201 pages
Published 2019
Read from June 20 to July 3
Rating: 4.5 out of 5
We've been having a rough time of it here in reality, haven't we? An unelected council of robed wizards declaring that fascism must be the law of the land (at least here in the United States); the relentless loss of liberties and personal autonomy; an incipient genocide against LGBTQIA+ folks gathering momentum everywhere from megachurch pulpits to the opinion page of The New York Times; sacrificing the future of human civilization (and most of the biosphere) to a couple more years of capitalist profiteering -- 2022 has been a bad fucking time.
Lucky thing the gay spec-fic has been so brilliant.
This Is How You Lose the Time War is the book Dinosaur Beach didn't even know it could wish itself to be, but far weirder, queerer, and incomparably better, a poetic manifesto burning in a fist of revolution. It's a document of beauty, a transcendent evocation of love and hunger and grief so fierce it can unmake the future and weave something greater in its stead. With my own thoughts so steeped in the necessity of unmaking the fascism and ecological collapse of our present, I needed this book at this particular stipple in time. I can only quote Amal El-Mohtar from the acknowledgements: "Books are letters in bottles, cast into the waves of time, from one person trying to save the world to another."
This is how we win.
