Red becomes paranoid that the Agency is following her because she feels a shadow everywhere she goes.

The war is a backdrop for their relationship, just the place where they met rather than their purpose in life. Their letters become regular and passionate, and they confess their love. Both sides have eliminated the concept of the self in service to the greater community identity.Īt first, Red and Blue blindly support their sides while taunting and probing each other through letters in secret, but even as they work to undo the threads the other has woven in time, they ultimately end up undoing each other and falling in love. The future Garden serves the hive of their people. Blue’s side, Garden, is a nature-based society where abstractions like words are considered dangerous. The future they want is filled with elaborate technology. Red’s side, the Agency, is a technologically superior society where they’ve engineered out most human needs like hunger and sleep. Their job is to move through time’s braids and weave/unweave history to help their side secure the future they want. Red and Blue are rival agents on opposite sides of the Time War. This warning applies throughout the book, as these aspects are present in nearly every chapter. This guide refers to the 2019 First Edition of This Is How You Lose the Time War, published by Saga Press.Ĭontent Warning: This novel contains profanity, violence, gore, murder, loss of life (both animal and human), disease, and stalking. The story explores the futility of conflict through time travel and ends with a message on the power of words, art, and love. The novel follows rival agents Red and Blue as they weave through time to fight a time war waged on behalf of the Agency and Garden, respectively. They both have authored award-winning, critically acclaimed fantasy and science fiction novels and short stories.

This Is How You Lose the Time War is a science fiction novel cowritten by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone.

This is how you lose the time war pages