Book Notes: This Is How You Lose the Time War

A love story, set against the backdrop of a war in which time travel is a weapon. The world feels intriguing and only partly glimpsed. I’d like to read more stories set in this universe. Very lovely.

Book highlights

A fugitive becomes a queen or a scientist or, worse, a poet.

I revel in it, as one only revels in pursuits one does not need.

Island saving’s not a one-woman job, so she works harder than one woman can.

Adventure works in any strand—it calls to those who care more for living than for their lives.

We treat the past as trellis, coax our vineyard through and around, and harvest is not a word for swiftness; the future harvests us, stomps us into wine, pours us back into the root system in loving libation, and we grow stronger and more potent together.

To be alone in a crowd, apart and belonging, to have distance between what I see and what I am.

Always a balancing act, of course, to give without losing, to support without weakening. Everything a weaving.

But when I think of you, I want to be alone together. I want to strive against and for. I want to live in contact. I want to be a context for you, and you for me.

Red may be mad, but to die for madness is to die for something.