What if falling in love was the most dangerous thing you could do?
In “This is How You Lose the Time War,” two women on opposing sides of a war — one that stretches across space and time — begin an unexpected correspondence. Blue belongs to the Garden, a collective consciousness rooted in all organic matter. Red works for The Agency, a technologically advanced civilization which merges humans and A.I. Blue fights with patience and subtlety, while Red is violent and brutal. They share one thing: both are the best of their kind.
Despite their contact being forbidden, they begin leaving each other letters. They don’t send conventional letters — instead, they are forced to write hidden messages written using tree rings, tea leaves and chemical reactions. Messages they then memorize, as it’s too precarious to leave any trace of their contact behind.
In one letter to Blue, Red explains her lack of hunger. She already mentioned that her people do not need to eat — they have advanced beyond such basic human needs. They have implanted organs that rid their bodies of the need to cry or digest food. Why not sate needs before they strike? Despite this, Red describes a feeling that to her, was hunger — a hollowness, a lightness, a loneliness, a wanting to be seen. She felt it in her heart, and it felt good. I really enjoyed this passage. Red put hunger into words even though she has never physically felt it. I wanted more of that. I wanted to know more about her organs, her hunger, her side of the war.
In another letter, Blue writes about her loneliness. She explains that those within Garden are not “friends,” and that any sense of friendship she has known has been fleeting — ephemeral, and merely an extension of her work. Both agents operate alone. The loneliness that defines Red and Blue ultimately shapes the novel. Its restraint — its refusal to linger or explain — mirrors the isolation of its characters, leaving the reader with the same sense of incompleteness that follows them through the war.
The book was co-written by the two authors: Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone. Each author wrote the respective letters for the two characters, Red and Blue. The letters are flowery, poetic and lovely — if you’re a romantic, this book may be for you.
The writing was beautiful and kept me reading. The yearning, the longing, the lyricism, the hunger! The love between these characters reached beyond the physical. There were no kisses and no subtle hand brushes, dangerous letters exchanged between Red and Blue served as the venue for their story to unfold.
Although there was immense yearning, this was not a slow burn. With only 198 pages in this book, I did not feel there was enough time for these two to properly fall in love. They went from enemies fighting to destroy each other’s sides to addressing each other as “dearly” and “lovingly” too quickly.
Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate the bond between Red and Blue. I just wish their story had been given more time to breathe. I wanted to slowly watch them learn companionship and explore their hunger in their lives full of loneliness, bloodshed and pretending. I would have been more invested in them if their connection didn’t feel so easy and immediate. My own hunger to see these characters fall in love grew. It might be valuable to note here that I’m not a fan of love at first sight stories. I prefer a slow buildup full of tension, and this book didn’t offer me that.
If you’re seeking plot, “This is How You Lose the Time War” might not be the place to find it. I was constantly intrigued by the world — its scale, its strangeness, its ambition — but I rarely felt grounded in it. Science fiction is not my usual genre, and I spent much of this book confused, wanting to understand the mechanics of the time war rather than losing myself in the story. Yet, that incomprehensibility echoes the relationship at its center: a bond that resists logic and causality Just as the war unfolds beyond full understanding, so does the connection between Red and Blue.
“ I wish the book had given me more of this world, one where they don’t say “the Earth” but “the soil,” and where time is something you step through rather than something that passes you by.”
Red and Blue move through strands of history as easily as we walk from class to class, yet these movements were only really glimpsed in passing. I was aching to know more, to understand this world. This gave the novel a dreamlike quality, but it left me grasping for firmer ground.
Overall, I think my main complaint is that the book was simply not long enough. I admired the concept, the letters and the characters, but felt the book was too short to properly accomplish what it set out to do. I wanted more space for the story to breathe. Still, “This is How You Lose the Time War” was undeniably beautiful. It was definitely a book driven by language rather than plot, emotion rather than explanation. If you’re a reader who values lyricism, metaphor and romance, this book may feel intoxicating. For me, I closed the book wanting more — more time, more world, more tension — but perhaps that lingering hunger is exactly the point.
Kassia Zabetakis PZ ’28 loves speeding through romance novels in days, but usually ends up hating them after she’s done.
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