This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone. This is one of my extremely rare (like unicorn rare!) book reviews. Right off the bat, it’s a strange book. Not going to lie to you about that, and it won’t be everyone’s cup of tea. But once I started reading, I could not put it down until I fell asleep waaaaayyyy past my bedtime for two nights in a row. A fairly slim volume at 198 pages, each page packs a clever punch. You’ll think about this story and reread passages.
Well, what the heck type of book is it? It’s adventure, poetry, epistolary, romance, tragedy, secret agents, nature, sci fi, time travel, art, literature, history, and more. You can get a copy HERE. It’s from 2019, but I only found out about it recently, and I am so glad I did.
Now I’ll try for a one sentence synopsis: Two female not-human but human-shaped agents from opposing sides travel up and down threads of time changing history so each one’s side will win, but they write secret letters to each other, break all the rules, and fall in love. But it is so much more than that. I hope you’ll give it a go. If you do, I would love to hear your thoughts on it. Seriously. Comment below or write to my email. Tell me if you found it strange, wonderful, awful, all of those, none of those. Happy reading!