“Among the ashes of a dying world, an agent of the Commandant finds a letter. It reads: Burn before reading.” I love time travel stories so this synopsis was an excellent hook for me. I hardly knew what I was getting into when I started reading though. Starting out as a battle of wits, a game of covert communication and hyper-sensory eye spy, this book turns into one of the most compelling and interesting love stories I’ve read. This book is only 208 pages long, but each scene and each letter is packed with feeling and tone, building our relationship with Red and Blue quickly and fiercely. 

This is How You Lose the Time War is about Red and Blue enemies in a war of time. Red works for the Agency, a techno-utopia organization, and Blue works for the Garden, an organic-futurist. These agencies send agents back through time to shift the direction of the future in minute increments towards a future where their organization is the true one. With lots of language about the impacts of changing the past, travelling up and down through time, of different realities, I was in love with this concept. If you are a Doctor Who fan like I am (or at least of the Eccleston-Tennant-Smith incarnations like me), you will like this book and how this concept is carried out.

I don’t want to give too much away, but the slow development from a catty game with Red and Blue challenging and teasing each other into expressions of care was at once exhilarating and  heart-swelling. I couldn’t stand to stop reading once that started, and it became a true Romeo and Juliet story. Picking up on the references to our own day and age, and history, was also enjoyable - a puzzle for the reader to discern, and to what extent.

Overall, this book was fantastic. I loved the concept, I loved the writing, and I loved the story. The book is light on the actual science of what they do, so don’t be deterred if you’re not a usual sci-fi fan. This book is just so much fun to read, and I think anybody would like it.