This is How You Lose the Time War

The epic time-travelling love story and Twitter sensation

By: Amal El-Mohtar, Max Gladstone

Narrated by: Cynthia Farrell, Emily Woo Zeller

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?

(P)2019 Simon & Schuster©2019 Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

Critic reviews

This book has it all: treachery and love, lyricism and gritty action, existential crisis and space-opera scope, not to mention time travelling superagents. Gladstone's and El-Mohtar's debut collaboration is a fireworks display from two very talented storytellers

An intimate and lyrical tour of time, myth and history, with a captivating conversation between characters - and authors. Read it

Lyrical and vivid and bittersweet. An absolutely lovely read from two talented writers

This is How You Lose the Time War is rich and strange, a romantic tour through all of time and the multiverse, and you shouldn't miss a moment

An intense, poetic work

Exquisitely crafted . . . Part epistolary romance, part mind-blowing science fiction adventure, this dazzling story unfolds bit by bit . . . Full of fanciful ideas and poignant moments, weaving a tapestry stretching across the millennia and through multiple realities that's anchored with raw emotion and a genuine sense of wonder. This short novel warrants multiple readings to fully unlock its complexities

Spectacular . . . Poetry, disguised as genre fiction. I read several sections out loud - this is prose that wants to be more than read. It wants to be heard and tasted

If Iain M. Banks and Gerard Manley Hopkins had ever been able to collaborate on a science fiction project, well, it wouldn't be half as much fun as this novella by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone. There is all the pleasure of a long series, and all the details of an much larger world, presented in miniature here

Fast-paced and intricately plotted

A time travel adventure that has as much humanity, grace, and love as it has temporal shenanigans, rewriting history, and temporal agents fighting to the death. Two days from now, you've already devoured it

Sweet, hopeful, and unashamedly beautiful

A gorgeous love story playfully yet powerfully spanning time and space in a weave of imagery and delight

This is the time-travelling queer epistolary romance I didn't know I needed . . . With precise, cut-glass prose - poetic and pragmatic at once - deeply compelling characters, and a tensely rewarding conclusion, This Is How You Lose the Time War is one of the most striking works of fiction I've read this decade. I'm going to be thinking about it - returning to it - for months, at least. Read it, because I can't recommend it highly enough

A wonderful tapestry of detail

I'm very rarely a reader of romances - but I think now that's only because there is so rarely a romance like How To Lose the Time War. I've lost the day to it, and my only regret is that it's over . . . It's a smart, inventive, lyrical story that dances a pas de deux down the edge of a razor, and I'm very glad to have read it

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

Breathtaking

I didn't know elegant plot twists like this still existed. Perfectly written and tenderly executed.

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

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

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.