eBook- This is how you lose the time war

 eBook- This is how you lose the time war 

Authors: Amal El-Mohtar; Max Gladstone.

Score: 9/10

Year:  2019 (original book) ; 2019 (this edition)

Publisher : Simon & Schuster

ISBN : 9781534431010

This first read for 2024 was superb, though not always totally pleasant - as you'll see towards the end of this review. Check the section between the **** lines. 

The novel is full of quotable, poetic and philosophical lines, and, mirroring its two-author composition, it centers around two main characters. Both are spies. 

 

The first introduced is Red. She belongs to the Agency, a post-singularity technotopia. 

The other is Blue and she belongs to Garden, a single vast consciousness embedded in all organic matter. In their (Red & Blue) words, Garden is viny-hivey elfworld, as opposed to techy-mechy dystopia. These already say quite a lot about their two "Origin Worlds" or timeframes, or Strands. Either word works fine. 

Each of them answers to a hierarchy - of sorts. Red to Commandant, and Blue, to Garden, as an ocean becoming a drop, in order to communicate with another drop - a member of its own community. Or, rather, a tree becoming its own branch, since all metaphors used in the book about Garden are plant-based ? Perhaps we can also view it as a form of possession. 

Red's and Blue's pasts (and many presents) are bloody and filled with gritty actions, as their respective Authorities sent them backwards and forwards in time into various Strands ( (are these parallel 'universes'?), all numbered...  Some days Blue wonders why anyone ever bothered making numbers so small; other days she supposes even infinity needs to start somewhere. After all, this helps direct their operatives to their missions' time-space location more effectively - and since Agency and Garden's projects are totally at odds, this creates mutually exclusive futures for Red and Blue. 

They have nothing in common—or almost! They’re the best at what they do, and they’re alone, even lonely. So, when Red finds a letter marked “Burn before reading” signed by Blue, she's intrigued, overlooks the warning, and reads this first letter, to which she replies, starting an unlikely correspondence between two rival agents in a war that stretches through time and space, across many Strands.  

They cross one another's paths by their actions and counter-actions, or re-actions ; causing either damage, war and havoc in one spot, or attempt to prevent, or re-orient these, to change the future. 

The authors left the exact mechanics out of composition ; the narrative gives away only possibilities as to what each operative's doing here, there, now, then, or in x amount of time from these... filling the cause-and-effect with poetic phrasing such as 

But wars are dense with causes and effects, calculations and strange attractors, and all the more so are wars in time. One spared life might be worth more to the other side than all the blood that stained Red’s hands today. A fugitive becomes a queen or a scientist or, worse, a poet. Or her child does, or a smuggler she trades jackets with in some distant spaceport. And all this blood for nothing. I especially love that part of "or, worse, a poet" as a phrase, though am not totally sure if I agree with the affirmation itself. And "all this blood for nothing" echoes, for me, an anti-war comment, though it's said within a time-war's context and its effects. 

Elsewhere, a passage that is probably even more eloquent (is it ? I don't really know), 

… It’s so easy to crush a planet that you may overlook the value of a whisper to a snowbank.

Or even Start a stone rolling, so in three centuries you’ll have an avalanche.

Both of those work so marvelously in telling about those tiny actions each Agent in this time-war may have much bigger future ramifications. We can see them based on our, real life, past (and present) wars, how some small things became much bigger as well (and fear of what may come from current ones). 

The authors also never tell us exactly how Red and Blue manage (technologically speaking) to embed their messages to one another - we just assume that in their Earth Realities, they have the means to do so. 

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Some of these were harsher for me read, and took me out of my comfort zones. Indeed, as some messages are left in seeds, others required more graphic, even gory aspects - here I warn you that about 20% into the book, a message is left inside a seal, the goriest scene of the entire book.

There are, however, many passages that are quite graphic, with characters doing things to their bodies, for instance, or descriptions of decay and battlefields. 

Also, the V- word for emetophobes are present 4 times (though 2 are symbolic, the other 2 are occurrences), so beware of those short passages. 

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The prose and poetry are exquisite ; the authors found a balance between repeated words, and unique usage of others, especially at the start of each letter (dear Red, dear Strawberry, dear Blue, or dear 00FFFF are just a few of those).

The unfolding story and relationship born from unusual pen-paling and their fight to the death of timelines are super well written, in a mix of bittersweet wording, into decay in one side, and lyrical blossoms on the other. 

The narrative grows, expands, and descends into its ultimate not-totally open-ended conclusion, one that explains the novel's title, without really spelling it out... 

One can question the morality behind both entities who sent these agents on missions of annihilation - the Agency and Garden's real motives and morals are left to the reader's interpretation, not only via the philosophical discussions of war, but also the operatives' letters and exchanges with their respective bosses. 

Red and Blue's exchanges also bring the question of identity, in the midst of existential crisis, and one's motives to the forefront ; I love how two lone spies, even lonely, become so mutually enmeshed in their enmity, from taunts to a sort of admiration, respect and a bizarre relationship. 

What a successful first collaboration between these two authors - both who already wrote solo before this novel erupted out of their combined minds. It's no wonder this novel was nominated, and won, many awards!

My own overall score is 9/10 - the lost point due both to the emet triggers and the gory portions out of my comfort zone. 

PS : this book also helped with reading challenges from LucieBulle's club