This Is How You Lose the Time War
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.
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?
Praise
[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
If Iain M. Banks and Gerard Manley Hopkins had ever been able to collaborate on a science fiction project, well, it wouldn’t be half as much fun as this novella. There is all the pleasure of a long series, and all the details of a much larger world, presented in miniature here.
—Kelly Link
This book has it all: treachery and love, lyricism and gritty action, existential crisis and space-opera scope, not to mention time traveling superagents. Gladstone’s and El-Mohtar’s debut collaboration is a fireworks display from two very talented storytellers.
—Madeline Miller, Winner of the Orange Prize for Fiction
Seditious and seductive, lush and lustrous, allusive and elusive, THIS IS HOW YOU LOSE THE TIME WAR is one of those rare stories where one struggles to decide whether to heap more praise upon its clever structure and prose or its brilliant ideas and characters. Never mind … sit back and let it wind its way into your mind, until, with a start, you realize that you no longer know where the story ends and you start.
—Ken Liu author of The Grace of Kings and The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories
Lyrical and vivid and bittersweet. An absolutely lovely read from two talented writers.
—Ann Leckie, Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author of Ancillary Justice
An intimate and lyrical tour of time, myth and history, with a captivating conversation between characters—and authors. Read it.
—New York Times bestselling author John Scalzi
This Is How You Lose the Time War is rich and strange, a romantic tour through all of time and the multiverse, and you shouldn’t miss a moment.
—Martha Wells, Hugo Award-winning author of The Murderbot Diaries
A time travel adventure that has as much humanity, grace, and love as it has temporal shenanigans, rewriting history, and temporal agents fighting to the death. Two days from now, you’ve already devoured it.
—Ryan North, New York Times Bestselling and Eisner Award winning author of How To Invent Everything: A Survival Guide For The Stranded Time Traveler
Poetry, disguised as genre fiction. I read several sections out loud — this is prose that wants to be more than read. It wants to be heard and tasted.
—Kelly Sue DeConnick, author of Captain Marvel
A twisting, sapphic time travel fantasy love story that never stops surprising: El-Mohtar and Gladstone have written the ultimate in enemies-to-lovers romance.
—Booklist, Starred Review
Tenderness, danger, daring, wit — Time War has them all… In other words, these pages are strewn with myriad delights.
—Nisi Shawl
read this. DO NOT look up anything about it. just read it. it’s only like 200 pages u can download it on audible it’s only like four hours. do it right now i’m very extremely serious.
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