Amal El-Mohtar’s and Max Gladstone’s This is How You Lose the Time War (Saga Press, 2020)
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trihal
Written by Stephen Hong Sohn
Edited by Tripat Rihal
This book is one of those that pushes us a little bit further afield again from Asian American literature, but I find it compelling to review here on Asian American literature fans. One of my reading groups picked Amal El-Mohtar’s and Max Gladstone’s This is How You Lose the Time War(Saga Press, 2020), which is primarily an epistolary novella situated in a speculative/ science fictional world in which there are two warring factions. These warring factions include two assassins, one denoted as Red and the other Blue. The two spend time writing to each other, playing a game of cat and mouse, as they both move through time and try to stage different events in order to alter the course of history, the present, and the future for their peoples. Between the epistolary exchanges, the author includes short third person intercuts, where the world building gets a little bit more robust. We know that Red comes from a people that are seemingly part cyborg, and the command structure is more militaristic. We know that Blue comes from a people that are connected to plants; they are more like a rhizomatically linked grouping that fall under the larger apparatus of something called the Garden. As the novella moves forward, it becomes apparent that the letters between the two are not merely ones in which Red and Blue are adversaries. Indeed, one of the club members said that this novella was killed as Killing Eve meets science fiction, and that description cannot be more apt. My minor quibble with the novel is that the world building aspects were not as robust as I would have preferred; it didn’t quite understand how the Red and Blue peoples were really all that differentiated because Red and Blue, as characters, lived such solitary lives. I also didn’t understand the compulsion for the two people to be at war, but perhaps that was part of the point. The novella takes a little bit of time to gain steam, but eventually, it really took off for me, and I could see where it was going. I found the concluding arc to be logical and cohesively thought out, with a kind of time loop scenario that I always enjoy.
Buy the Book Here
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trihal
Written by Stephen Hong Sohn
Edited by Tripat Rihal
This book is one of those that pushes us a little bit further afield again from Asian American literature, but I find it compelling to review here on Asian American literature fans. One of my reading groups picked Amal El-Mohtar’s and Max Gladstone’s This is How You Lose the Time War(Saga Press, 2020), which is primarily an epistolary novella situated in a speculative/ science fictional world in which there are two warring factions. These warring factions include two assassins, one denoted as Red and the other Blue. The two spend time writing to each other, playing a game of cat and mouse, as they both move through time and try to stage different events in order to alter the course of history, the present, and the future for their peoples. Between the epistolary exchanges, the author includes short third person intercuts, where the world building gets a little bit more robust. We know that Red comes from a people that are seemingly part cyborg, and the command structure is more militaristic. We know that Blue comes from a people that are connected to plants; they are more like a rhizomatically linked grouping that fall under the larger apparatus of something called the Garden. As the novella moves forward, it becomes apparent that the letters between the two are not merely ones in which Red and Blue are adversaries. Indeed, one of the club members said that this novella was killed as Killing Eve meets science fiction, and that description cannot be more apt. My minor quibble with the novel is that the world building aspects were not as robust as I would have preferred; it didn’t quite understand how the Red and Blue peoples were really all that differentiated because Red and Blue, as characters, lived such solitary lives. I also didn’t understand the compulsion for the two people to be at war, but perhaps that was part of the point. The novella takes a little bit of time to gain steam, but eventually, it really took off for me, and I could see where it was going. I found the concluding arc to be logical and cohesively thought out, with a kind of time loop scenario that I always enjoy.
Buy the Book Here
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