First impressions review: This is How You Lose the Time War, by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone
This is a gorgeous, fascinating novella. How to describe it? My first thought on having it described to me was: "This sounds like Doctor Who (fanfiction) meets 'Good Omens' (fanfiction), and I must read it immediately." That impression was not wrong. The two protagonists are eternal time-travelers on opposite sides of a never-ending conflict who are each other's perfect foil, and who over time realize that they not only actually like each other, they love each other enough to take the risk of seeking a third way that will allow them to be together. However, this book is still its own beast - and what a sharp-toothed, extravagantly plumaged beast it is.
Red comes from a post-singularity technotopia; she was grown in a pod and has all sorts of mechanical modifications1. Blue comes from the Garden, a galaxy-spanning consciousness built of organic material. She was grown in a more literal way, and her body is often not human-shaped at all. Both of their worlds feature a kind of group consciousness, but each is incompatible with the other. So each separates off agents to travel up the time threads to modify events so that the other future can't happen. However, only those who have the inclination to separate themselves from the whole can do this work, and that means they can begin to have individual thoughts, motivations, and desires.
Blue begins things by leaving a letter for Red on a battlefield that can only be read when it is burnt:
'Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!...I hoped you'd come...I shall confess to you here that I'd been growing complacent. Bored, even...The elegance of your work makes this war seem less of a waste... Fondly, Blue'
A mixture of taunt and compliment, that first letter. But soon the two ostensibly rival agents are sharing sense impressions, book recommendations, and ideas they could never share with their home offices, and their manner of addressing one another grows ever more affectionate: Dearest Blue-da-ba-dee; My perfect Red; Dearest Lapis; My Apple Tree, my Brightness. To evade detection, they write their letters in tea leaves, on a piece of cod swallowed by a seal, in tree rings, in sumac seeds that must be eaten to be read. Every time they read a letter and discard the fragments, something comes to gather them up - but is this shadow a friend or a foe?
I had heard this called a Sapphic romance, and at first as I read I wondered if that was an appropriate categorization, because I don't think gender matters to these characters in the same way it does to us. Everyone from their worlds is called 'she' (as we currently refer to all members of an asexually reproducing species ), and they recognize each other despite drastic shifts in bodily form, including variation in apparent gender. But there is something about their poetic, painstakingly crafted letters, the way they express themselves, that does feel feminine by our standards. Sometimes they pretend to be Victorian lady correspondents, which is funny given how thoroughly they would smash that century's concept of womanhood! Red even sends the letter that first properly declares her feelings on real flower-flecked scented paper sealed with red wax:
Dear Blue. I - I don't know what to say. Even perspicacious, almost prescient Mrs. Leavitt2 lacks a model...Thank you. For saving me, obviously and for starters. I felt you as you climb down the braid. I am more sensitive to your footsteps, I think, than anyone alive...I could not have beaten the beast alone. You're more ferocious than I am...I hope I've selected a fragrance to your taste. I asked the busboy in London Next for a sample of your tea...I do not know what roads lead forward. But your letter hungers for reply...I see you as a wave, as a bird, as a wolf. (My wolf, with the six legs and double-banked eyes.) I try not to think of you the same way twice. Thinking builds patterns in the brain, and those patterns can be read...It's amazing how much blue there is in the world, if you look...So in this letter I am yours. Not Garden's, not your mission's, but yours, alone.
Anyway, by that point in the story it seems clear that even if these characters are "woman-shaped beings"3 only part-time, they sufficiently identify as female to warrant the "female protagonist" and "LGBT+ MC" tags4. I was interested to note that when Blue has a husband as part of her deep cover, Red expresses no jealousy. But, then, an ordinary time-bound human would hardly be serious competition, would he?
Because this is a time-travel story, there are a lot of fun little asides dropped in. For instance, in some time-lines (or "threads") Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy; in some it is a comedy5. There have been many versions of Atlantis "always sinking...an island off Greece, an advanced pre-Minoan civilization on Crete, a spaceship floating north of Egypt, and so on", and Red and Blue both hate all of them. Naturally, of course, there is of course a timey-wimey mobius-strip element to the tale's resolution. I'll say no more than that, because I wouldn't want to spoil it. But I think a re-read is in order, to savor the delicious pining and the crumbs dropped along the way that suggest that all that angst won't be for naught.
1. 'Her weapons and armor fold into her like roses at dusk. Once flaps of pseudoskin settle and heal and the programmable matter of her clothing knits back together Red looks, again, something like a woman.'
2. Author of an etiquette guide.
3. As Aziraphale and Crowley might put it.
4. BTW, the "middle eastern author" tag is a shorthand for "author of middle eastern descent", in this case: El-Mohtar was born in Lebanon, but raised in Canada. Still, as an immigrant's daughter myself...I'd say that matters.
5. At a particularly fraught decision point, Blue leaves before seeing the ending, fearing it will be an omen.
Overall recommendation: Yes, READ THIS! It has something for those who like science fiction, those who like romance, those who like poetic literary fiction...and it is less than 200 pages, so it doesn't take much time.
