This Is How You Lose the Time War

The novel follows a more traditional Western story structure with a clear plot arc that follows the rising tension between Red and Blue’s factions, culminating in Blue’s death, which acts as a turning point for Red’s character. Despite this adherence to a more traditional plot arc, the authors bend aspects of the traditional plot arc to subvert expectations and convey the nonlinear and multiplicitous nature of the universe.

Since the war takes place across time as Red, Blue, and other agents work to braid and manipulate time to their sides’ advantage, the story necessarily moves through time and space in unconventional ways. Rather than seeing a linear progression, the novel follows Red’s and Blue’s journeys through time and across multiple timelines, resulting in sequences that resist linear flow. They are on spaceships and then around dinosaurs, and they complain of being bored with seeing the same events in history many times over. This shows how recursive time can be and the power of cause and effect. Time is only linear in how modern humans perceive it, and multidimensional beings like Red and Blue can see a bigger picture. They know how certain things that seem to matter so much are insignificant, yet they are also aware of the profound impacts a small action taken or not taken can have on the course of history.