This is How You Lose the Time War Book Review

This is How You Lose The Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

Summary and Review

This is a difficult book for me to review because I absolutely chose a book that was not my usual taste when I selected this to listen to on audio. If you’ve noticed the general trend of books I listen to on audio getting general lower ratings than books I read as physical, it’s because of the correlation to how excited I am about the book. If I’m really excited about reading a book because I think I’m going to love it, then generally I want to buy a physical. And if I’m going to own a physical copy, then I’m going to read that copy, because there’s no point in owning a physical edition of a book if I’m not going to do anything with it. So, I usually pick titles that I’m only mildly intrigued by to listen to on audio—then that way if I don’t love it, I didn’t spend money to own a physical copy of a book I won’t read again. 

That’s my philosophy anyway. Also, I listen to audiobooks when I’m working from home, and so I want something I’m less intrigued by, so that I can concentrate on my work and casually listen, rather than be totally absorbed by the book. 

Onto the actual story itself.

There were things about it I appreciated. I liked that it was written in epistolary style. I like that the authors chose to write it about an F/F couple. It’s really good representation to see a sapphic couple in a SciFi work when they do easily could have made it a hetero couple without a second thought. The idea of this whole story is really great. 

In fact I do also love the way it plays out, the slow transition of Red and Blue going from rivals in warring factions to falling in love. I also love—as twisted and confusing and difficult to understand as it is—the way the timeline unfolds, and we discover the, uh… wrinkle(?) created by Red and Blue’s love story. I would attempt to explain it, but I would just bungle it. You have to actually read the book to understand more thoroughly. 

The main issue with the story is world building. I think it was intentional on the authors’ parts to keep the world building vague. I can respect the creative reasoning behind it, but it unfortunately prevents me from understanding this story at times, and it hindered my appreciation. 

I mean is this a SciFi take on the real world (I think that’s what it is), or is it its own universe? The two different sides that Red and Blue were on, why were they against each other? Maybe these questions were answered, and I just wasn’t paying close enough attention to grasp it, but I finished this with too many unanswered questions, and not in an open-ended ending good sort of way. More of in a “so what exactly was going on” kind of way.

I also feel like I could have used more of an emotional connection to the characters. Again, I think it was a creative decision to distance the reader from the full scope of the characters’ feelings—given that we only know them as Red and Blue, so we don’t really have any intimate knowledge of them as people—but this doesn’t help the development of their relationship. That in turn doesn’t help the story because the story itself relies so heavily on the relationship between Red and Blue. 

Final Thoughts

Overall, I would give this a 2.5 out of 5 stars. It’s a test concept and has its moments, and I love the representation. It just feels a little too underdeveloped for my personal taste.