Attain This Is How You Lose The Time War Crafted By Amal El-Mohtar Audio Books

good stories travel from the outside, "

This is a passionate, genrestorming prose poem about temptation and the paradox of opposites that are not: of hunter and prey, tempter and victim one and the same.


“I want to chase you, find you, I want to be eluded and teased and adored I want to be defeated and victorious I want you to cut me, sharpen me.
”

Irresistible

The first temptation is to defy the instruction to "Burn before reading", and the climax hinges on whether or not to succumb to the urge to read a poison pen letter.
In between, there are the temptations of rulebreaking including the rules of genre, devising and rising to reckless challenges, and the lure of forbidden love.
No

serpent or apple, but there is the possibility of an Eden,

Battling through time

Red written by Max Gladstone and Blue written by Amal ElMohtar work for opposing organisations: the posthuman cyborg Agency and biopunk Garden, respectively: “flash and dash” versus “patient planting and pruning”.
Their bodies, personalities, and words reflect that to begin with,

“What a microcosm we are of the war as a whole, you and I, The physics of us. An action and an equal and opposite reaction, My vineyhivey elfworld, as you say, versus your techymechy dystopia, ”

They travel time in unexplained ways to shape and guard the future their bosses desire, trying to outwit Orwells famous line in see my review sitelinkHERE: “Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.
”


Image: The authors sitelinkSource,

Epistolary love

“Theres a kind of time travel in letters”,
They are letters in the loosest sense: steganography in tree rings, seeds, molten lava, bee stings, and more, Almost out of sight, the shadow Seeker gathers, works, and consumes the broken, illegible remnants,


Image: Message in lava sitelinkSource,

"Assassinations become assignations, "
Its a sort of Romeo and Juliet up and down the twisty threads of time: braiding, cutting, cauterising, A shimmering kaleidoscope of butterfly effects,

“I have known you since before I knew you, ”
Literally true for those who travel in time, Who loved who first Who existed first
“Under the spreading chestnut tree, I made you and you made me, ”

What sort of novel is this

Its unpolycategorisable, and revels in that.
Genres include: scifi minus the science, timetravel, alternative history, speculative, futuristic, dystopian, Utopian, poetry, epistolary, action thriller, espionage, new weird, LGBTQ love, fantasy, magical realism, tragedy, comedy

Freedom from futility

“What lasting advantage comes from murdering ghosts, who, with a slight shift of threads will return to life or live different lives that never bring them to the executioners blade”

Its red and blue, not black and white.
Their love is transgressive not because they are both female, but because they are meant to be enemies, even though there is no binary sense of good and evil.
When youre constantly rewriting events, right and wrong become as mercurial as “history” itself,

“Wars are dense with causes and effects, ” Time wars especially, and when any battle can be rerun with a different outcome, war is even more futile than in a linear, single universe.
That realisation is liberating.

Subtle diversity

Red, Blue, and Reds Commandant are brave, intelligent, strong, women, taking charge of their lives.
I appreciate normalising that by not shouting about it, but I dont think Id have noticed their gender if it hadnt been stated, which rather dilutes the point.
However, I prefer subtlety to sledgehammers: immediately after this, I read The Psychology of Time Travel see my review sitelinkHERE, which constantly reminds readers how diverse the characters are.


Up, down, back, forward, but how

Details of the mechanics would be out of place in such ethereal writing, but sometimes its frustratingly opaque:
“In downthread server farms couched in remnant icebergs hearts, she circles back upon her tail.
”
I wanted just a little more understanding, especially early on,

I found the idea of upthread being the “stable past” and downthread being the “fraying future” so counterintuitive, I had to keep checking my notes.
Obviously the pages have a gravitational pull from top to bottom “How strange to uncover things in sequence”, Red says of books, but I visualise the threads of the past hanging below the present.
My fault, but distracting.


Image: Braided sweet grass sitelinkSource,

Quotes

“Most strands lack Atlantis altogether, knowing the place only through dreams and mad poets madder whispers.
”

“I want to be a context for you, and you for me, ”

“Threads of time sing with the light, swift footfalls of soldiers, ”

“Moss breathes fumes of sleep, ”

“Pollen thickens the air with wisdom, ”


Image: Fan art, by Kori Michele sitelinkSource,

Ive added line breaks to these, but not changed the words,

“London one strand over
is the kind of London other Londons dream:
sepia tinted, skies strung with dirigibles,
The viciousness of empire acknowledged
only as a rosy backdrop glow redolent of spice and petalled sugar,
Mannered as a novel,
filthy only where story requires it,
all meat pies and monarchy, ”

“The dreams towards which she rocks him
will spiral tendrils of possibility from this strand into others,
send tremors to shift and shake the futures boughs in Gardens direction.
”

“As the great Gallumfry lists planetward,
raining escape pods,
as battle stations wilt like flowers tossed into film,
as radio bands crackle triumph
and swiftskimmers swoop after fleeing voidtails,
as guns speak their last arguments into mute space,
she slips away.
”

“I wick the longing into thread,
pass it through your needle eye,
and sew it into hiding somewhere beneath my skin,
embroider my next letter to you one stitch at a time.
”

“Space here is sick,
Thick.
Slick.
She drowns in cloying honeyheavy light,
Her passage through vacuum feels like sliding over meat
Far away and too, too near shines a sun that is an eye with a great hourglass pupil like a goats,
sweeping space for weaknesses to improve, exploit
Thick fluid space opens.
”

Dedicated, recommended, tempted or not

This is dedicated “To you, PS. Yes, you. ” Perhaps Blues recommendation of sitelinkTravel Light is to me as well as Red, GR says its a fantasy with a strong female lead, written by a Scottish Victorian, Back to temptation.

The TV rights have been optioned, with the original writers doing the scripts, I dont want to see concrete manifestation of characters and worlds that are so ethereal, but curiosity may win, .