This is a blossoming romance set among the rubble of incomprehensible destruction. Email or call for price . It reads: Burn before reading. It is both of those things to some extent, but mostly it’s a love story. This Is How You Lose the Time War is available from Simon & Schuster. ( From … “Seditious and seductive, lush and lustrous, allusive and elusive, THIS IS HOW YOU LOSE THE TIME WAR is one of those rare stories where one struggles to decide whether to heap more praise upon its clever structure and prose or its brilliant ideas and characters.” —Ken Liu, author of The Grace of Kings and The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories This is the time-travelling queer epistolary romance I didn't know I needed . As you can probably tell from this description, This is How You Lose the Time War reads less like a story and more like a conversation. This Is How You Lose the Time War (Book) : El-Mohtar, Amal : Among the ashes of a dying world, an agent of the Commandant finds a letter. Head over to Bookish for the behind the scenes details! Thus begins an unlikely correspondence between two rival agents hellbent on securing the best possible future for their warring factions. It won the BSFA Award for Best Shorter Fiction, the Nebula Award for Best Novella of 2019 and the 2020 Hugo Award for Best Novella. We get to watch as needling evolves to playful teasing, compliments, increasingly erotic or sensual names and turns of phrase. That plot hinge forces their idyllic competition as opposite forces to shift into a team effort at survival, rearranging the logics of war and provoking their desire to create a fresh world for themselves. The book is worth keeping between one’s own teeth for a little while, savoring the flips and pulls of the poetic alongside the narrative plot. Their letters are as sweeping as the timelines between them, frequently meta-textual and intensely flirtatious, wide-ranging in the way that correspondence between people who really fit each other can be. It reads: Burn before reading. This Is How You Lose the Time War : Amal El-Mohtar : 9781534431003 We use cookies to give you the best possible experience. Except the discovery of their bond would mean death for each of them. Now, what began as a taunt, a battlefield boast, grows into something more. Gallery / Saga Press (July 2019) Genre: Literature, Sci-Fi-Fantasy, Romance, Thriller, Adventure Disclosure: If you click a link in this post and make a purchase, I may earn a small commission. It reads: Burn before reading. It reads: Burn before reading. . Summary: Two time-traveling 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. The simultaneous rejection and centering of continual conflict is something I’d like to think further on in future readings of the text, because This is How You Lose the Time War is the kind of handsome, charged novella that rewards repeated close reading. This Is How You Lose the Time War (Book) : El-Mohtar, Amal : Among the ashes of a dying world, an agent of the Commandant finds a letter. You must be a registered user to subscribe to threads. While the ending itself leaves the door open (will their escape together be successful, will they thrive, will their rejection of the entire system be possible? Thus begins an unlikely correspondence between two rival agents hellbent on securing the best possible future for their warring factions. The novella manages to be broadly romantic while also maintaining a hideous cruelty in its approach to violence, weaving those strands of emotion together seamlessly. In the ashes of a dying world, Red finds a letter marked “Burn before reading. However, that epistolary/poetic structural combination doesn’t mean there isn’t also narrative action on the page. Though competition drew Blue and Red together in the first place, a relationship has to evolve past competition into support to survive. Among the ashes of a dying world, an agent of the Commandant finds a letter. The closing lines paired with the title create a fantastic turn: To lose the war is, by implication, desirable if losing means stepping aside from the conflict rather than holding tenaciously to the goal of besting one another. Philippine-American War, war between the United States and Filipino revolutionaries from 1899 to 1902, an insurrection that may be seen as a continuation of the Philippine Revolution against Spanish rule. ), it does so with utmost hope and potentiality on the table. Estimated Ship Date for Winners: June 11th, 2019. Among the ashes of a dying world, an agent of the Commandant finds a letter. “Seditious and seductive, lush and lustrous, allusive and elusive, THIS IS HOW YOU LOSE THE TIME WAR is one of those rare stories where one struggles to decide whether to heap more praise upon its clever structure and prose or its brilliant ideas and characters.” —Ken Liu, author of The Grace of Kings and The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories In the Unmapped Land Between Me and Not-Me, A Quirky Eclectic Christmas Mix (2020 Ed. It reads: Burn before reading. Impossible letters wait through centuries for discovery as the pair of them communicate about their goals, their missions, their shared distastes and pleasures—taboo informational liaisons that lead to far more. Thank you for keeping the discussion, and our community, civil and respectful. Among the ashes of a dying world, an agent of the Commandant finds a letter. 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