This is How You Lose the Time War: The epic time-travelling love story and Twitter sensation

Like many people, I first heard about this book when legitimate and professional news readers had to repeatedly say the username "Bigolas Dickolas Wolfwood" on TV and over radio. I remember finding the whole thing utterly hilarious back then, and mentally added the book to my 'to read' list. It was actually much later that a close friend mentioned the book again as something she thought I would like that I actually went out and bought a copy to read. I wish I hadn't waited so long honestly, because I think this might now be one of my absolute favourite books. The story is a scifi, written in the epistolary style between two agents of rival factions in a time war. It starts with them taunting one another, then the language begins to soften, and it's done so artfully that sometimes you don't notice and have to go back a letter and read it again to see the subtle changes in language. It's so poetically written as well, truly lyrical by the end, and the idea and themes are so clever and well executed throughout, I feel like I'm going to re-read this book hundreds of times and still fall in love with it all over again. I've got to admit, usually when I write book reviews I tend not to worry too much about spoilers, simply because I tend to read books that have been out for a few years already. This time I'm being deliberately vague though, because I really think this book is better if you go into it with no expectations. It takes so many twists and turns in the narrative and the ending honestly broke me - I genuinely sobbed all through the last forty pages, I'm not kidding. It's a true enemies to lovers sapphic romance, written in the most dazzling way, with so much poignant yearning dripping from the pages that it destroyed me and healed me over and over again as I read it. It's not a big book, by the way. I think it took me four or so hours to read? I would recommend this book to anyone really, but especially people who enjoy clever narration and beautiful wordplay. I'm excited to read it again!

The book is a bit hard to get into at first. The world is very very difficult to imagine and the sci-fi elements are not explained until much further on so they can be very confusing. The prose, while extremely beautiful and poetic, can add to this confusion. That being said, I feel that once you get used to it and just accept the impossibilities of a world much more advanced than our own, the story is incredibly enjoyable. I eagerly anticipated each letter, falling in love with the characters with each one. Despite the mind-bending sci-fi elements, the romance is believable and incredibly human. We really don't learn much about the characters, their worlds, the war. And yet watching the love grow between red and blue is so convincing and heart warming. Ive already mentioned the prose, but I really want to emphasise how beautiful they are. I feel totally inspired to become a better writer. The language evoked such emotion out of me, I was tearful, inspired, elated, scared, desperate along with the characters. I really enjoyed this book, despite not being a big fan of romance or fantasy/sci-fi. It's a great read for getting out of a reading slump.

“You’ve always been the hunger at the heart of me, Red—my teeth, my claws, my poisoned apple.” My brain hurts. I've read sci-fi before but this made me question my intelligence. I'm struggling to process this book never mind try and write a coherent review. First of all this is a story of how Blue and Red are rivals of different sides from different multiverses?? The best I can explain it is that Red represents technology and Blue the earth. Or at least that's the world's in which they respectively come from, were grown as weapons etc. They are worthy opponents and thus their story grows through the letters in which they send over many timelines. It's hard to say how many years that their story unfolds over but I would guess it's over a couple of centuries. With each letter and each life time these two rival assassin time travellers fall in love. Amidst lots of casual murder and a time war. Now why is this time war happening? Who knows! Do I grasp the concept of power and how it can apply here to events that unfold and how each timeline impacts the world therefore giving that power to the "winners"? Absolutely. But the authors don't really give depth to that here. This book is written mostly in letters which I had no issue with actually. It is also a love story that unfolds slowly. Then there's the non existent world building; you get details here and there to try put it together but overall I'm still very confused. I don't often seek out books that I feel will hit me emotionally, that will pack a punch. However, I wanted that with this book but I didn't get that. This book is written in a way which is to be understood as attempting to be beautiful and philosophical and to pull certain emotions out of the reader. However the prose were too much so much so that they read as pretentious to me. It offered lots of imagery and potential for swooning but when I.actually stood back and tried to understand the flowery writing it would be nonsensical. I was so busy trying to understand what was happening, what was being said, trying to decipher meaning from it that I couldn't actually feel the connection with the book and with Blue and Red and their love story. And that was the issue for me besides it being overwhelming to read was that there was too much reliance on the flowery writing itself, to get so trapped up in the confusion that it sounded pretty but what was actually happening?? How were they falling in love? How does this world work from timeline to timeline? Don't get me wrong, the yearning and the pining between these two women was so good but beyond that? I was just confused. I was hoping by the end it would all click for me. That I'd have understanding and clarity on what the story was. That I'd feel this book in my chest. And while some things slowly came to light, for the most part I was confused. Still am. Perhaps that's the point. Maybe the over poetic writing is for a very particular group of readers and I'll just be over here being dumb for not getting it. Also I think your perception on the world and on love and time could dictate how you connect with this story. But I have to be completely honest at times I wondered if the authors themselves even fully understand the world in which they created and maybe it's more about the characters and this supposedly other worldly love. I also went into this expecting more antagonism but didn't get that. I have no qualms about quitting on a book. Clearly even though this book was stressing me out and even now my brain feels like it has melted for trying to understand how this world works, I enjoyed the concept and finished the book. I wanted to actually feel this love story and while that didn't happen and I still don't know what I read really, it certainly was an intriguing read and it's probably gonna make me have weird dreams now. *Read e-book & Audio

I’ve always been a little wary of co-written works, because I’m skeptical about the cohesiveness of the writing. However, this slim and totally absorbing novel cast those apprehensions away. Much has been mentioned about the co-authors’ writing process, which I will not belabour here, but the epistolary structure of this novel lends itself well to it. This is essentially a love story, but with a key difference, in that the two protagonists do not even exist in the same spatiotemporal dimension. Blue and Red, as they are rather functionally named, are operatives from opposing camps in a multi-dimensional battle that spans millennia and realms, which is little hard for me to grapple with at first. Blue is from “Garden,” which suggests nature, growth and life itself, while Red is from “Shift,” whose business appears to be to tamper with or engineer the “natural” course of history. We are told that Garden thinks “Shift relies too much on tricking time, evading it, skimming across its stones, dipping its distasteful toes, thinking to divert its currents by rippling its surface.” Red, an agent of Shift, carries out these diversions by being an assassin of sorts, picking out those individuals whom the Agency determines should not be there, in order to redirect or “braid” the strands of time together. She traverses these dimensions, moving “upthread” or “downthread” in her missions. Red reports to a Commandant, and though all the characters take on female pronouns, they do not always assume (human) physical forms. They are bonded by the letters they send each other, which are embedded in a seed, in a fallen star, etc. But the fact that Red and Blue are time travellers also mean things don’t always have to be linear, so when one is forced to betray the other, this quality gives the whole story enough twists to keep the reader captivated. This is an unusually entertaining sf novel that is intelligent yet does not set out to obfuscate with its cleverness. The writing is top notch, and the inventive vocabulary is so aptly used to convey refreshing insights. I only wish there was more of it to read, when i reached the end of it.

I loved this. It was,quite hard to get into initally; some of the early descriptions are quite abstract. That saud, the prose is beautiful,and I quickly got to feel for Red and Blue. Their letters convey a developing relationship so well. There is a great twist, and an emotional final third. Excellent.

A war is raging through all of time and space, spanning an infinite number of universes. Two great powers - the Commandant and the Garden - are clashing, their agents fighting one another in the stone age and a distant future of galaxy-spanning empires. Two agents, Red and Blue, clash again and again without ever exchanging a single word...until the day they decide to start writing letters. This is How You Lose the Time War is a novella depicting a war fought through time between two implacable forces, each represented by one of their agents. It's a short book, at under 200 pages, and also an interesting one structurally, mixing traditional third-person narratives with the letters the two rival agents exchange on a regular basis. It's not quite an epistolary novella, more of a mix between it and more traditional narration, but the letters form an integral part of the story. Although short, the novella covers a lot of ground. Multiple settings, from deep space in the far future to a sinking Atlantis to contemporary cities, are used as battlegrounds by the warring sides, and we see both the hard end of their fighting and meet the vast and almost staggering forces leading the wars. That said, there isn't a lot of exposition in the book. The reasons for the war - given that billions, if not trillions, of branching timelines exist for the two factions to coexist in - are never really given and it's unclear who is winning and losing (although both Red and Blue are prone to boasting of their side's achievements, at least early in their relationship). To be honest, it's not really important. More important is how alone and isolated both agents feel, and the only person they can relate to is their opposite number, doing the same thing and feeling the same feelings, just in a different cause. The writing is poetic, with both agents keen to use creative language in their letters, which start off as verbal fencing matches but later become more flirtatious and intellectually challenging. There is humour in the book but also an air of bitter-sweetness. There's also tension: agents from the two forces are forbidden from communicating with one another out of fear of corruption, and it's not always clear it the agents are genuinely becoming enamoured of one another or each is trying to trap the other in an unexpected reversal. It feels a bit like Spy vs. Spy with added romantic tension, all set in the middle of Doctor Who's Time War. This is How You Lose the Time War (****½) is short, focused and energetic, playful in tone and compelling in execution. Those who like books packed with exposition with every I dotted and every T crossed will probably be unhappy with the book's unapologetic lack of context; those who enjoy stories for their emotion and wordplay will be very satisfied.

I first read this book for class (I'm doing a film and creative writing degree) and I have decided to write my final essay for the module on it. I have never actively looked forward to writing an essay before in my life, but with this book, it's hard not to. The writers have done god's work here and I owe them my life. This has done wonders for my lil gay heart... It's a short read, quite lexically dense, but it is so so worth reading it! If you are trying to decide whether to get this book or not, I promise you won't regret it

I had a real mixed experience with this book. What I want to make clear from the outset is that there are a lot of people who will absolutely love this 200 page novella. There were parts I loved, and there were parts I really couldn’t get to grips with or I felt let it down as a whole, which only gave me average overall enjoyment. I was in fact going to stop reading at 50% but am glad I continued as it improved past the halfway mark. The main positive I found was the stunning prose. I have never read a more beautifully written book. It reads like poetry, like Shakespeare. The words ooze from the page like a meandering river of molten gold. For that alone I can recommend this book to at least experience this! The descriptions just make you feel good, the effect the same as looking at a beautiful painting or a sunset over the ocean. The problem is, the abundance of flowery language can border on whimsical and pretentious, especially when prioritised at the expense of the plot. Eventually it becomes exhausting and overbearing. I found myself becoming frustrated with the lack of focus on the story and subsequently not appreciating the beauty of the prose. On the plot, for the first half of the book at least, it feels pretty vague. Where in most stories the plot is at least in part a driving force, it feels more of an afterthought here, more of a “how can we fit a story around the interactions of these two characters and base it on time travel?” It is a backdrop for the story of the two characters’ developing relationship, which is the only thing looked at in detail. The time travelling aspect for example, which was one of the main marketing sells, wasn’t explored in any depth. There was even a point where an Apatosaurus (a genus of Sauropod – not one of the dinosaur groups theorised to have feathers) was described as “ruffling its feathers” which suggests that the time travel wasn’t taken all that seriously. There was no real explanation into how it worked, what the agents were doing exactly or what the characters of Red and Blue were really trying to achieve (other than playing their part in the minimally described war between the Garden and the Agency in influencing and guiding their preferred version of history.) These historical and future events could have been explored to add more substance to the book, especially given in the synopsis the characters are apparently “hellbent on securing the best possible future for their warring factions.” Within the space of about 5 letters they seem to have disregarded the importance of this war and their role within it, consumed by their blossoming romance. Despite this, the romance is a plus point in many ways and it is enjoyable to witness a mutual intelligence and appreciation for the nuances of life drive two opposing agents towards one another. It is at times heartwarming, and heart wrenching, and you do definitely feel a strong desire to see Red and Blue find happiness and a solution to their situation. The series of letters, which is what most of the book consists of, is a novel technique and certainly has its merits. It does stop it reading like a traditional novel/novella though which may affect the feeling of immersion for some readers. As mentioned above this also limits the worldbuilding or overall depth of the story and world this is taking place in. It’s certainly possible that the authors never intended to do much worldbuilding or give much information about the world, clearly choosing to focus on the characters. For me personally, I just couldn’t fully enjoy it due to an enticing and intriguing time travel war only being a backdrop to the story. If you don’t care about the events or the Time War so much as this character relationship told within it, this could be a 5 star read for you. And for those who don’t mind a divergence from the story but are looking for a page turner, after the 50% mark, it does get more exciting and more things do actually happen in the story. Just don’t expect a great deal of focus on anything past the love of the two characters or for their thoughts to be on anything but the other one of them. For readers looking for the ‘fast paced’ ‘tour through time,’ ‘science fiction adventure’ described in this book’s description, you’d probably be better looking elsewhere.