The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August

This was a bit like the movie Groundhog Day, but instead looping through a single day, Harry loops through full lives. He is born in the early 1900s and when he dies, he's reborn back in the early 1900s with his previous memories intact.

The book begins in England in the early 1900s and follows Harry's lives throughout Europe, Asia, and North America through the entire 20th century. The only “magic” in the world is that a small percentage of humanity relives their lives over and over again.

All around the globe and throughout time, the Cronus Club recruits people like Harry. They often seek each other out as children and help them jumpstart their lives with wealth and new identities. North takes this concept and does some really cool things with it. For example, Harry could seek out someone like himself in the early 1900s who is nearing the end of their loop and pass on information for their next life. This cycle allows information to be passed forward or backward in time.

The people like Harry are nearly immortal, but can still be killed. For some reason, killing someone's parents before they are born (or otherwise preventing their birth) will kill one of them forever. Extreme torture during one life can leave a person mentally broken in the next, and it's possible to erase one's memories of their past lives.

Harry August is the main character of the novel, and we meet a good number of people through his eyes. The thing is, each one of his lives is different, and side characters don't always show up in multiple lives. There are a couple repeat characters (some more important than others), but to talk too much about them would get into spoilers.

I will say that this story has one of my absolute favorite types of villains. They believe they are truly the “good guy” and I was honestly pretty close to rooting for them by the end. Rather than good vs. evil, the main conflict is more of a matter of ideals.

Harry's first life is relatively normal. He experiences pain and joy, hardships and triumphs, and then dies. Imagine his surprise when he finds himself right back where he started.

It takes him a while before he adjusts to the idea, and longer still before he finds out there are others like him. He explores religion, philosophy, academia, and crime. One day, towards the end of his eleventh life, someone like him passes on a message from the future: the world is ending, and the end is occurring sooner with every life cycle.

From that point on, Harry is determined to try to stop the end of the world. Events from earlier in the book that didn't seem to have much purpose come back with new meaning and a game of cat and mouse begins between Harry and his enemy.

Claire North has a knack for combining beautiful prose, complex characters, creative ideas, and never wasting a word. Rather than centering her story around magic, she focuses on the human elements of her world. This can lead to a slice-of-life, slower-paced feel at times, but the story gradually builds in intensity and suspense.

The plot is nonlinear, jumping around between Harry's various lives, but this nonlinearity was chosen with care and adds to the story. I typically find magical realism stories to be too slow for my liking, but this story has excellent pacing that accelerates in the later parts of the book.

If you like books that explore the consequences of a character's actions, have nonlinear timelines and rely more on intrigue and mystery than on action, this might be for you. Good and evil aren't black and white, either.

If you prefer action-heavy, fast-paced, happy books, this might not be for you. The book takes its time getting started (though the pace definitely does pick up), and it might feel like its rambling. There is a relatively small cast of developed characters, with most of the attention being directed at Harry.