Book Review - 'This is How You Lose the Time War' by Amal El-Mohtar, Max Gladstone

Goddessdamn this book.

It's confusing, baffling, all over the place, and borderline pretentious, yet I could not put it down. The writing is so lyrical, poetic, clever, and even funny - the authors mostly achieved what they'd set out to do - despite its oftentimes bizarre choices of words. Words that could be English, words that may or may not be made up entirely for the book. And the bizarre uses of words. Maybe I'm merely uneducated in my vocabulary and in literary, cultural and historical references, and don't get it.

When I let it flow through me like water in a river in a traditional Japanese garden, however, when I let it go and it subtly and gently consumes me from the inside out on the long run of the reading journey, I found I could still enjoy the whole wretched thing set out to undo me. There are passages that will leave some readers cross-eyed, reading back again and again until midnight strikes, but the overall tasty and beautiful writing, and content, should render these concerns moot. Like soot.

If nothing else, 'This is How You Lose the Time War' is an unforgettable experience. It is highly ambitious and daring in its uniqueness and deliciousness, its delirium. I was spellbound whilst reading it, even with its purple prose and lost words and phrases necromancy. Go with the flow, tread on the (time) thread, and it is a legitimately smart, thought-provoking, dazzling, soft, intricate, and passionate piece of literature. It can be pretty like a jewel, hard to crack but fascinating to just sit and stare into for hours on end.

'This is How You Lose the Time War' is about two opposing sci-fi soldier/agent women - Red and Blue, cyborg plant and plant-plant, grown for war - who are against each other in a war across all of time and space and multiverses and dimensions, who throughout their changing and threading lives (including their own) write, create, invent, plant, and induce letters to only one another, and fall in love, without them actually meeting properly on the same time thread, at the same time. It's a beautiful premise ripe for science fiction, that is executed beautifully. And I dare not say anything more about it. It should be stepped into, and experienced, as blindly as possible, for the full wonder of the blasted, frustrating parasite of a novella.

I'm half-joking. Or am I?

I'm not sure anymore.

And thank goddess 'This is How You Lose the Time War' is a novella. Short and sweet, and doesn't overstay its welcome. How much more of the lovely and addictive pain in my arse could I have taken before throwing up my hands and giving up at last?

Where is this review going? What is thought? What is content? What is cohesion? What is going back and editing? I don't know, the writing of this is kind of like how I've experienced the book itself.

A book that has gotten me out of a long, long, depressing slump, and made me possibly love reading new (and old) books again. Made me believe in the magic and revolutionary power of prose literature again. Regardless of what anyone thinks of this magnum opus, and whatever they gather from it in coming away from it...it makes you think. It's its own anomaly, a great trial and effort towards a great achievement.

Of course I recommend it.

'This is How You Lose the Time War' - Feminist, LBGTQ, creative, genius, and a hell of a lot of seeds-and-pollens-and-pods-and-stars-worth of WTF-ness. It mentions nature, tea, books, libraries, seals, dragons, and other gorgeous (and human) things that exist (except the dragons), too.

For a story about war, it is not too gruesome: killing, poison, bones and blood are not all there is. It is also about love reaching across every timeline, multiverse, and everything and everywhere all at once, forever.

(See what I did there? In addition, the book could easily be made into a video game as well as a film. Okay, I'll shut up now.)

(…One more negative point to end this messy review of a messy and perfectly imperfect small-but-big book: It could have done with more birds, literal or metaphorical or symbolic, especially towards the end. The cover is almost a lie.)

Final Score: 3.5/5