This is How You Lose the Time War

 

 This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone (2019) 209 Pages

I really don't know how to describe this one, I feel like it is simply a story one must read for themselves. It is written like poetry, riddles, puzzles. It's truly beautiful. A substack I read tuned me into this book as it has recently gone viral thanks to a random "Trigun" anime fandom twitter user. It has skyrocketed on the best selling shelves across the board thanks to this tweet and I must say...it is well deserved! 

Time travelers "Red" and "Blue" are rivals from the "Agency" and "the Garden", who travel across the millennia and spaces in order to make subtle changes to timelines or "strands" in order to save, or destroy  populations. They come in contact with each other through letters and soon form a budding relationship that transcends both time and space. The letters are always incredibly unique in the ways they are written and discovered. The sting of a bee, the rings of a tree spanning hundreds of years. I really don't want to give too much away with my recap, if you haven't read it yet you definitely should! 

"I want flowers from Cephalus and diamonds from Neptune, and I want to scorch the thousand Earths between us to see what blooms from the ash, so we can discover it hand in hand, context in context, intelligible only to each other. I want to meet you in every place I have ever loved."