Time travel is tricky for me. It gets confusing fast, and a lot of the time the results feel especially arbitrary; and that's kind of how reading This is How You Lose the Time War started for me.
But the book isn't super long, and won the Hugo and Nebula for Best Novella. It's the perfect kind of book to challenge yourself in a sub genre that you don't immediately attach to.
And I'm glad I did.
The glue - the binding of the book - is the love story. Red and Blue. One of the amazing things about the feeling of love is just how expansive and deep it can be for us as individuals. The authors here are really exploring how that depth can be expressed through time, and it's a pleasure.
Final Verdict: Recommended
You'll like this book if you like
- Time travel, love stories
You Might Not Like This Book If:
- You don't like abstracted environments and situations. There are a lot of abstract ideas in here.
Below are some of my favorite lines from the book, and other popular lines/highlights. I've taken these passages, and created AI-based art with them. One of the amazing things about books is how we visualize them in our minds. I wanted some way of expressing the flavors of the book visually.
After a mission comes a grand and final silence. Her weapons and armor fold into her like roses at dusk. Once flaps of pseudoskin settle and heal and the programmable matter of her clothing knits back together, Red looks, again, something like a woman
There’s a kind of time travel in letters, isn’t there?
I love you. I love you. I love you. I'll write it in waves. In skies.
We grow in pods, our basic knowledge flashed in cohort by cohort, nutrient balance maintained by the gel bath, and there most of us stay.