The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August

LoveReading Says

Maxim Jakubowski Highly Recommended.

In her recent and rightly praised Life After Life, Kate Atkinson revisited the eternal theme of 'what would you do if you could live again?'. Not a new idea and one much exploited by fantasy and SF writers, but this new variation on the genre by the pseudonymous Claire North notches up matters to the nth degree. Harry August is part of an elite group of people, The Cronus Club, who can live again and again beyond death itself, although they are not allowed to change the past. When he encounters evidence that someone is doing so and is endangering the world's future, he encounters his nemesis and their battle continues over fifteen lives. Imaginative and dazzling, this spans the world and the centuries and never flags, while constantly defying the reader's expectations. Science fiction for people who don't like the customary trappings of SF: if this doesn't convert you, nothing will. Just read it!

Sarah Broadhurst's view...

This is an extremely complex plot expressing an even more complicated idea, and it is wonderful.  Not time travel; not quite reincarnation; not a ‘Ground Hog Day’ repeating loop.  A little bit of all of these.  Harry August lives many lives and remembers each one but they are all the same one over and over.  If you think that is complicated take a look at the rest of it.  It is one of those stories where I hesitate to tell anything in case of spoiling it.  It is a thriller across many life times.  I could not put it down.  It really is a rare gem, a totally enthralling read and a startling original idea.  I loved it.

Maxim Jakubowski

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