I'm going to be posting about the books I read in my most recent graduate English class out of order because there are things that need to be finalized in my writing about the other books before I commit my thoughts to the internet.
First to be written about is This is How You Lose the Time War (2019), but it was the second one we read.
Co-authored by El-Mohtar and Gladstone, Time War is written in epistolary format between two spies on opposite sides of a continuous war. The letters between Red and Blue start off as curious inquiries about each other and their methods of foiling one another's plans but soon become something more: curiosity evolves into desire that blooms into love. However, for these opposites attract agents, their forbidden love puts their lives at stake.
Red is a machine-augmented 'human' that works for the Agency, part of a Technotopia.
Blue is a shape-shifting nature-infused 'human' working for Garden, an organic consciousness.
The letter format of the novel is broken up with short chapters describing how the correspondence is delivered, hidden and received by both Red and Blue. Their notes are hidden in water, disguised as smoke, rested under the skin of animals, and grown in seeds to be consumed. The whole exchange is kicked off by Blue's direction to Red: "burn before reading" on a desolate field post-battle. From there, the letters get exponentially more creative as the operatives tease each other and endeavor to circumvent their respective masters catching on to their activities.
Red and Blue's love story is a slow burn, and a first you don't believe it is actually real. I believed that one or the other was going to betray themselves, and that the whole thing was a ruse from the start. Yet, in an act of defiance, Blue saves a young Red (before she becomes an agent) from assassination and is significantly wounded in the process. Their letter-contact during Blue's recovery strengthens their bond allowing Red to later return the life-saving favour at the climax of the book. (I won't give this part away because there is so much that ties into in from the novel as a whole).
There is a plot thread present throughout the story that sits on the periphery for the reader which was fun to guess at. I was able to guess it correctly before the reveal, but the full outcome and purpose would have been really hard to foresee with how wrapped up it is in the climax and conclusion of the novel.
I'm not typically a big fan of letter format novels, and this one takes a little bit to get into, but I did quite enjoy it once I was in it more. Character building and world setting are key topics in this class, so the discussion in class revolved around the two-author contribution (a theme in the course) and how each author contributed to the development and outcome of the story. We also discussed how the two main characters, Red and Blue, interacted with or were influenced by the world within the novel and how those elements contributed to their character development in the story.
