This Is How You Lose the Time War

This is How You Lose the Time War is a Novella that is unique in the SF genre, it puts romance and prose ahead of all other elements, and it manages to deliver a compelling narrative with minimal world-building and hardly any emphasis on plot. It's fair to say that most SF works place their priorities in exactly the opposite configuration, so to call this book intriguing is an understatement to be sure.

To frame the premise, this is a queer-enemies-to-lovers story centering on two spies/agents on opposing sides of a war across time. Is there a little bit of the ol' “tick-the-boxes- this is Steven in marketing and he's going to help you sell this puppy,” razzle dazzle? Yes. Is the Novella content to let its premise dictate the direction of its narrative and structure? No way. The story is delivered through alternating passages, ingenious love letters from Red to Blue, and vice versa, each crammed full of literary reference and prosodic suggestion. If there were ever a novella that needed an annotated edition it's this one. I think that for each hour I spent reading a chapter I spent another hour looking things up, especially for some of the more literary references. Allusion rife abounds, and it's a double-edged sword- if much of the meaning is caught up in allusion and reference to other works, then the books run the chance of having that meaning lost. Thankfully despite how much reference is crammed into each letter, the sentiment and narrative manage to punch through.

When I first picked this novella up, I ripped through the first quarter like it was a white powdery substance and I was Carrie Fisher. I was immediately impressed by the presentation and the language, and I was excited to see where and how the plot would develop alongside the romance. I guess I didn't know what I was in for, because the further I went the less engaging I found it to be. This book subverted my expectations, where I thought I was getting Terminator meets The Lake House, what I actually got was Jane Austen writing Primer, and I thought Jane Eyre was a snooze fest best relegated to the back halls of the Library of Congress. That's not to say I didn't enjoy the story; for as little experience as I have with the romance genre, even I could appreciate how carefully crafted and beautiful each missive between agents is. But this isn't just a romance novel, it's Romance, it's poetry.

Never has a story transported me back to my collegiate writing seminars quite like this one, the more I read, the more I thought to myself, “This would totally kill in a workshop.” That's a backhanded compliment; I won't go so far as to say that this book is all style and no substance because it is substantial, it's just not my cup of tea. This book read to me like a collegiate exercise, a Capstone publication, impressive and exquisite for sure, but lacking in the pulpy flavor I crave from my SF. If I'd wanted to read Dickens, I'd have read Dickens, if I'd wanted to read Austen, I'd have read Austen, and if I want to read a book about the Time War well maybe it should BE about the Time War. Jake Brookins' review put it best,

“even if SF stories don't follow their worlds' particular Chosen Ones, it's customary to fill the reader in on the larger picture—at least beyond short story lengths. So, it's startling, for those used to at least a strong whiff of monomyth and systematic subcreation, to spend so much time with characters losing interest in the war, and a narrative that seeks to escape rather than explain its world.”