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This Is How You Lose the Time War

By: Amal El-Mohtar, Max Gladstone
Narrated by: Cynthia Farrell, Emily Woo Zeller
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Publisher's summary

Winner of the 2020 Hugo Award for Best Novella, the Reddit Stabby Award for Best Novella AND The British Science Fiction Association Award for Best Novella

Two time-travelling agents from warring futures, working their way through the past, begin to exchange letters - and fall in love in this thrilling and romantic book from award-winning authors Amal-El Mohtar and Max Gladstone.

Among the ashes of a dying world, an agent of the Commandant finds a letter. It reads: Burn before reading.
Thus begins an unlikely correspondence between two rival agents hellbent on securing the best possible future for their warring factions. Now, what began as a taunt, a battlefield boast, grows into something more. Something epic. Something romantic. Something that could change the past and the future.

Except the discovery of their bond would mean death for each of them. There's still a war going on, after all. And someone has to win that war. That's how war works. Right?

©2019 Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone (P)2019 Simon & Schuster
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What listeners say about This Is How You Lose the Time War

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    4 out of 5 stars

just go with the story

okay, big time travel fan here, and this is one of the best stories out there, I tried to follow the time travel and my head almost blew my up, so just don't think about the time and go with the story, it will work out in the end

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I just genuinely enjoyed it

That’s it. It was such a wonderful story to listen to, and it is written in a way that keeps you curious. I can’t say more without adding spoilers

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Well Written and Well Performed

The format of the book and the approach to the production into an audiobook yielded a great audiobook experience.
Very simple yet very ingenious they to voice the letters read by one character with the same actor as the sender.

Overall it's a short and sweet romance story.
A "Sci-Fi Romeo and Juliet spy novella"
I'd recommend it even to people qho don't fancy themselves Sci-Fi fans

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

This one is hard to review...

This is a unique book that verges on poetry. It's mystical, confusing, melodic. I'm not sure I like it all that much, but then I think that's what I like about it. It's left me uncertain.

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1 person found this helpful

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    3 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Incredibly confusing and frustrating to listen to

I found the entire book frustrating with its jumping around and confusing narrative.
May have been a lot more accessible to people like me who battle to differentiate voices if the characters had been different genders with clearly different voice actors.
If like me you struggle with this then avoid this at all costs.

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Fantastic!

Absolutely loved it! It drew me in from the first moment and didn't let me go until the very end.

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Good idea, but...

Certainly an original idea, but the plot took forever to move along. The language seemed unnecessarily heavy.

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