This Is How You Lose The Time War
Book · 2019 · Reviewed on
It’s my sincere belief that this book is best experienced without any impressions. So, to those of you who are already considering reading this book. Stop reading this review, and read this book. It’s short, and it’s more than worth it.
To those who aren’t and to those who already have, please read on.
Science fiction is often very impersonal. The ideas and concepts at the centre of the stories tend to become their own main character, rather than the actual main character. This has lead to very though-provoking science fiction, but they have a tendency to lose their reader, in the pursuit of their central idea. It requires a certain kind of mind to brave through the impersonality of good science fiction, and I find myself unsuitable to the task.
I say all this to highlight how different this book is from the norm.
When asked what this book is about, how do I answer?
Sure, I can say that this is about two agents on opposite sides of a time war, changing history in subtle ways to favour their side. They perform counter-counterstrokes against counters, thinking centuries in advance about the implications of their actions in the grand chessboard of the universe.
These two agents are Red, and Blue. And this book is their story. They move through time in the way we move through space. I felt like both of them, growing more and more invested with each secret, intimate letter written to each other. As they grew to love each other more and more… I grew to love them more and more. As short as this book is, I know Red. I know Blue. I discovered more about both of them at the same time that they were discovering things about each other.
These agents write letters to each other which aren’t pen and paper, but inscribed into the fabric of the universe, written in the froth stirred from a cup of tea, the rings of a dying tree, the taste of a certain seed. They’re written to each other and slowly start to fall in love with each other. That in a nutshell is the surface answer. Somehow, as true as that answer is, it still feels wrong.
What’s going on under the surface? This book, to me, is about the ways the people around us change and shape us while being changed and shaped by us. It’s about how the smallest actions can spark the biggest changes. It’s about how there are no winners when in combat. It’s about the power of words. It’s not just a love story, but also a love letter. A love letter to hope, and the strange, wonderful ways it works.
I want flowers from Cephalus and diamonds from Neptune, and I want to scorch the thousand earths between us to see what blooms from the ash, so we can discover it hand in hand, content in context, intelligible only to each other. I want to meet you in every place I have loved. I don’t know how it’s done between such as us, Red. But I can’t wait to find out together.
Let me get this out of the way, I know Goodreads tagged this as a romance, but it’s not. Branding it as a romance feels like a disservice to their relationship. They think so differently from us that romance doesn’t really apply here. This is a love story. That’s what it is at its core. Love in its purest and deepest, yet somehow also its most alien form. A deep and fierce love that is grown and nurtured with every page of this book.
I am not equipped with the right words to describe the experience this book gave me. It’s raw, it’s tender, and it’s beautiful all the way through. I don’t say that lightly and yet, these words aren’t enough. I didn’t expect to connect so deeply to this book, but I ended up doing so anyway.
This is the gift of reading. I am ever grateful for having received it.
