Introduction

This Is How You Lose the Time War is a science fiction novel cowritten by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone. They both have authored award-winning, critically acclaimed fantasy and science fiction novels and short stories. 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. The story explores the futility of conflict through time travel and ends with a message on the power of words, art, and love.

This guide refers to the 2019 First Edition of This Is How You Lose the Time War, published by Saga Press.

Content Warning: This novel contains profanity, violence, gore, murder, loss of life (both animal and human), disease, and stalking. This warning applies throughout the book, as these aspects are present in nearly every chapter.

Plot Summary

Red and Blue are rival agents on opposite sides of the Time War. Their job is to move through time’s braids and weave/unweave history to help their side secure the future they want.

Red’s side, the Agency, is a technologically superior society where they’ve engineered out most human needs like hunger and sleep. The future they want is filled with elaborate technology. Blue’s side, Garden, is a nature-based society where abstractions like words are considered dangerous. The future Garden serves the hive of their people. Both sides have eliminated the concept of the self in service to the greater community identity.

At 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. Their letters become regular and passionate, and they confess their love. The war is a backdrop for their relationship, just the place where they met rather than their purpose in life.

Red becomes paranoid that the Agency is following her because she feels a shadow everywhere she goes. Her fears come true when Commandant confronts her in Russia about Blue and wants Red to set a trap to poison Blue since the Agency thinks Blue may be trying to turn Red.

Red tips Blue off and warns her not to read her next letter, and though Blue says she’ll comply, she doesn’t. Blue fears Red’s betrayal will be found out if Blue doesn’t take the bait, so Blue eats the poison made just for her. Blue dies an agonizing death as she reads Red’s letter.

Red throws herself into her duties. She is seen as a hero, but really Red moves through time collecting all the pieces of Blue left behind. Red uses Blue’s DNA to grow a second skin that will disguise her as Blue. Covered by this second skin, Red infiltrates Garden and saves Blue from the poison by giving her the antivenom as a child.

She is imprisoned by the Agency, and she is tortured and left to die until she finds a note in her cell from Blue. Her plan worked. Blue is alive. The person following her all along, that shadow that caused her paranoia wasn’t the Agency but herself in the future working to find pieces of Blue to save her.

Red and Blue run from both sides indefinitely and build a happy life together, hidden in time.