Do you want a swoon worthy romance? Do you want a relationship to root for? Do you want to become deeply invested in a love story that does not concern you? If so, I would recommend you read This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone.
Yes, you’ve heard me right. For a great romance, I am recommending you read a sci-fi novel.
This is How You Lose the Time War is not the most accessible novel. If you are used to reading contemporary rom-coms, it might not be what you are used to. The novel does not ease you in with a relatable world and quirky characters. Instead, the novel throws you in the deep end. You might say that, it thrusts you into a strand of time. The novel not only starts in the middle of the action, but it also does not have the most traditional characters. In fact, I have no idea what any of the characters in this novel look like and I only have a basic understanding of the wider world the novel takes place in. This might be strange to say as I have read the novel three times and wrote an essay on it. Yet, the joy of the novel is that it makes almost no sense but perfect sense at the same time. You don’t need to understand the ins and outs of the world because the romance is what draws you in.
At its core, This is How You Lose the Time War is an enemies to lovers romance. Red and Blue work for rival time organisations and are working against each other to manipulate the time line. This science fiction element forms the background of the novel. The intricacies of time and politics in the novel are almost unimportant. What matters is that the wider world has forced Red and Blue to be enemies.
Despite working against each other, Red and Blue start to communicate with each other. They leave each other letters which start off goading and full of banter and evolve into the most romantic lines of fiction you will ever read. Alongside this, the characters evolve. My personal favourite part of the novel is watching Red come into herself and embrace her inner thoughts. When you think of science fiction, you will probably think about some of the most famous evolutions or transformations of all fiction. But forget Frankenstein, The Fly, and X-Men. The sci-fi evolutions we should be talking about are in character development.
Because This is How You Lose the Time War is a novel focused so much of characters (both their relationships and their inner selves), it manages to be the perfect romance novel. It is forbidden love done perfectly. I’d say read the novel even if it seems intimidating. This might annoy sci-fi fans, but forget the world and just focus on the romance.
By now we are used to hearing that real life is dystopian and We Had to Remove This Post by Hanna Bervoets takes it one step further. It feels sci-fi in a way a realistic novel never has for me.
We Had to Remove This Post follows Kayleigh who used to be employed as a content moderator. This is a job right out of a dystopia and yet it is a real job (this is only highlighted by the list of primary sources Bervoets lists at the end of the book). Content moderators are the people who decide if flagged social media posts should be deleted or not. They are basically forced to watch porn, violence, hate speech, and all the things we avoid for hours on end. No not basically, literally. They are literally forced to encounter the world’s horrors. As always is the case, capitalism has chained them to their desk. They have strict daily goals and are timed from the second they leave their desk to the moment they return. As you can imagine, this is hell.
However, it does not necessarily make you rethink all the times you have ever complained about your job or the social media that haunts your for you page. While long hours and diet pill adverts are undoubtably not great, they are incomparable to the life and work of a content moderator. Yet, despite your experiences feeling tame in comparison, Bervoets encourages you to recognise how social media and capitalism impact you on a day to day basis. Our trauma might not be as extreme as Kayleigh’s but it is still real. We might not believe the world is flat and that Hitler had some good points, but we do consume the hustle culture and diet culture we experience.
From Kayleigh’s perspective, we see the affect that content moderation has on her friends. I am reluctant to call them her friends, as they are more so the only people in her life. Her job traps her in the world of social media and cuts off her wider social circle. Kayleigh focuses on their mental trauma because it is the only thing she experiences other than her own trauma. They are not so much her friends as they are her inmates… or fellow victims. She recounts her disbelief at their newfound belief that the world is flat and that the holocaust isn’t real. Yet, Kayleigh does not simply function as a mediator for the reader. Instead, Bervoets presentation is much more complex.
Bervoets uses Kayleigh’s perspective to masterfully show the slow deterioration of her mind. The moment you realise just how corrupted she is haunting. For such a short novel, Bervoets makes an impact. Like the best 140-character tweet or a 3 second TikTok’s, her novel is able to make a difference. By forcing you to rethink the eyes you are reading from, Bervoets simultaneously makes you challenge your own perspective. Even if we are not aware of it, we too have been impacted by online content. As we spend so much time online, we ourselves are essentially content moderators. Just like their lives (and viewpoints) become infected by the world of content moderation, our lives are dictated by the online world of social media. It does not leave us as soon as we turn off our phones. Although, thinking about it does anyone ever turn off their phone anymore?
Like all the best haunting dystopias, social horrors, and trauma narratives, this novel is slightly hard to read. But, no matter how hard it is to read, it is easier to consume that the videos Kayleigh has to watch. Bervoets embodies the horror they experience in a way that even Charlie Brooker could not achieve.
I love romance. I love science fiction. I love science fiction romance (About Time is a great film and This Is How You Lose The Time War might be the most romantic book I’ve ever read. So surely you’d think that The Time Travellers Wife would be perfect for me. At least that’s what I thought when I read the book last year. Yet, I was very disappointed.
Mainly because this book is not a romance. It is a metaphorical tale about child abuse and grooming. The premise is literally a man telling a young girl that they are destined to be together and her falling for it until they eventually get married. That is the most problematic plot ever. It is so problematic that it only could have only been published in the early 2000s. It had to be published in the era of toxic fictional relationships. Yet, at least other novels from this period (like everyone’s beloved Twilight) are fun.
I am absolutely baffled how someone could have decided to make an adaption of this story in the post-me-too era. In fact, I feel like what was needed was an anti-Time Traveller’s Wife TV show. Now is the perfect time to explore just how toxic the romances we grew up reading and watching were. Seriously Netflix needs to get onto this concept cause I’m sure it would be a massive hit with the 20plus-year-olds who survived this era.
There is a chance that this book is perfect… at least perfect for me. I’ve never had such a positive feeling about a book that I have preordered before (and certainly not one I had signed). I am so glad that this one delivered everything I wanted and more. This book will hold a special place in my book collection (and my heart) for years to come.
I have previously read three Emily St. John Mandel books, and this one is probably my favourite. I was first introduced to her writing when I picked up The Glass Hotel on a whim and I started off strong. I found myself immersed in the plot and in love with the atmosphere. (Irrelevant sidenote: since reading this novel, I have come to the conclusion that I love stories about hotels. This is super niche, but one of my favourite comfort shows is Schitt’s Creek, I could talk about The Shining for years and years, and The Grand Budapest Hotel is an unforgettable film with an even more unforgettable soundtrack – it is basically the only film score I will rave about.) It is therefore no surprise that while Station Eleven is everyone else’s favourite Mandel novel, The Glass Hotel was mine. Until I read The Sea of Tranquility, which truly changed the game… or rocked the boat.
However, The Sea of Tranquility is perhaps not a novel for everyone. It is designed for an Emily St. John Mandel reader. In this novel, she essentially creates her own extended universe. However, the Mandel-universe differs from others like the MCU. Unlike these films, her novel is not a desperate attempt to make as much money as possible. In fact, Mandel’s decision to her unite her novels might have made them less profitable. Even though it can be read on its own, I wouldn’t recommend reading it without having read at least The Glass Hotel, and maybe even Station Eleven too. To appreciate the full complexity of the novel, you need to immerse yourself in her writing.
The Sea of Tranquility is almost impossible to describe. It is a novel that initially appears to have no protagonist. It starts much like Cloud Atlas. It includes vignettes that later connect to a more recognisable plot. While none of her novels are chronological, this novel has even less of a familiar structure. Like her other novels, The Sea of Tranquility follows multiple threads across time. Yet, in her other novels, these strands are plaited together by repeating characters. At first, The Sea of Tranquility feels completely unconnected, her reader cannot decipher why Mandel is choosing to tell these stories. It reads more like a book of incomplete short stories than a novel.
However, around the halfway mark, Mandel finally ties her disparate stories together through Gaspery-Jacques Roberts. As a time-traveller tasked with exploring a weird artistic loophole he unites the novel. At this point, the book became impossible to put down. I ravished the end of the book. I lived the dream of basking in the sunshine while reading a perfect novel. The atmosphere was beautiful and well, tranquil.
‘This is the strange lesson of living in a pandemic: life can be tranquil in the face of death’
Emily St. john Mandel
This does not mean that I did not enjoy the beginning of the novel, don’t get me wrong I loved the entire thing. But understanding the connections between her sections transformed the book from a simple walk in the woods to a transcendent experience that needed to be captured.
Throughout the entire book, Mandel writes with her trademark luscious style. The entire book is just beautiful to read. It is incredibly quotable. Olive’s section includes the type of impactful ruminations you would expect from an author’s perspective. In this section, Mandel narrates the experiences of an author who wrote a pandemic novel going through an actual pandemic (I can only guess where she stumbled upon the inspiration for this narrative). Olive forces you to reflect on your own pandemic experience. But it is not all doom and gloom. Amidst, her reflections that ‘in any given crowd, serval people will be incredibly sick’, Mandel weaves in little comments that offer the reader a wave of irony and humour. You can’t help but laugh at her thoughts like ‘but obviously Marienbad was fiction’. The line between fiction and reality is blurred for Olive, just like Mandel blurs the lines between the narratives we are reading and the lives we are living. Its commentary on the pandemic would perhaps appeal to fans of Ali Smith. Like Smith, Mandel’s jibes skim the water like a pebble on the ocean.
Saying this, the most impactful lines definitely manifest once we have dived into the head of Gaspery-Jacques’s mind. Learning about his marital failures, his search for purpose, and his kindheartedness, makes an already resonant novel unforgettable.
It’s very rare for a book to make me cry, but this one did it. It has so many lines that will resonate with me through time. I truly don’t think I can forget this book or its language. It is literary fiction at its best. It makes you think by offering subtle images that can transfer into messages for life. By focusing on him, Mendel anchors the book on his experiences. Through her short chapters, Mandel forces her reader to think about existential questions… but in an inspiring way. After all, ‘a life lived in a simulation is still a life’.
I absolutely loved that it reminded me of some of my favourite sci-fi stories. It reminded me of the OA, Sense8, Cloud Atlas, This is How You Lose the Time War and much more. I often forget why I love sci-fi and this has proved that it is because of connection. Sci-fi can offer beautiful relationships and interconnected plots at the same time. It makes me want to read more sci-fi, dive back into those beloved stories, and reread this book immediately – while writing this review, I took a break to reserve the audiobook from my library. I can’t wait to dive back into the book and discover even more hidden paths and connections.
Words and Dragons 