jeremy C. Shipp, hosted by Kristina Elyse Butke on Friday, February 28th!