Review: This Is How You Lose the Time War, by Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone

[Russ Allbery]

This Is How You Lose the Time War
by Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone

Publisher: Saga
Copyright: 2019
ISBN:      1-5344-3101-2
Format:    Kindle
Pages:     200

Red is the most effective operative of the Agency. She darts through
time's threads, finds threats to the future, eliminates them, and
delights in the work. She rarely encounters the operatives of her enemy
directly; they prefer painstaking work in the shadows. But there is one
opponent who has a different style. Audacious. Risky.

In the midst of a dead battlefield, Red finds a letter.

Blue is Garden's operative, moving from mission to mission, exerting
exactly the right pressure or force at a critical moment to shift the
strands of the future. She decided to leave a letter taunting her
adversary, but also expressing gratitude at the challenge, the
requirement that she give the war her full attention, the relief from
boredom. She wasn't sure whether to expect a reply, but she received
one.

This Is How You Lose the Time War is an epistolary novel, told in short
action sequences by Red or Blue followed by the inevitable discovered
letter. At first, they taunt each other and delight in their victories
while expressing admiration of their opponent. Blue has the smoother
and more comfortable writing style. Red has to research the form of
letters and writes like a conversation, sharp and informal. Both
threaten and tease the other with the consequences if their superiors
discover this exchange.

In word play, cultural references, sincerely-shared preferences, open
curiosity, and audacious puns, the letters turn into something more
than a taunting game.

The time war is a long-standing SF trope. This one reminds me the most
of Fritz Leiber's The Big Time: a two-sided war between far-future
civilizations, neither of which are clearly superior in either
capabilities or morality. Unlike Leiber's Spiders and Snakes, though,
El-Mohtar and Gladstone's Agency and Garden have some solid
world-building behind them. Red's Agency is technological, cybernetic,
and run by what feels like machine intelligence. Blue's Garden is the
biological flip-side, a timeline of crafted life culminating in stars
with eyes and a living universe, focus on growth and poison, absorbing
and reshaping. To the reader, they alternate between incomprehensible
and awful, although Red and Blue are comfortable with their sides at
the start. Don't expect detailed or believable descriptions of the
technology of either side; this is well into "indistinguishable from
magic" territory throughout.

Despite its nature as a time travel story, the plot structure of this
story is straightforward and somewhat predictable. You're unlikely to
be surprised by the outcome; the enjoyment is in how the story gets
there. The relationship didn't quite ring true to me, mostly because it
develops so quickly, although some of that has to be forgiven for the
format. (I have some experience with epistolary relationships; they're
much more rambling and involve far, far more words than this one does.)
But the letters themselves are playful, delightful, and occasionally
moving, and the resolution, although expected, delivers on the
emotional hooks the story was setting up.

I wasn't blown away by this, partly I think because it's too tight,
focused, and stylized. Red and Blue are the only true characters in the
story and the only people who feel real, which undermines the
world-building and means the story can't sprawl into its surroundings
or let the reader imagine other ways of living in this world. At 200
pages, it's more of a novella than a novel, and it's structured with
the single-minded thrust of short fiction. The dynamic between the two
characters is well-done, but there is a limit to how much
characterization one can do with only a single other character to
interact with. Since Red and Blue can define themselves only in
relation to each other, they felt two-dimensional and I was unable to
fully embrace either of them as a character.

That said, I read the whole story in an afternoon and did not regret
it. I have a weakness for epistolary stories that this satisfied
nicely. It hit, at least for me, the sweet spot of recognizing most of
the cultural references while being surprised I recognized them, which
was oddly satisfying. And the whole book is worth it for the growing
tendency they both have for seeing and writing about each other's
colors in everything.

I think this is more of an afternoon's entertainment than something
you'll remember for a long time, but if you like time travel stories or
characters writing letters to each other, recommended.

Rating: 7 out of 10

Reviewed: 2019-09-30

URL: https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/reviews/books/1-5344-3101-2.html

-- 
Russ Allbery (eagle at eyrie.org)              <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>