If Devotion had a Color
A review of Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone's This Is How You Lose the Time War.
Personal rating: 4/5
May contain some lightweight spoilers. Think before you continue reading.
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What a ride! As the first novel I've finished reading in 2026, Time War is an unfiltered joy in the form of text, grown wildly from the roots of Existence itself.
The premise is straightforward: two agents, from rival sides of a war on the size of spacetime itself, started noticing each other and sending messages to each other, and an unexpected romance unfolds.
This sounds like a cliché, an off-the-shelf “enemies to lovers” path. Yes, it would have been — if it hadn't gotten this execution.
Let me ask you three different things.
- Do you enjoy musing about the reality of existence itself? Do you contemplate what makes me “me” — my body, my thoughts, my memories, my voice — or is it Something Else? Do you debate between Platonism and Nominalism inside you?
- Have you been fascinated about the sheer amount of ways a message can be written — numbers, shapes, sounds? Have you been shocked that you can carry an idea in a medium you never thought of — colors, smells, birds?
- Do you like being pleasantly surprised that the author knows a reference, sometimes an obscure one — such as what “Hyperbolic Geometry” is, what an “ortolan” is, that “a wound is a hole from which light comes in”, and what it means to “dream that you're a butterfly”?
A “yes” to each one would correlate to a higher enjoyment you'll get from this book. And if you answered “yes” to all three, like I am — you'll likely be in for a thrilling ride.
This book reads like a compilation of Kōans. If you're looking for a science-heavy sci-fi like Project Hail Mary, you'd likely be disappointed. Time War uses sci-fi as a backdrop, to let your mind dissociate from the fixture of a specific time in history, a specific way of storytelling — but rather, roam in the many threads, changing as fast as our current world itself (if you have a keen eye), and feel the presence of two forces that manifest themselves in all kinds of carriers.
But this is not all of it. Like a Kōan that tells you what is essential behind what is customary, the book forces you to realize what is unchanging behind what is changing — this is its essence, its true meaning.
The story of the whole book can be summed up into a few sentences, but the execution is what wins hearts. Crafted by two imaginative souls, each holding a whole universe within, they poured them out over a living room table and let them fully mix. This is the book that you'll be reading.
Though this is a wonderful trip, it still regretfully left a few itches unscratched. It is, first and foremost, a romance novel: the cast outside the two main characters are quite plain and undeveloped. The theme doesn't develop deep enough either, like most romance novels. But if you are looking for a high-stakes sci-fi romance with genuine emotions, you'll likely find a shining, colorful world in this terse, high-information-density story and call it home.