This Is How You Lose the Time War

Dearest, deepest Blue— At the end as at the start, and through all the in- betweens, I love you.

Time travel always gets my head in a knot.

I was expecting more from the worldbuilding but once you let go and just focus on red and blue relationship the book becomes very good.

Recommended for sci-fi and romance fans.

Style over substance but i didn't really mind

What a fun, weird little book. This felt more like poetry to me than prose, for which I loved it. I also appreciated how much was left unsaid, for the reader to fill in.

A nice snack of a book—perhaps would be more substantial if I reread it, knowing what was to come. But again, that feels like a poem!

I'm a huge fan of short stories / novellas, but this one took both some time to get into and more time to finish than expected. In fact this book almost entered my DNF list in the first 30 pages, I had all but given up and then google led me to the reason why I felt this book was strange and that was due to the different writing styles of multiple authors. Due to the unusualness of this I persevered and I'm so glad I did, what would have been a DNF turned into a 4 star book.

A lovely twisted story of romance, time travel, war and fantasy. Written in a “she said, she said” (I guess) style that is strange at first but turns out to be really beautiful. Persevere through this and you will be rewarded with a great read and an ending wanting you to read more.

Didn't understand a word of this book. Way too pedantic for me. But hey, if you gots more smarts than me, then give it a read! I caught glimpses of beauty and fantastic character development.

Although I often felt so adrift in imagery and metaphor while reading this epistolary novella that I had a hard time grasping the ancillary plot elements, this inventive work left a smile on my face. The prose poetry of This Is How You Lose the Time War, if at times abstruse, gleams even when describing the horrific, and especially when describing the beautiful.

Note: unless I missed more here than I thought, it is never once explained how the protagonists travel in time. Some other key details I'd have liked to see elaborated include the inner workings of the protagonists' unconventional letter-writing and, indeed, the reason for the time war itself; these were either implied, glossed over, or outright ignored, which rankled me. If you must be told the “why” and “how” to enjoy a time-travel story, this book is probably not for you.

This book's saving grace is that it is not actually about the titular time war. At its core, This Is How You Lose the Time War is a romance, one that the travel back and forth in time and space ultimately serves to facilitate. In this respect, it tells a brilliantly original story of the triumph of love in the face of the horrors of war. I can't say I enjoyed this book until I really got into the rhythm of El-Mohtar's and Gladstone's worldbuilding-by-implication, but when I did get into it, oh, boy, did I.

Gun to my head, I could not tell you what was going on for the majority of this book. The parts I could comprehend were just fine.

the entire book went through one ear and out the other. I enjoyed the little mocking (?) between the two characters but that's about it. Don't get me wrong it was elequantly written but I found it had no foundations for me to grasp on to. I had no idea what was going on at all and the ending was even more confusing. They're all just a bit dramatic.

Maybe it's not my reading style or you're not supposed to get it but an entire book that just made me more confused as to what was going on isn't my cup of tea

This is one of the different book I've read.

I think I will not be able to write a review because that might be turn into spoiler

I didn't know what to expect going into this so discover a surreal sci-fi/fantasy sapphic love story was quite the surprise. This short tale weaves through time as two opponents try to best one another. An abstract, epic, story that at the heart of it is about how love can be the most powerful weapon of all.

I'm surprised I enjoyed this as much as I did since I'm awful at sticking with books where the science fiction “doesn't make sense” or “isn't possible” (which is absurd, I know). The book requires you to suspend your disbelief and just accept that the fictional technology is so far advanced it may as well be magic. If you can do that the rest of the story is incredibly rewarding and beautiful.

It wasn't perfect. Some parts of the narrative were confusing to me (but then again I also read the book quickly and maybe I should have taken my time with the more complex passages). It also has the audacity to end before I wanted it to.

Overall, This is How You Lose the Time War was pretty great and I'm probably going to be recommending it to a lot of my friends.

A sweet, interesting, well-told and unique sci-fi romance! I'll admit it took me a minute to wrap my head around the storytelling but I got there and it was well worth it.

Took me a bit to come around to this. The early chapters are saddled with a lot of overcomplicated scifi world building and inexplicable pop-culture references, but once it shifts into being an earnest villains-to-lovers romance I was all in. I do not read enough violent and vulnerable love poetry so perhaps I am just starved for intimacy, but the way Red and Blue's brovado gets shelled as they realize they are falling for each other made me yearn for a similar connection the way all great romances do.

I am not particularly interested in picking apart the time travel for inconsistencies as the emotional impact works regardless of if I can make sense of the strands and ripples. The impression I get from talking with others is the stylistic moves and flowery ambiguity are fully love/hate, but I'm glad to fall in the former. Irrelevant in some ways, but the cover is one of my favorites of the last decade so I'm glad the book lived up to it (if not in ways I expected).

It wasn't what I was expecting, more poetry than science-fiction. That said, it was an interesting read and had some twists I didn't see coming.

Une chasse à travers le temps, une histoire d'amour construite à travers les époques. Assez unique et parfois très beau, égarant à certains moments mais finalement émouvant.

Pages ‘n Pines Grading Scale:

5 - Amazing
4 - Really liked it
3 - Liked it
2 - Okay
1 - Didn't like

My words fail me when I try to describe this book, but I'll try my best in spite of it. I have never in my life read a book in one sitting. Never. It was unheard of. Between how busy I am, my ADHD riddled attention span, and so many other factors of life, I was sure I'd never be one of those people who devour stories in one meal, like so many here and on booktube.

Well I was wrong. It's funny, really. I nearly put this one down, intimidated by the flowery prose and my own doubts. “I can't read this! This is basically poetry, I won't have a clue what's going on for the whole novel! Nobody understands poetry!” I told myself. I had heard too many good things about this story to give up only a few pages in and so I forced myself to push through, just read the first chapter.

I made it through the first chapter alright, then the next, and the next, and the next. I kept reading “one more chapter” chasing my next through the pages until I found several hours had passed.

This is truly one of- no is, my favorite book of all time to date. As you'll see through many reviews for this one, it's incredibly difficult to describe and appreciate parts of the story without giving crucial bits of it away. You really do have to just read it for yourself. I know that's not particularly helpful but if I don't say that the alternative is a wildly inaccurate TLDR like: lesbian spy vs spy with time hopping and victorian love letters? Doesn't quite do it justice, as you'll see if you read it too.

TLDR of this whole thing: read this book, of for nothing else, for its beautiful beautiful prose. I've never been a fan of flowery writing if for no other reason than doubting my own ability to understand it but this changed my mind. I loved every second of this read. To play off of the often repeated hunger themes in the book, I craved this story. I wanted more, wanted to be greedy. I couldn't stop myself once I started gourging on the delicious writing between the book covers. Read this if you want your heart to ache for the two main characters and their longing for one another while they cat and mouse through every page.

I have so much more to say about this but don't know how to put it into words. Unfortunately I'm not nearly as skilled with language as the authors so I think I'll call it here and hope, perhaps, that I've helped you decide to give this book a shot even if only a little bit.

This is how we win.

The writing style reads more like a teenager's tumblr fanfiction. Not my cup of tea.

okay im ngl it bored me at times. but the prose is very pretty and i enjoyed the format ^_^

”Dearest, deepest Blue—At the end as at the start, and through all the in-betweens, I love you.”

Incredibly sonorous prose. I found ti hard to stay connected, and harder to really be invested in how things go. It's definitely a mental challenge with the English language. 

i am devastated. i love it.

I find myself wanting to like this book desperately, but I don't know what to think. Don't get me wrong: This Is How You Lose the Time War has beautiful prose and romance, fascinating worldbuilding and a satisfactory ending, but ultimately I don't think it agrees with my brain or the way I read stuff.

There are points of this book that was truly 5 stars for me.
And there were points that really felt flat and I just wanted to give 2 stars.

The writing style is so beautiful, and the end was so well done. 5 stars for sure.
The Sci fi was exactly my taste! The main story line about how you need to change just a tiny bit of thing to make a huge impact in the future is spot on. (on a side note, Asimov did something similar in “The end of Eternity”, but instead of being a war between 2 organizations, it was just one trying to prevent humanity to end)

The romance felt super rushed for my taste (I know, I know, this is a novella). They went from enemies to lovers in a span of just a few letters.
I also felt that Red and Blue had both the same voice and I couldn't distinguish one from another.

It also felt like a collection of time travel short story intertwine with love letters. It became repetitive real fast.

So if you get all the stars, add 5 here, remove 2 there, it will be 3 stars (:

I really wanted to like this book and the whole concept is great but while reading this I just wasn't entirely sure what is going on. The way it's written, it was not really clear how it's structure and as someone who always struggles a bit with figuring that out in the beginning, I was completely lost and confused while reading this book. But the writing was nice!!

This was such a lovely read! From characters to plot to the development of it all.. All in a short story! I loved the writing so much. Definitely will set it aside for a reread in the future