Interestingly, neither Red nor Blue’s gender is mentioned in the marketing materials, yet ever since this book was announced, I was somehow convinced they were male and female- a glaring assumption that I can’t really justify beyond the fact that the co-authors are male and female. Unfortunately, it’s also part of a larger trend, in which this type of romance plays out along very gendered and heteronormative lines: the man travels, and the woman waits for him.

With its twisty timelines, in which each of the lovers knows more than the other about their relationship depending on the time of their interaction, and its bittersweet ending, Niffenegger’s book remains one of the best time travel love stories. While the latter two examples are original films, they were no doubt influenced by the first, a 2009 adaptation of Audrey Niffenegger’s 2003 novel about chronologically-impaired librarian Henry DeTamble and Clare Abshire, his artist wife. Taken separately, each of the three examples is amusing, but together it’s a worrisome pattern. Following the release of time travel rom-com About Time, a spate of articles highlighted how actress Rachel McAdams had completed the odd hat-trick of playing the time traveler’s girlfriend/wife without ever getting the chance to travel herself. What had become the archetypal time travel love story came to a head in 2013. But, as Red and Blue leave one another love notes on infinite battlefields, they remix a time-crossed love story into a wholly new take that elevates the subgenre. Similarly, before This Is How You Lose the Time War, Max Gladstone and Amal El-Mohtar’s new epistolary science fiction novella, the time travel love story had become stuck in an outdated formula that too often left one lover at a disadvantage. Before time travel agent Red finds the first letter from rival Blue on the battlefield, she thinks there is only one way to win the time war: her side’s way, barreling through time and ruthlessly cutting strands as needed.

This is how you lose the time war pages