Disclaimer: This article contains spoilers!
This year at Episocopal School of Jacksonville multiple new English senior seminars were added to the class list. Last semester, I got the chance to experience one of these classes, Apocalyptic Literature. In this class, we learned many things about what apocalyptic literature actually means, such as it doesn’t always have to be zombies or nuclear warfare to make an apocalypse.
We read quite a few books and a couple short stories; however, the one that stood out to me the most was This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone. This story was confusing to most for it has a dual perspective and due to the main plot being that of time travel it is hard to understand the timeline of this story. However, I found it an intriguing puzzle where I got to piece together different parts of the story and connect them in order to get the full story. I enjoyed this story so much I went back and reread almost the whole thing which is not something I find myself doing often.
The two main characters include an android from the Agency that goes by the name Red and a worker from Garden who has a nature origin who goes by Blue. They work for rivaling ‘companies’ that are fighting to win this ‘time war’. They are both soldiers that work by going through different strands (timelines) and move up and down (through past and present) setting up plans that last decades in hopes to sabotage each other’s side.
However, Red and Blue begin to notice each other, they notice how the little things are done almost in attempts to poke fun at the other. So they begin to write each other letters, hidden in the most unnatural ways to let the other know that they’ve noticed them and that they’re looking out for what the other might do next. Student Penelope Nelson, class of ‘25, said, “I just really liked how they wrote the letters in a way that made you feel like you were actually reading something sent between two people.”
After a while of doing thi,s Red begins to realize that deep down she has begun to care for Blue, and that she wishes to keep her safe through all of what the world might do to hurt her. Blue soon begins to feel the same. They begin to reach out more often and get risker to contact each other, however it ends up endangering both of them in different ways. This leads to shocking and powerful plot twists, daring and out-there moments of tension and betrayal, love and hate, and most of all the winners and losers of The Time War.
Image courtesy of Flickr.
