Mitchell Loughlin’s Reviews > This Is How You Lose the Time War > Status Update

Red devours the letter clinging onto the hope her plan worked. Red explained why she ate the poison. Why, stuck between losing red or red passing she chose to take her own life. Explains how red saved her. And promised her a future.

In a war without winners they lost create their own victory. And together is how they win

Knowing her poison wouldn’t have killed herself she gives blue a drop of her blood. A vaccination against the future. This was the change that made blue sick when she was young. The garden noticing the change kicks her out where she is found by the agency. They tortured her to get information but she doesn’t say anything. A young man throws her into a cell with a letter.

She formulates a plan. She needs to become more blue, she searches for the letters and consumes all
That is blue. She follows herself
Taking in the words and offering comfort at times. She runs, and hides and changes. Becoming more blue until, chased by agents, she enters the garden.

A totally different world, deadly to someone like red, she is accepted as part of the garden. She finds a young blue

Fin

Blue love London, from the beginning she made mentions of it. The tea, the people, the city. Red languishes around the city looking for
Things blue might have enjoyed. She sees a painting of a young boy who died in a chair, hand clawing his heart, he wears blue overalls. It’s the exact pose blue did in.

Red begins to wonder, if this was left on purpose for her to find? Could blue be alive?

Red is crushed and runs off a cliff, as the rocks approach threatening to spill her blood she fades into the past.

But not before she finds the seeker. For the first time getting a real glimpse of them. They are a shadow still, the crystal of a river at noon. Their hand outstretched asking the letter. They are not garden or agency. Red doesn’t care to delve into the mystery

Red finds blues body, she runs her hands through her hair, finding the letter sealed in scarlet. She runs, not caring about her pursuers or that she is carrying a virus that breaks timelines. At the end of a world, under a sky lit by the dying gasps of atomic weapons she reads blue’s goodbye
Blue felt betrayed in a way, proud in another. She’s proud to have such a worthy opponent but it could have been different

Red had warned her about the poison, before in her letters and again in the plant, but blue thinks red will die if she doesn’t eat it. Below the poison red leaves a final letter. Begging blue to stop, but blue doesn’t knowing that there are more words hidden beneath that she doesn’t want to miss. She reads to the bottom, past I loved yous and goodbyes.

She composed a letter in paper and ink and passes

Red works under the guidance of lab workers to compose a letter to blue. It is wrapped inside a plant red chose to make beautiful but obviously poisonous. She tries to make the words feel genuine but obviously not her own.
Blue finds the plant and knows immediately it’s a trap but keeps it on the shelf for a year. The berries start to fall and she knows it’s time. To save red she eats the plant

The prose in this story is beautiful, there are moment where I feel it so entirely captures the feeling of falling in love and the duality of it all. However I am not a great reader….maybe it’s because of my
Limited visualization but it’s hard to wade through the flowery writing at times to cut into the meat of the story. Find myself rereading a lot

Red is willing to walk away if it means blue has a chance at life despite the fact she knows it will kill her.

The seeker continues to eat the leftovers of their letters.