book cover of This Is How You Lose the Time War
Added by 96 members
 

This Is How You Lose the Time War

(2019)
A Story by

 
 
Awards
2020 BSFA Award for Best Shorter Fiction
2020 Hugo Award for Best Novella
2020 Locus Award for Best Novella
2020 Nebula Award for Best Novella
2020 Shirley Jackson Award for Best Novella (nominee)
2020 Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award (nominee)
2019 Ray Bradbury Prize (nominee)

* HUGO AWARD WINNER: BEST NOVELLA * NEBULA AND LOCUS AWARDS WINNER: BEST NOVELLA *

“[An] exquisitely crafted tale...Part epistolary romance, part mind-blowing science fiction adventure, this dazzling story unfolds bit by bit, revealing layers of meaning as it plays with cause and effect, wildly imaginative technologies, and increasingly intricate wordplay...This short novel warrants multiple readings to fully unlock its complexities.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

From award-winning authors Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone comes an enthralling, romantic novel spanning time and space about two time-traveling rivals who fall in love and must change the past to ensure their future.

Among the ashes of a dying world, an agent of the Commandment finds a letter. It reads:
Burn before reading.

Thus begins an unlikely correspondence between two rival agents hellbent on securing the best possible future for their warring factions. Now, what began as a taunt, a battlefield boast, becomes something more. Something epic. Something romantic. Something that could change the past and the future.

Except the discovery of their bond would mean the death of each of them. There’s still a war going on, after all. And someone has to win. That’s how war works, right?

Cowritten by two beloved and award-winning sci-fi writers,
This Is How You Lose the Time War is an epic love story spanning time and space.


Genre: Science Fiction

Praise for this book

"Lyrical and vivid and bittersweet. An absolutely lovely read from two talented writers." - Ann Leckie

"If Iain M. Banks and Gerard Manley Hopkins had ever been able to collaborate on a science fiction project, well, it wouldn't be half as much fun as this novella by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone. There is all the pleasure of a long series, and all the details of an much larger world, presented in miniature here." - Kelly Link

"This book has it all: treachery and love, lyricism and gritty action, existential crisis and space-opera scope, not to mention time travelling superagents. Gladstone's and El-Mohtar's debut collaboration is a fireworks display from two very talented storytellers." - Madeline Miller

"Fast-paced and intricately plotted." - Temi Oh

"I'm very rarely a reader of romances - but I think now that's only because there is so rarely a romance like How To Lose the Time War. I've lost the day to it, and my only regret is that it's over . . . It's a smart, inventive, lyrical story that dances a pas de deux down the edge of a razor, and I'm very glad to have read it." - Stephanie Saulter

"An intimate and lyrical tour of time, myth and history, with a captivating conversation between characters - and authors. Read it." - John Scalzi

"This is How You Lose the Time War is rich and strange, a romantic tour through all of time and the multiverse, and you shouldn't miss a moment." - Martha Wells


Visitors also looked at these books


Used availability for Max Gladstone's This Is How You Lose the Time War


About Fantastic Fiction       Information for Authors